As the world evolves and becomes more and more digital, social media plays a big role in marketing. Almost anyone with a smartphone or a laptop has a social media account. This makes it easier to set targeted ads. A lot of businesses who seek social media marketing often get into it with a ‘‘more followers=success’ mindset. They often set expectations like “I want my followers to increase by X amount within X months”. This can lead to several bad outcomes as the business sets too high of an expectation as their social media marketing goal. A higher follower count does not translate to a brand’s success and setting unrealistic expectations has negative repercussions.
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What Happens When Businesses Set High Expectations?
It’s always a good thing to set goals or certain expectations in your business. However, it becomes a different story when goals or expectations are set too high or unrealistic. This is what can happen when you set unrealistic goals or high expectations for your social media marketing:
1. Failure to meet expectations or goals.
When one sets high expectations or overly ambitious goals, it might be a bit hard, especially for startups or growing businesses, to reach those goals. This will lead to feelings of disappointment when those expectations aren’t achieved.
2. Loss of trust.
Following the previous point, when a business keeps on failing to deliver based on its unrealistic goals, customers or users may lose trust in that business and move on to a better option.
3. Possibly miss out on a lot of opportunities.
Similar to life, when you solely focus on paths that are overly ambitious or unrealistic goals, you may overlook other opportunities that may bring actual benefit to the business like growth or engagement. In this case, fixating on increasing your follower count may cause a business to neglect or abandon its existing followers, losing numbers from that instead of growing.
Also, while we have you here, you might wanna check out our blog about whether your business should be on all social media.
4. Burnout or decrease in motivation.
When a business constantly expects unrealistic or unreachable social media marketing goals, its appointed social media marketing team may get demotivated or experience burnout from the pressure. This can be due to overwhelming pressure or the inability to meet expectations. This may also lead to their productivity and creativity being diminished.
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Follower Count on Social Media Does Not Guarantee Success
Although the number of followers a brand has for their social media accounts may be a good first impression, first impressions don’t last long and there are bigger aspects that matter more than follower counts. Let us share with you a few reasons why follower counts don’t always translate to a brand’s success:
1. Inauthentic or Bought Followers
Some brands that resort to buying followers to boost their numbers actually experience negative repercussions in the end. For instance, social media platforms can detect followers or users that are inactive or fake. Thus, if a platform were to see that the engagement on your page does not match or tally with the number of followers, it might restrict your account from reaching a genuine audience. Those fake or inactive accounts provide no actual engagement, rendering them ineffective or useless for growing devoted and supporting following. Authenticity is essential for building trust and credibility among your audience. Plus, as an example, it might be pretty obvious when the follower count is over a million while the likes and comments only remain within a couple hundred.
2. Lack of Engagement
Having a huge following is meaningless anyway if your audience isn’t actively engaged with your published content. Engagement is an important factor that indicates how much engagement and leads your postings generate. As mentioned before, a huge following may appear impressive at first, but if your audience isn’t liking, sharing, commenting, or at least interacting with your content in any way, your reach and influence will be restricted. Thus, instead of reaching and chasing a huge following, build a meaningful and trustworthy relationship with the genuine audience that is already there, supporting your content. This may lead to more and more people seeing your authenticity and also lending their support.
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3. Irrelevant Audience
Another reason that shows how a high follower count is not a big deal is because of the potential of obtaining an irrelevant audience. Having a large following made up of people who are not engaging in your content, products or services will produce little to no results or leads. Instead, it is critical to focus on gaining followers who are interested in your niche, business, basically, your target market. A more engaged and relevant audience means more chances for meaningful interactions, conversions, and long-term success. One example of a common misconception is that some businesses think that constantly hosting giveaways are a great way of gaining followers and engagement. However, there’s such a thing as giveaway hunters. These giveaway hunters engage for the sole purpose of joining and possibly winning the giveaway. They are not relevant followers or the target audience of your brand.
4. Lack Of Conversions
A lot of brands want their following to convert into sales or potential clients, of course. However, having a huge following does not guarantee that. Based on the previous points made in this blog, a huge following does not necessarily translate to high conversions, leads or so on. Your followers may become passive observers rather than active participants in your offers if they are not engaged, relevant, and focused. A smaller, more engaged audience is more likely to become loyal consumers and consistently engage with what you offer.
5. Changing Algorithms or Platforms
Social media platforms are always evolving, and algorithms are constantly changing. It’s not a smart move to fully rely on follower count because it does not account for unexpected changes or alterations produced by algorithm updates or platform changes. For instance, a platform could prioritize accounts with high engagements rather than high follower counts, thus, this makes having a huge following useless anyway. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are just a couple examples of platforms that value engagement and constantly update their algorithm, and that’s what determines whether your content shows up on people’s feeds. Being able to adapt is a good trait to have in a growing business. Allow us to reiterate that a high follower count without high engagements will be considered useless in the long run.
Conclusion
So, although a brand’s following might provide a good first impression of social media presence, it should not be used as the sole focus for measuring performance. An effective social media strategy includes engaging your audience, establishing trust and authenticity, targeting a relevant audience, driving leads, and responding to changing algorithms or platforms. Brands will grow and gain loyal consumers even better when they consider these factors instead of solely focusing on growing their numbers just so it looks impressive. Remember, one thousand engaging and interacting followers are worth so much more than one million inactive followers.
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