Rumour has it that ‘Vanity Metrics’ might become private….
The latest news from Instagram headquarters, after a design trial was leaked, is that Instagram may make the ‘likes’ on posts private to all viewers, and only viewable to the person who posted it.
The idea of this trial is to make users focus on the post content itself, rather than the engagement and ‘likes’ it receives. Encouraging users to create quality content and forget those metrics (that have little to no effect on your bottom line!).
We’re interested to see how this one plays out.
Updated 2 May 2019
The Situation – I want you to “Like me”
So you’re a small biz and hold a competition run through Facebook. You gain some new likers and you are pretty happy to see your following nearly double. You gave away a basket of tasty treats. Lots of people entered (the prize was pretty cool). However, your sales haven’t increased at all.
Why This Matters (or Doesn’t!)
You provide accounting services to small businesses in your town. You can only manage 200 clients locally. Your books are actually almost full and you get most clients via word of mouth.
Do you see the disconnect here? Just because your business has a large (or small) Facebook following it doesn’t mean much, unless those followers are your target customers and might actually buy your products or services.
Vanity metrics (those pesky numbers on our social media accounts that try and tell us how successful we are – how many likes and follows we have) actually carry very little weight when it comes down to the reality of being successful and profitable.
Businesses get caught up in their followers and the number of followers of their competitors has. The proof lies in the bottom line, in your referrals and reviews.
The Challenge
I challenge you, for 7 full days, don’t look at those numbers (or try not too!). Don’t look at your competitor’s pages. Instead focus on creating engaging social media content, getting reviews and doing a great job at what you do best!
