The chase for getting followers to companies presences on social media has been on for the past decade or so. Companies celebration posts of follower no. 1000, 5000, 10.000 etc. has been frequent in social feeds, but I noticed a stagnation recently. So why aren`t the chase on any more ?
I think that many have – finally – realized that followers are – well just followers…They are an anonymous group, which we cant really target. Their “activity” cant be measured.
Are they real people – or not ? Are they actually interested in our company ? Did they just pass by, and forgot to de-follow ? Are we actually a nuisance in their social feeds ?
No matter what, many still spend quite heavy budgets in producing content based on the follower count – only to see that engagement is lower than ever.
So maybe it`s time to ask oneself;
How much would you pay for your followers in it`s current state ? ..Or at least try to investigate if the spending matches the outcome..
The – very – simple calculation could look like this;
An enterprise with a Linkedin company page has posted 3 times a day in the past 5 years. Production cost, time spent being creative, images, graphical sw purchased, agency costs, salary to the SoMe manager etc. would probably end up in apx. USD 250,- pr. post. That`s USD 750,- per day in 5 years – or a total 5 year investment of a whopping USD 825.000
Let`s assume this enterprise have attracted 10.000 followers during these 5 years, which gives a cost of USD 82,5 per follower.
Now on to the next problem;
The average engagement rates on LinkedIn are between 0,5 – 3% – so for this enterprise it means that their daily posts are being viewed by 50 – 300 followers per day. Average click rates based on the views are again below the 1% mark, so each post generates – at best – 3 clicks. Based on the investment made it`s a cost per click of USD 165,-!
So to rephrase to the big question:
Would you pay USD 165,- per click for an unsegmented, anonymous, non measurable target group ?
Start distributing your content “inside out” instead
Truly biased, you should start distributing your content “inside out” instead. This is what employee advocacy so brilliantly do.
If you were to choose where to spend your money – and decide which group you really want to distribute and interact with your content – would you go with your Followers or your Employees ?
Obviously you would probably go with your Employees, and if we put some numbers on it it makes even more sense:
Let`s assume you have 10.000 followers and 400 employees.
The characteristics in your followers are that they are anonymous, have low engagement and you cant really measure when “targeting them”.
The characteristics of your employees are that they actually know your brand, your products & your workplace.
They have direct access to relevant networks of potential customers & talents – acc. to LinkedIn each user have in average +300 connections. So – in this case 400×300= 120.000 potential customers & talents…
So again you might want to ask yourself; How much would you pay for your followers ?
Or – should you invest in your employees instead ?