Why do I have Less Than 200 Fans on Facebook?

Posted by David Chism | Fri, Feb 4, 2011

 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!

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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