Trust vs Traffic – What do you believe in?
Who do you trust?
How do you measure the ROI of social media in your company, by the number of followers and likes? If you do, you are not alone, but at Citrus Content we think differently.
One of the initial questions from a prospective social media client is: ‘How many followers and likes are you going to get me?’ This is not surprising when you see so many social media companies guaranteeing:
20,000 Likes
10,000 followers
Woohoo!!
The conversation
Client “How many followers and likes are you going to get me?”
My Reply “I’m not!”
This is not my attempt to lose business, but we firmly believe that traffic is not the way to build a following. I have personal experience on this from growing my own personal following through social media before launching Citrus Content. I noticed that when I provided content that was of quality and interest, my following grew and what’s more this following trusted my content, my opinion and me and what’s more they were loyal.
On launching Citrus Content I knew that I needed to have this consistent approach with my clients. But I’m not alone in this thinking. Social media and marketing expert Mark W. Schaefer states:
“Instead of focusing on traffic, we need to focus on TRUST”
And this is exactly what we do!
No matter what content we are working on for a client, we focus on building trust and loyalty. Website content, company brochure, blog post or social media management our approach is always the same. Trust is two people having a connection and as we know people do business with people.
Building this trust takes time, but it is also so powerful.
The need to share
If you have a blog, you need to be populating it with powerful content, content that people will want to share. It is no good writing your blog posts and then doing nothing with them, you need to share them with your social following, your email lists and your team. It is only by sharing content that you start to establish a quality following built on trust.
83% of brand marketers view social sharing as the number one benefit of digital marketing (eMarketer)
Let me be clear, sharing is not traffic. “Traffic is intoxicating as it is easy to measure” (Mark W. Scheafer)
And this is the problem; if you concentrate on the traffic you will stop the trust.
So why is trust so powerful in the social world?
The New York Times recently did a study and the results speak true for no matter which country you are in.
70% of people are more likely to make a purchase based on a friend’s social media updates
In other words if you saw your friend sharing a post from a particular estate agent, they are 70% more likely to ‘purchase’. This could be inviting the estate agent for an appraisal, view a property on their books or simply sign up to their newsletter.
Surely you want a following that is actually interested in your business?
How do we measure the ROI for our social media clients?
- Profile views, if someone is checking your profile, they are interested in who you are.
- Website visits, if you’re sharing content from your website on your social media accounts and the content is of quality, they will visit your site to discover more.
- Engagement, are your audience/following sharing and liking your posts?
There is a place for monitoring the increase in following but this has to be measured alongside the above. For example, if you have a rapid increase in following together with engagement, you know you are attracting the right audience.
So do not worry if your competitor has 1000 more followers than you, we’re striving for quality rather than quantity and so should you!
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Want to know more?
Get in touch today to find out how we can help you grow your business through Trust.
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