Interpreting stats on social media is not easy. I have to rely on my intuition to figure out what is what. We have multiple social media channels going on and I have trouble keeping up with all of it. My social media manager handles most of it, and I review her work from time to time.
Although we found it hard to get 11 Linked In members, and easy to get 18000 Facebook members, the total number of intelligent posts from other members on Linked In exceeds what we got on Facebook for this particular account. Please keep in mind that my Facebook account for my notary site is very lively and intelligent. I am not trying to undermine Facebook as they have been a valuable resource to me. I’m just doing a quality analysis on social media commentary.
It is the quality of the followers, not how many you have. It is about how many of them post, and how good their posts are. If you get intelligent comments on one medium, that is worth a million bad quality comments on another medium. Actually bad comments are a liability because you have to remove them.
Another thing to consider is the science of how an online community grows. Does it grow like a seed and germinate? Do you see a small seedling sprouting up, that becomes a small tree, then a bigger tree, then a huge tree which eventually produces fruits? It is very unpredictable.
We have had a Notary Facebook account for years. The total number of followers continues to rise. The quality and quantity of commentary seems to have been constant for three years. We get good comments, and enough of them, but it is frustrating that we don’t see any growth in the total interactions. Out Twitter accounts seem to have regular growth in the amount of interactions and retweets. Part of it is the improved quality of our content and increased networking on our end.
My bottom line message is to forget about the top line numbers in social media. Look at the growth rates for quality interactions.