Dear Alex

I run my own small business and I’m extremely confident about my work

But I recently took some time away from the business to raise a family and since I’ve come back everything has changed

I’m not able to go out to face 2 face events as much as I used to because of my young family and I’ve noticed a worrying trend in seeing businesses being hired on the number of likes / followers they have

Is this a thing? Do people get really hired on the number of followers alone?

Can you shine a light on this?

Anon

Thanks for asking this – it’s a really interesting question and one that many people will have a different opinion on

Let me stop some of that worry 1st though

Talent and skills are important and if you don’t have those you’ll soon go out of business – an audience amplifies real life and exposure

So if there is someone who can’t do their job or do what they say they do, but they have a large audience, then they will simply speed up the chances of them being caught out

You said that you are confident about the standard of your work so hold your head up high and put your best foot forward. Be proud of your work

And now on to that question of “Do people get hired on the number of followers alone?”

Social Media is massively important and having a large (but targeted) audience will open you up to more opportunities

You don’t have to be an “influencer” to build an audience

A person with 10,000 targeted engaged followers on social media will find more opportunities come their way than someone with 100 targeted engaged followers

Re read that last line – notice I said targeted and engaged followers. Those words are important

From personal experience (and we’re slightly different in that we’re a social media company) I can say that the size of our audience, we have 30,000+ local followers across social media, certainly helps us win more business. To our audience it shows that we walk the talk and 100% deliver on audience growth, engagement and actually winning business from social media

A larger audience also works for our Social Media Management clients as great ideas have a place to land

For yourself who I’m presuming doesn’t work in social media, I want you do think of it this way

A person won’t get hired on the number of followers alone – but all other things being equal (such as price, quality of work, relationship, convenience), the number of followers could play a part in the decision making process

It could be a point of different which encourages people to work with you or your competitors

I’ll give you 3 different examples so you can see how this works in real life

* You’re a business looking for a graphic designer and leaflet delivery company, my best friend is Mark at Altrincham Design Studio and he creates brilliant work. You have several businesses to go with and all areas mentioned previously are pretty much the same except one. Mark has 4000+ social media followers that he can talk about your business and his design work with and the nearest competitor has a couple of hundred. It’s an easy choice – you can win extra exposure and potential new clients just by going with Mark

* Let’s say you’re a new startup business looking for an accountant. Every accountants website says the same thing, but one really stands out as they inject personality into social and help retweet some of the clients they work with. They also support those clients offline at networking meetings. They provide something called extra value

* You’re a model looking to break through in the industry and you need to get a professional portfolio together. Nobody knows your name, but you’re looking to make a name for yourself. You’ve looked through about 30 different photographers and have got the choices down to 2. One photographer posts at least once a day to 17,000 followers and the other posts once a week to 250 followers. Both get engagement and encouraging comments, but the one with 17,000 followers gets more likes and comments on each post due to the audience size

You can see from just those 3 examples how the number of followers bring extra value to customers

Because the business has dedicated their time to build up a community on social media who engage with their posts they now are able to provide extra value to those that work with them. And that’s why people are buying from them. Not the number of followers, but the value those followers can bring to the table

If you focus on how social media can bring value to your customers then followers will grow and business grows

You can provide value in many ways from supporting your audience with retweet / shares, likes and comments; talking about those customers and suppliers; blogging or producing content that helps your ideal clients; referring work to clients; keeping in touch with your clients

It might be worth an audit of your 3 nearest competitors and ask the question of why you feel they have so many followers? What are they doing on a regular basis that encourages people to follow them (and importantly what can you do differently or better than them)

Hope that helps – don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need more help

Alex

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Alex

Alex McCann is owner of Altrincham HQ – a social media management and training company based in Altrincham, Cheshire that has worked with 100s of local business developing their social media strategy. Alex has 400+ LinkedIn testimonials and is ranked number 1 for Social Media Marketing in the UK via independent customer reviews on Freeindex.