Why do I have Less Than 200 Fans on Facebook?

When ado­les­cence end­ed, I thought that the play­ground com­par­isons of who has ​“the most friends” was over — that is, until social media! Now, at the click of a mouse, I can see with math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion which busi­ness con­sul­tants or social media ​“experts” have the most friends and fol­low­ers on their Face­book and Twit­ter pages. Many of these spe­cial­ists have sev­er­al thou­sand fans. You might think that’s a lit­tle intim­i­dat­ing for a con­sul­tant like me, with few­er than 200 peo­ple who count them­selves my friend, fan, or sub­scriber. It is, but it’s not. Let me explain: I’m a small-busi­ness guy, with a very niche mar­ket. I work pri­mar­i­ly with ser­vice con­trac­tors: painters and remod­el­ers. There are thou­sands of busi­ness­es in that niche! But since I don’t work with com­pa­nies that are in direct com­pe­ti­tion with each oth­er, my work will always be lim­it­ed. Also, I can only han­dle so much admin­is­tra­tion, and if I had thou­sands of fol­low­ers I would burn out long before I man­aged to keep up with them all. It would be an ego boost to have so many ​“fol­low­ing” me, and to my peers I might appear to be a more seri­ous com­peti­tor as a Social Media and Mar­ket­ing expert. How­ev­er, at this point I’m fine with my num­bers. That said, if my num­bers are not high­er in 2012 than they are this year, and ris­ing again in 2013, then I would be con­cerned. But I start­ed from scratch less than 2 years ago, and I am pleased by my mod­est progress to this point; I’m grow­ing more each month. Rather than build­ing huge lists of indif­fer­ent sub­scribers, my goal is to build a long-term rela­tion­ship with my clients, friends and fol­low­ers. I strive for qual­i­ty over quan­ti­ty in my field. I would rather have a small fan base that is real­ly con­nect­ing with what I’m doing, and have them spread the words to their friends. If I can do this, then Social Media will work the way it is sup­posed to. So don’t get dis­cour­aged by low num­bers ear­ly in the game. Look at every fol­low­er, every fan, and every com­menter as a per­son (not a num­ber) that you can con­nect with and build rela­tion­ship with over time. As you earn their trust and enthu­si­asm for your com­pa­ny and con­tent, you will begin to see those num­bers grow, and your sales dol­lars with them!