Is chasing arbitrary numbers in your marketing holding you back?
Create content like you’ve got 1m followers!
I’m a parkrunner, and after recently getting my 100 milestone (100 parkruns run overall) I realised that I was also coming up on another 100 - 100 times that I’ve run my local parkrun. Suddenly I’ve been quite focused on getting more and more parkruns at this location done so that I can reach that milestone sometime over the summer.
On Instagram, my local project, Leighton Buzzard Local now has 3.9k followers. As soon as it ticked over from 3899 to 3900 something in my brain lit up - I’m on the road to 4k followers!
This week though, I’ve been reflecting on what that actually means. What does it mean to have run 100 parkruns at the same place? Why am I racing towards this completely arbitrary milestone as fast as I possibly can?
And my followers on Instagram, what am I going to get when there’s 4k people following my account? What will be different? In all honesty, not much really…
So why do we chase these arbitrary numbers, and what should we be doing instead?
I often hear people in my workshops saying things like - ‘I’ll definitely work on my content more when I get more followers’ - which I find comes under the same strange idea.
Social media is a weird thing. I work in it and with it and I absolutely share the frustrations that others have with it. Just because you can bend it to your will doesn’t mean you don’t feel the same when they move one of the buttons, or change the way people view your posts.
But the idea that marketing your business is something that you’ll do ‘better’ or ‘differently’ in the future for these future people that will suddenly show up based on your current (by extension of this idea) ‘worse’ (?) content, is one that I both understand and also think is completely the wrong way around.
Small business owners are awesome people, who do great work and often go completely unnoticed. Your one win here is to get to grips with how to market what you do, and double down on creating some wonderful content to show it off.
I would challenge you to flip this thinking completely. Market and create content like you have 1m followers. Think about the best version of what you want to say and put out into the world and start working towards that, whether 1 person (usually one of your parents!) or 100 or 1000 people or more are watching it.
Don’t be put off by ‘only’ having a certain number of followers, and don’t be chasing arbitrary follower numbers unless there’s a reason for that.
Some channels will unlock different features when you have a certain number of followers - you can monetise on YouTube with 1k followers, you can have a link in your profile for a personal account on TikTok and go live with 1k followers, and get into their Creator Rewards Programme with 10k. For these, there is a reason you’re chasing those numbers.
Outside of that, take the pressure off.
And perhaps think about how to really measure what you’re doing when it isn’t all about likes, follows, comments and shares. I often encourage clients to listen to their business. What I mean by that is, listen to what matters to the people you work with that commit money to the thing that you’re offering. What are they saying?
What is it about working with you that they love? What made them choose you? That is what you need to measure here, because you don’t need a certain amount of followers, at the end of the day you need the right ones.
Perhaps you’re creating viral content that everyone loves on TikTok, that’s great. But is anyone clicking through the links in your profile to work with you? If they’re not, then that means your TikTok is lovely, and going viral is fun, but it’s not marketing your business in a way that is taking you towards your business goals, so again, the numbers don’t matter.
As I’ve now mentioned viral content, let’s also just have a pause and discuss that too. It’s something else I’ve been thinking about recently, and I’ll definitely come back to it in a future post to talk about it in more detail.
For now, this is what I’d add here. Going viral is a bit like being an overnight success. No one is actually an overnight success. They’ve been working hard for years and years and then something that they’ve done has gained momentum and now everyone knows about them. It’s the same for going viral.
Businesses and content creators who go viral have been doing what they do for a while now. They know what content they want to create, how to play with new trends and create content that connects with their audience. They will have created a lot of content that could have tipped over into going viral at this point, and then one of those videos just goes wild.
Going viral doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s something that those who’ve worked hard on their content creation skills, know their audience and their platforms well can tap into, sometimes, because they are so good at what they do. It is achievable for you and your business too, but you will need to get those skills, that marketing, that content creation going for a while to tap into it as well.
If my posts get you all fired up and you’re ready to take some action, stop obsessing about those numbers and really learn how to nail your marketing, I run two live sessions a month - on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month, the next one is 13th May - where I talk about something that will help your marketing right now, and answer all your questions. Find out more and sign up to join me at the next one here. I’ll be talking about all things AI in marketing and content, when and how to use it and when to steer well clear!
And as always, if you have a question, would like to know more about working with me, or just want to have a chat, hit reply and let’s set something up.
Until next time!
Laura