We all know at least person who is constantly posting to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now LinkedIn. Hoping that by pushing that publish button over and over without thinking of how they can add value or share valuable content, they will just gain more followers. In the early days of Facebook we saw people telling us they were getting ready to jump in the shower and then follow-up with, “I am out of the shower and the hot water ran out on me!” I actually muted a friend for doing this everyday about their showers and what they were making at that moment (pre-Instagram days). Obviously if we are working on building a personal brand or maybe even a business brand, we all want to have a large audience to talk to and engage with. This is why it is imperative that we understand the difference between quality and quantity.
Let’s think of this in terms of your followers: If you use Twitter and I hope you do, you ever receive a follower and their bio reads something about for $5 they will add 5,000 legitimate followers? Having 50,000 fake Twitter followers is not going to prove to your target customer that you know what you’re doing. Now, let’s look at from the other side of the coin. So you have been on Twitter for a while and you are following the influential people in your industry or niche market and retweeting their content while adding a bit of your own thoughts (think 80/20 rule). This will start to gain you some quality followers that like what you are dishing out, even when it isn’t your material. To gain results on your social media accounts whether it is followers or “quality” of posts, it is important to focus on your audience while adding a bit of your personality to the mix.
Looking at the engagement side of quality and quantity is another topic that can be highly debated by some. However, to be successful and have a rich social media engagement you must focus on quality first. While followers do matter, it is more important to have those highly engaged followers that are motivated to re-tweet your content.
To keep quality over quantity at the forefront it is important to remember that:
- Delivering quality content will help spread your content, if it is found worthy by your network as they spread your message to THEIR network.
- Don’t spread yourself thin. Don’t try to be everything to everyone, just focus on a core group of influential followers who can help get your content further.
So what is your definition of quality and quantity with respect to social media? Check out the video from Pam Moore below and leave me a comment and let’s continue the discussion.
Colin Haas 
I agree with quality over quantity argument as establishing a successful social media community takes thoughtful management, regular engaging posts, and daily monitoring. I have heard other marketers discuss an interest in growing their fan or follower bases for the sake of looking like a strong, popular brand. While consumers may be enticed to follow a brand with lots of other followers to see what they are missing, those same users are not likely to stick around if the content is not engaging. Achieving ROI from social media fans is much more likely to occur from a handful of evangelists that actually care about one’s brand than it would from a list of purchased followers.
Hi Holly, great points! I have from time to time un-followed someone, including brands who didn’t deliver value to me anymore and when the quantity flooded my Twitter stream. Quality plays a key role, but engagement also plays another key role with followers.
I like your point about being focused on your niche and audience. While each of us has many interests, tweeting about all of them will leave your audience unsure of what to expect. Do you see that as a difference between Facebook and Twitter? With Facebook, your personal page, at least, is likely to be people who know you and will be interested in your various interests. With Twitter, it seems followers are more likely to share only one of your interests.
I definitely agree! I am friends with one person from the IMC program and rarely do I post about IMC-type information.
However, on Twitter I am mainly stay around those topics since I am passionate about these topics. Instagram I do share a little bit of both and my school journey or day, etc. I love connecting with my fellow classmates though and see the connections as valuable to learn from each other.
The quality is actually relative. Many times on my Facebook newsfeed I see posts that are not even close to interesting to me, but I will continue to see it at the top of the feed for days because so many other people are commenting on it or liking it, driving it up in popularity. It reminds me of a lesson I learned about calling direct marketing pieces “junk mail.” It is actually poorly targeted mail. The email, postcard, text, or, as in this case, social media post is only “junk” when it has no appeal to me.
Kim, that is very true about Facebook. I check Facebook from the app on my iPhone and I constantly have to change the feed to “Most Recent”. You should be able to have that be the default setting, versus what is remaining popular. Thanks for the comment.
Excellent beat! I would like to newbie as well just like you amend your internet-site, the way may my spouse and i sign up for just a website? The actual bank account assisted us a pertinent Social Media Strategist Salary deal. My partner and i were being little familiarised in this your own over the air presented brilliant obvious thought