It’s fine to be jealous of the hare, but let’s be the tortoise.

Quality Over Quantity

There is a marketing phrase out there that goes “depth over width” (which we learned from social media expert Gary Vee). What does this mean? Well it means “quality over quantity” - basically, the number of followers, likes, etc doesn’t matter if the people doing the liking and following don’t actually care about your company. It’s similar to having hundreds of acquaintances and no real friends. As we know in life, it is better to have a smaller group of close friends that always have your back than a ton of people that barely know you. Same goes for your company. 

Lots of followers sure looks good, but looks can be deceiving. If you are small business, you know how it works in the real world to get more customers: you take great care of the customers you have, they spread the word, you get more customers and the cycle continues. YOU KNOW how much work these relationships take to build, it is not overnight. Just like there are “get rich quick schemes” there are also “get followers quick schemes”. They sound great, they sound easy, but if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. 

So how do you actually get real, engaged, followers? You put in the work, or you hire people like us to do it for you. :) Here are the basics:

1. Treat your social media accounts like real relationships that you are having with your customers and fans. Reply to comments, follow other businesses that align with yours. BE GENUINE with your comments and who you follow. Don’t just follow people to follow people. Think of your closest friendships. Think about how long it took to become close friends like that. THAT is what you are building - you are building trust. Don’t be that person that only starts a conversation with someone just so they can talk about themselves. It is yucky in real life, it is yucky in social media. 

2. Put out content that gives people value. Don’t just try to sell stuff all the time.

3. Be honest and genuine. If you are a small company, don’t try to look like you are a big corporation. Show people what’s under the hood, they will appreciate your honesty and it only helps to build their trust more. 

There are many people who will violently disagree with this article. That’s ok. There are shortcuts out there, there are social media tools, robots, software, etc. You can use them, not use them - that is up to you. However the three points we list above, are things that you should always keep in mind. If a tool you are using weakens any of those points, then you should relook at it and see if it is really worth it. 

We love working with small businesses on social media because they have passion, purpose and great stories behind what they do. The field is wide open for them to succeed extremely well on social media by just being themselves and bringing the values that built their business in the first place, to the digital world.