As of today I have exactly 17,309 subscribers/followers/friends/colleagues over my various social media networks. These are personal, business, and organisational accounts. Many more if we count account pages and organisations I share administration rights.
So what? So what indeed!
Of course this is nothing compared to a particular young person I know. He has 10s of thousands of connections, so many I gave up years ago even talking social network numbers. One video post alone spurred nearly a million views and 1000s of comments that lead to equal amount of subscribes/likes/follows over the various networks. Of course this young person doesn't sell anything, it's a profiling game that strokes the ego very nicely.
If on the other hand your job is selling products/services/ideas the question of raw numbers is much less important. Numbers should be just the start of your strategy. It is in fact the type/sort of people you should be most concerned about. In other words the 'quality' of your connections.
As the image below illustrates certain people are much more influential in connecting with other people than others. Imagine if the central message here was a recommendation to subscribe to a particular news service. Imagine now that you have received a message from a trusted associate recommending the news service. Emotionally and statistically you are approximately 10 times more likely to take up that same recommendation than a cold recommendation from a random/unknown source. Let that sink in for a while.
One of the best tactics I use is to conduct an audit of your social media networks. Rank people and organisations into relevance for categories. Divide these into logical communications groups and start becoming more relevant to more people over night. Your contacts will reward you with a smile because "Quality Rocks!" .
So what? So what indeed!
Of course this is nothing compared to a particular young person I know. He has 10s of thousands of connections, so many I gave up years ago even talking social network numbers. One video post alone spurred nearly a million views and 1000s of comments that lead to equal amount of subscribes/likes/follows over the various networks. Of course this young person doesn't sell anything, it's a profiling game that strokes the ego very nicely.
If on the other hand your job is selling products/services/ideas the question of raw numbers is much less important. Numbers should be just the start of your strategy. It is in fact the type/sort of people you should be most concerned about. In other words the 'quality' of your connections.
As the image below illustrates certain people are much more influential in connecting with other people than others. Imagine if the central message here was a recommendation to subscribe to a particular news service. Imagine now that you have received a message from a trusted associate recommending the news service. Emotionally and statistically you are approximately 10 times more likely to take up that same recommendation than a cold recommendation from a random/unknown source. Let that sink in for a while.
 |
| Quality networks are more important than the raw numbers |
