Vanity Metrics, Part II: Why Followers Mean Very Little

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Often when I meet a new potential client, she'll say something to me like, "I only have 200 followers on Twitter." Or another potential client may say, "I have 200 followers on Twitter, which I think is pretty good since I'm just starting out." 

So, which is it? 

Well, this scenario is your first clue that a number of fans or followers on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram may not be the best way to measure whether you're reaching a substantial audience of potential customers. 

Fans Do Not = Customers

As I explained in Vanity Metrics, Part I , you are not trying to enlarge your general audience. Rather, enlarging your audience of potential customers is the whole reason you're engaged in social media marketing. You don't need to reach people who will never buy from you. 

And social media followers are not the same as potential customers. So, even if that number is going up, it doesn't necessarily mean you are reaching a larger pool of potential customers. 

Additionally, no matter the social platform, your individual posts are not seen by all or even most of your fans and followers.

Let that sink in for a second. Just because someone follows you on a platform does not mean they often or even ever see the content you post. 

But you can reach followers and non-followers alike who are interested in what you're sharing. One great way to do that is by hashtagging your posts, using hashtags relevant to your topic. 

(You can get a quick primer on how to choose hashtags in this great video from Savvy Sexy Social.) 

You'll hear more from me on hashtags in the coming weeks. Just remember: 

• Not all followers are potential customers

• Not all followers see what you post

• Non-followers who care about your topic can find you without necessarily following your social pages

Measuring Success: Split Tests and Social Media

The home page of Google Analytics. What are these numbers actually telling you about your business?

In my last post on vanity metrics I asked, 

“So how do you measure if you’re creating a larger audience that can help you reach your goal?”

To put it bluntly: the key is to measure how many of your users are taking an action that directly leads to your making money. So how do you do that? 

Page views can’t tell you whether you’re attracting potential customers who become real, live customers. But one of the methods you can use to produce actionable metrics—metrics that indicate whether your audience is getting hooked on what you have to say—is the split-test. 

What is a split test?

Split-testing is also called A/B testing because you are testing two ways of doing something (way A and way B) on two halves of your audience—splitting your audience.

For example, you may present 50 percent of people who land on a particular page with a link that says "Click Here" and the other 50 percent with a link that says "Get It Now." 

If a whole lot more people click on "Click Here," you know that "Click Here" is the better word choice for your link on that page. 

Here's a video that explains the idea, from Optimizely, a company that helps set up and run split-tests.

Why are split-tests hard to execute on social media? 

Because you cannot automatically segment your social media audience this way.

You can't set it up so that half your followers see a post with one type of wording and half see it with another.  Your post will pop up to whomever Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest chooses to show them to. 

How to execute tests on social media anyway

You can still conduct very effective tests using your posts on social media. They may not be perfect split-tests, but they can provide enough data to help you decide whether saying something like "click here" works better for your audience than saying, "Get it now." Here are some options: 

1. Use targeted audiences on Facebook. You can target geographically, by age, gender, and language on Facebook for free. Use this option if you want to see whether a certain message lands more effectively with women, as opposed to men, or with a certain age group. 

 2. Test using time of day and day of week. People often ask, "How often should I post to social media?" The only way you'll know for sure is to run tests. When are the best times of days to post? Should you post more often on certain days and less on others?  

Get a detailed how-to guide on setting up split-tests that answer these questions here. Have you tested these methods? How have they worked for you? Let me know in the comments!