Why You Should Stop Counting Your Followers

Everyone wants to be liked. It’s human nature. And when it comes to social media, that same yearning rings true. Thousands of followers on Facebook or umpteen “likes” on an Instagram posts means we are well liked, right?

Not necessarily.

While having a large audience is important to reaching more people, the amount of “followers” you have doesn’t necessarily mean your content marketing is strong. What matters, really, is how much people engage with your brand.

What does high engagement look like? It could be any of the below:

  • Comments on posts
  • Clicks to website
  • Shares on articles

As content marketers, we need to always be looking for ways to engage with our audience. While increasing social media “followers” is still important, we need to be looking at the bigger picture. How are people interacting with your social media? Are they asking questions? Are they tagging their friends?

As we continue to explore social media trends into the new year, we encourage you to change up your thinking when it comes to brand presence. Instead of keeping a tally of your social media followers, try promoting social media engagement instead.