Don’t Judge Your Social Success From One Update

Writing by Nick Stamoulis in Social Media

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s easy to lose the forest for the trees. We get so hung up on the daily numbers (how many times this piece of content is shared, how many people Liked our Facebook page, how many reTweets this link got), that we lost sight of the bigger picture. I’ve heard it from many site owners— “Well I posted this update to Facebook and nothing happened, so I don’t think social media marketing will work for my business.” When it comes to social success, you’ve got to remember that it’s not the individual updates that make the real difference, it’s your social presence, personality and activity as a whole.

I think the problem a lot of site owners have with determining social success is that they are looking for a direct connection, a one-to-one relationship between this Facebook update and that sale. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that social media marketing works in that linear of ways. I’m not saying that it can’t ever happen that way, but I’m willing to bet the majority of leads/sales/conversions/visitors a site gets from social media marketing aren’t that instantaneous. Instead, I’ve found that social success is garnered through long term and consistent activity.

Think of it like this. Let’s say you post a great piece of content to your Facebook wall, in this case a video. Even if you have 1,000 Facebook Fans, they would all have to be logged into their Facebook accounts AND looking at their Walls the moment your update went live in order to see it. Even then, there is no guarantee they are going to watch it. If your update went live a few minutes before someone logged into their Facebook account, chances are your video is buried among the latest updates from other people in their social network. If it goes live a few minutes after they log out, by the next time they login it probably won’t even be in their Newsfeed.

Is your video a failure because it didn’t capture the attention of your 1,000 fans? What if only 75 people bothered to watch it and only 1 shared it? Does that mean your social media marketing campaign isn’t working? Not necessarily. You can’t judge your social success by one lone update; it’s just a tiny piece of your overall social puzzle.

Keep in mind that every time you are active on your social networks, you are giving your current connections a reason to engaged with your brand, and you are giving new connections the opportunity to find your profiles. If you give up on social media marketing because individual updates are getting the kind of responses you were hoping for, you’ll never get social media to work for you! Much like SEO, social success comes from a long term and consistent commitment. Little wins, some hardly worth being called a victory add up over time to social success.