Quantity Vs Quality

Imagine a party crammed with people to the hilt, all disinterested with each other and doing their own thing.  The crammed party with its sheer numbers is making it seem lively.

Compare this to a party with significantly less people with enough room for all; more importantly these people seem to be communicating with each other and are having a conversation.

Which party would you want to be part of?  Different people would prefer different parties

For consumers, joining a brands social media platform is just like joining a party. Either they are joining a brand on any social media platform either because everyone else is joining it or they are simply interested in engaging with it.

Social media marketing is just like throwing a party, you want to bring consumers together and engage with them, the question is do you want to fill the room with as many people as possible or just get in a bunch that is interested.

There could be a hundred thousand followers, but what’s the point if they simply scroll past your post or tweet. They would be in a hurry to read or comment on things that really interests them, I’m sure all of us do that, we scroll past various posts, Farmville requests on our facebook page, ditto for twitter and others.

Its easy to build numbers, but the key is to build community with people who will share ideas, give feedback or event rant when you are in the wrong, an active bunch though small in numbers.  This very interested bunch will also pull in other with similar likes gradually. Numbers may not go up overnight, but gradually they will rise.

For a brand that’s where the dilemma creeps in, should they pursue sheer numbers or build an engaging community. Numbers are easily quantifiable, it makes explaining social media marketing efforts to management easier and showcase it as a case study. It’s a metric that’s easily understood, make life simpler and marketing performance presentations simpler.

After reading, newspaper reports of how some brands have successfully build social media communities; I visited these communities to find interaction to be zilch. What made them successful was the numbers. It had helped them build a case internally and externally and they are now leveraging it.

Nothing wrong with it, maybe over time these users convert and start engaging. Maybe users are choosing to be mute spectators or they have nothing to say.  These are some of the assumptions and arguments I always hear in defense of ‘quantity’

Well some might be correct too, but in this cluttered social media space we soon forgetting why we chose to communicate with users here. Simply because we wanted to be friends with them, hear them out and hold them in a conversation.

To broadcast or build numbers there are other avenues, isn’t it?

So what should a brand do? Well it really boils down to which kind of party would they like to throw?