Quantity or Quality is always a drama for a business. What to focus on? Especially when a business is just starting out on using social media. A recent Australian Survey confirms: quality versus quantity leads to success – but is that really true when you are a small business with a little marketing budget?
To determine if social media marketing is successfully working for you most businesses immediately look at their sales charts – has it made a difference? Is sales going up? Well, frankly, in most cases this won’t happen directly from using social media straight away. Not without a strategic advert campaign and a budget anyway. Most increased revenue will occur as a result of your social media presence building your business credibility. Who talks about your business and recommends you goes hand in hand with how professional you appear online.
Today, ‘online’ isn’t just your website. Quite often what appears in searches first is your Google Plus page or profile (so how is that representing your business and how does it encourage visitors to contact you). The next in line in Google searches tends to be LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and your website (not always in that order). So how credible do they look?
And here lies the conundrum of Quality versus Quantity…
When we first ‘check up’ on a business by clicking on their social links we need to know we are working with a credible professional within their industry. First impressions count in building a relationship. So look the part, invest in quality graphics that actually assist in telling people what you do through images.
The second thing we all have to admit to doing is… looking at the numbers. Yes we look at how many people are following them. We have a false security that if the numbers are reasonable then they must know what they are talking about or seen as an authority. So if you are a ‘late bloomer’ to social media, what do you do? You don’t buy a 1000 fake followers for $10 so when someone clicks on the ‘likes’ and sees the majority of your fans live in Turkey or India. That’s the quickest way to discredit who you are.
It’s also the stupidest thing to do if you want to build a profitable social media marketing strategy. To take advantage of Facebook’s organic search and ‘page suggestion’ features you need to build your page with genuinely interested people. This is because these features access your current Liker’s friends to suggest or promote your page to them in order to help you grow. Suggesting your page to a fake list of friends won’t obviously support your profit growth in a hurry!
So in the beginning do not be tempted to take short cuts – it will be expensive in the long term. Build your credibility by focusing on quality versus quantity from the beginning. And there are generally two ways to do this:
For the ‘social media time poor’
If this is you, the most effective method to gain a quality following quickly is to create an ongoing Likes Advert and set a daily budget. In the beginning, budget more and when you have the target of credible followers, reduce it to just work in the background for as little as a $1 a day (give up buying a few less coffees in the week). If you need assistance to do this then talk to me – we have a package that sets this up and teaches you how to monitor it for yourself.
For the ‘marketing budget poor’
If this is you, the initial growth stage is going to need you to rely on your network in order to build a credible following. First of all invite all your Facebook friends to like your page (there is a link on your page to do this). Facebook will send a notification BUT many of your friends will not necessarily see this – so forgive them. And here’s another little free tip… create a Facebook Event.
What you say!?
I’m serious, events don’t always have to be physical. People use this tool to promote product launches, Facebook competitions, webinar announcements etc. Just don’t over abuse it, otherwise you will become the ‘unopened email’. Add to the event description a link to your Facebook page to make it really simple for friends to find your business and like it. Event pages are also an easier way for friends to share your new page. (We all know how to share an event – but many don’t know how to share a page). To increase the incentive for friends to share and new people to like your page, add a bonus service or gift in the event description for taking the trouble. This obviously is just a token gift as a ‘Like’ cannot be enforced in exchange for something under the new Facebook terms and conditions.
Now, this method is not perhaps a completely genuine targeted list of clients, but at least they know you or have come from a connected source. I highly recommend when you reach the target of credible numbers organically, create a Likes Advert campaign and pay the minimum $1 a day.
This IS only equivalent to giving up 2 coffees a week!
In my books if you struggle with the idea of paying to educate yourself to then commit $7 a week to market your business then reflect how serious this business really is to you. How much do you value your time with family, friends and on other aspects of your life. Any time you spend on Facebook should be nurturing those relationships you have already created. The added bonus of a Likes advert is that it filters out for you the people you know you do not want to target by age, job, interests, relationship status etc. You can’t really identify these people organically without manually spending a lot of time researching!
So with these two simple cost and time effective solutions there is no excuses for not building a credible online presence quickly. You can easily use either of these methods to catch up with the rest of your industry and look professional to potential clients when they do a background research on you. There is no denying quality versus quantity leads to success if you take the time to set up your social media presence right in the first place.
