Instagram shutting down like counts<\/a> threw people who land between the extremes of gas station flip-flop brands and Nike on the \u2018How well are we known, and how much does it matter\u2019 spectrum for a serious loop.<\/p>\nWell, this is where you exit the loop, because the likes are made up and the counts don\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a bit harsh, let me try that again…the amount of likes you get on something doesn\u2019t matter as much as you think it does.<\/p>\n
Take YouTube\u2019s interface for example. You can like a video to show your support, or dislike it because you disagree or think it sucks. Here\u2019s the twist: it doesn\u2019t actually matter how much a video was liked or disliked. YouTube just sees people interacting with the content, and doesn\u2019t discriminate between fame and infamy when it bumps things up the lines for more people to view.<\/p>\n
If any given shoe company shared a video of grade-school age kids working on our athletic wear, it\u2019s highly likely that there\u2019d be a lot of comments, a lot of likes, and a wave of dislikes.<\/p>\n
Are the likes edgelords agreeing just to \u2018own the libs\u2019? Do they like the production values? Do they like the company values? Do those likes belong to repeat customers or not? Are they being liked because the person behind the account gave herself tendonitis being on her phone all day for a solid week, and selecting which playlist to put it in was too painful, so she just added it to her liked videos to save it for later because the Advil is too far away?<\/p>\n
You have no idea.<\/p>\n
And the same goes for any and every other platform out there. Ergo, strategy, presentations, and investments based on number of likes are all castles built on shifting sand.<\/p>\n
I still remember a long form content-style commercial for some…keto…thing? With a witch in it, and she got her revenge body, and…stuff? Slapped a like on it. Did NOT buy that keto stuff. I couldn\u2019t even tell you if it was a drink, powder, bar, or a gym at this point. We\u2019ve come back full circle to the era of people remembering fun commercials, but not moving past that.<\/p>\n
So what DOES matter?<\/p>\n
Comments: Kind of. <\/strong><\/p>\nYou actually have to read these to see what\u2019s valuable. There\u2019s nothing sadder than having an alert go off with \u201810 new comments!\u2019 but all of them are \u2018I made 10k in a week working from my moonbase\u2019 type spam.<\/p>\n
Moreover, if all of the comments are negative, you\u2019re doing great as far as eyeballs on all the ads you have supporting your site, but not so great on actually spreading what\u2019s going to get you paid paid.
\n
\nShares: Sort of. <\/strong><\/p>\nHave you ever seen a \u2018hate share\u2019? Those shares where your friends put a poor horrifically abused animal on your feed for NO GOOD REASON other than to show how much they hate the person that did it? Your brand content is not immune.<\/p>\n
And not everyone\u2019s settings will let you see the spirit in which something was shared. They could be buying. They could be outraged. The important thing here is that you monitor as much as possible, and don\u2019t fall for the \u2018no bad publicity\u2019 line. You\u2019re not the late Anna Nicole Smith (…right?). You\u2019re a business owner.<\/p>\n
Purchases: Mostly. <\/strong><\/p>\nThis always bothered me back in other places I worked. We\u2019d huddle up, and cheer over an email generating loads of opens and buys\u2014woo, we did it troops, we\u2019re on the way up, and so forth.<\/p>\n
The catch was usually that this email was about a giveaway, or a huge sale.<\/p>\n
When we used the same formula in titling, formatting, and getting hyped about other emails that offered products at full price? Crickets. And now that you can purchase through new social media integrations, we\u2019re facing the exact same potential for premature e-celebration with old new media.<\/p>\n
If no one\u2019s willing to buy your product\/service at full price, purchases during sales periods are nothing to get super excited about.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve gone through a lot of caveats here, good job following it all! This is where we get to the positive part.<\/p>\n
Follows are something you can reliably keep track of!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s confusing since Facebook uses the same verb for inviting a page into your life, and doing whatever with an individual post, and also you can follow without liking, or still like a page but unfollow it, so I\u2019ll call the phenomenon of clicking a button that will put your content into people\u2019s feeds free of charge (somewhat) \u2018follows\u2019.<\/p>\n
Follows are people saying \u2018I need you by me, beside me, to guide me.\u2019<\/p>\n
It\u2019s someone being totally willing to let your company be a part of their day. It\u2019s a reliable stop-gap measure between awareness and purchasing! Hate-follows are \u2018a thing\u2019, but unless your brand pages are set to follower-only (which…WHY), you\u2019re more likely to know that the folks following you like-like you, and you can adjust your focus accordingly!<\/p>\n
This whole article can be summed up as \u2018You can\u2019t make quantitative data the only thing you look at.\u2019 Even going by follows, if you have high follows, but low purchases, it\u2019s probable that the people you\u2019re pitching to don\u2019t have the capital you\u2019re actually aiming for. Not to get woo on this, but a human-focused, holistic approach to analyzing your social presence\u2019s performance is your only option for success.<\/p>\n
Whether or not you include bells and incense is up to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Social media likes don\u2019t equal people \u2018like-liking\u2019 you. There are other interactions at play like shares, comments, followers, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337716,"featured_media":19631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[253,109,1234,355],"class_list":["post-14632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-editorial","tag-real-estate-marketing-2","tag-real-estate-news","tag-social-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/multiple-people-texting-due-to-receiving-scams.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14632"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20192,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14632\/revisions\/20192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}