Small Following Base: You Really Might Be Missing The Point

Social media operates on one of the most basic levels of human psychology by providing users with a sense of social proof. Social proof is the notion that people are influenced by what a majority does or likes. If we like the same thing or find a value in that thing, we feel like we belong to a group. Before social media was added to the list, social proof existed in a way of word-of-mouth and media advertising.

Social proof theory: why likes matter

Just think about it: social media operates on numbers. The number of likes for a page or a post, content reach, number of video views a received. The list goes on and on. We judge the quality of products by the number of likes of its brand page compared to competition (while the answer may lie in a better promotion and advertising). We decide what restaurant to try out because of the average rating and reviews.

We think that this person is cool and popular because of the number of Facebook friends or Instagram likes. When Instagram cleaned up bot users and people lost thousands of “followers,” some people got so mad as to leave the platform altogether. While there was no real value in “bot-following” people were offended when their number of followers dropped.

Not surprisingly, App Store has a huge following. yet, there is no official Apple page.

We also consider how good a social post is based on the number of likes and shares. While that does hold some truth, we have to be careful and consider the overall reach of a little, but well-written blog over a famous person’s blog that might just depict their breakfast or pet.

Why more doesn’t necessarily mean better

As a blogger, a business person or a social media manager, we have to be careful as to not get ourselves into this cycle when building social media following base. While a larger follower base does have its perks, like a greater reach for our message, it has its own drawbacks if done wrong.

First of all, think about Facebook likes. Brands pay to get more likes. By targeting people from certain countries who will basically like anything and don’t meet any specific criteria, one can get tons of likes very cheaply. But then the “decreased Facebook reach” comes in place and now this business has to pay to boost posts and push them into newsfeeds. If there are tons of people who will never buy a product from this brand because of demographic or socio-psychological reasons, this brand is wasting money on boosts to get to the people who are genuinely interested in the product. See how they paid twice for nothing?

Now, I don’t say that there is no point in buying likes or boosting posts. There very much is the point in it if done correctly by targeting highly-qualified leads. Yet, this is not the point of this post.

The point is to ask yourself a question: how big my audience is, how effective am I in reaching these people and how qualified they are to be leads? It is much better to have 500 Facebook followers who buy from you all the time instead of 2,000 followers, 5 percent of which bought from you once.

Creating niche and building loyalty

This is a question of loyalty. Whether you have a small or a big online following, how loyal are they to you? Do they visit your platforms and blogs whenever new content or new products come out? Will they drop off easily if your competition undercuts you in price or promotion?

Pat Flynn’s following is impressive, yet targeted and loyal

Now we are talking about niche. Niche marketing is the new hot trend in marketing. Instead of trying to please everyone with your generic offering that is susceptible to price and market share wars, try creating a product that is really specialized and cannot be easily duplicated or undercut by price fluctuations. Create something that a relatively small market share relies on. If you can’t come up with such a product, create an outstanding marketing for it. People these days, especially online, look for value beyond the dollar sign. Apple is famous for its culture of innovation, Whole Foods is famous for its integral fair-trade, welfare-for-all philosophy, TOMS is famous for its buy-one-give-one initiative.

So, what size should your following base be?

If you’re just starting in blogging or a business world and trying to build social media following base, ask yourself these questions: 1. Is my content really that good? 2. Does it provide value? 3. Do people who know about it, love it?

If you answered yes to all of the three questions, don’t stress about social following. Do your thing, push it out on social and wait. Enjoy the process of building a true community of loyalists and brand advocates. We all might want a million followers on social media overnight, but that usually doesn’t happen. This is ok, because catering to a need of a million people may be much different than catering to a need of a hundred people, especially if you help resolve the issue instead of just attempting to do it.

So, thank all of your followers you have right now, because they were the first ones to see a potential in your creation.

Originally published at thesocialmediacurrent.com on February 11, 2015.