Once More with Feeling

Why social media isn't a numbers game, but kind of is

I recently spoke at a conference on social media in Europe, and after one of my presentations, I was politely reminded that simply giving pageview or impression statistics as a measure of the success of a social media campaign is kind of missing the point. I did not disagree. I had, in fact, mentioned a successful social media campaign and based this success (in my presentation, at least) purely on impressions and not on conversions or audience engagement. Generally, one follows the other to some extent, but we do need to be careful that we place the right amount of emphasis on things like engagement, interaction and brand advocacy as opposed to the mythical ‘viral’ phenomenon that many campaigns, which fail to deliver tangible conversions experience.

So this brings me to the point: is social media not a numbers game at all? Meaning, should our targets never be simply to increase our Facebook fans or achieve a certain amount of views of a video, or gain a greater following on Twitter? Even those that make this argument use audience engagement statistics (which are themselves numbers) to validate the success of a brand or campaign.

I started taking piano lessons in 1st grade, at the age of 5, and continued them until I graduated high school 11 years later. I really enjoyed playing the piano and could even get into the very technical part: scales and other exercises that taught coordination, sight-reading, and knowledge of key signatures. Because of this, I got pretty good. I wouldn’t say I was great (though my mother would), but I got pretty good.

As much as I liked the more technical aspects of playing piano, such as the dexterity exercises or learning new time signatures, I enjoyed playing some of the great classical pieces of music even more. Such emotional highs and lows, slow and fast pacing, and many times within the same piece of music! If I did okay with the technical aspects of reading and memorizing music, I excelled at the more abstract idea of ‘feeling’ the music. So much so, that my piano teacher had to remind me to stay in time when I got carried away and sped up during the exciting parts or slowed down during the softer ones. But the thing with music is that both parts—technical and emotional—are required. A great piece of music has both of those parts in equal or complimentary measure.

Which brings us back to social media. Making an online marketing campaign all about reaching certain numbers is kind of like hearing a great piece of music without any feeling. The reason social media is such a great channel to use for advertising is the fact that it can truly engage audiences and creates a great personal connection to your brand. We as marketers can never forget that because just as a half-hearted performance of a great piece of music fails to evoke the emotions its author intended, the same goes with a great campaign.

Yet, there is one more caveat. While we don’t run campaigns purely for the numbers, surely there is a threshold where running a campaign simply doesn’t make sense. For instance, Starbucks currently has about 26 million Facebook fans, 350,000+ of which seem to be regularly engaged in some way or another with the brand. This would make it seem worthwhile for Starbucks to dedicate staff, marketing dollars, agency time and more towards creating a place on Facebook where its fans can engage, interact and come away feeling closer to the brand.

Some of you aren’t going to like what I’m about to say. What if Starbucks only had 50 fans? What if all 50 of them even spent 8 hours a day on the Starbucks Facebook page? Would it still be worth it for Starbucks to invest the same amount of marketing time and dollars into its presence? I would argue absolutely not. What if it had 150 fans? 15,000 fans? There is a point where it makes sense for them to invest a lot more time and money. I’m not here to give a formula for what this magic threshold might be. But I am here to say that, even though social media is not a numbers game…it kind of is.

But it’s a numbers game in the sense that playing a beautiful piece of piano music is. Without the timing, without hitting the correct notes, Debussy’s Claire de Lune would not be what it was meant to be. Without an engaging idea or thought, whether it’s funny, poignant, thought provoking or otherwise, a social media campaign is simply a bunch of numbers and letters. It’s when we realize that both pieces are critical and support each other that we can move past a fascination with what is viral or a proper amount of fans for a brand to have and continue to create the dialogue we dreamed of having with our customers and supporters before the age of social media.