The size of the social media community isn’t as vital as it seems; the quality of your fans and followers is significantly more important than the quantity.

 

According to Mashable, 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of its traffic through sharing. Therefore, it’s important for you to interact productively with that 1% to maximize web traffic. To ensure you attract qualified fans, you should bring in prospects that fall under the desired demographic, geographic, and brand tastes and preferences (based on their bio and images). If your fans or followers are out of town, younger than your target group, and have distinctively different brand tastes than your ideal customer, it’s ineffective to develop such a large social media community as you won’t achieve optimal impact when promoting products or services. Additionally, by gaining too many unqualified followers, it may become difficult for you to cut through the clutter and interact with prospective customers. 

 

To ensure you’re engaging with qualified fans or followers, segment and create lists of different types of users. For example, create a list for the 1% that yields massive website visits, potentials who could be nurtured to become influencers, and general (everyone else). This lets you generate various ways to engage productively with your audience. For instance, you can plan to tweet a useful URL three times a day to members of the 1%, join in conversations once a week with potentials, and retweet once a week for general fans. This enables you to build relationships with your entire community while focusing primarily on the qualified, engaged, influential social media users.

 

Quality always beats quantity; even though you don’t have a million followers, when you attract quality followers and manage that community for quality engagement, it can be better than having a million followers. If you want help with social media marketing, please contact us or download our eBook to learn about best social media marketing practices.