Welcome back to Social Media Myths Week!  Today we’re covering a myth that becomes even more pervasive as individuals flock to social media in droves.  It’s The Myth of Quantity over Quality, and it’s one of the biggest controversies I know of in “the field.”  The myth goes something like this:  “If only I get X number of followers, I’ll start to get more business” or “X has Y number of followers, she must be more credible than Z.”  Whoa, Nelly, not so fast!  Contrary to popular opinion, quantity does not denote quality.

Does having a sizable audience matter?  Sometimes.  It’s all about your goals.  Here are a few observations about the quantity over quality conundrum:

For some, there is a baseline threshold of what constitutes credibility.  For example, some people will not follow someone they don’t know (italics important) who has less than a certain number of followers because it shows them that few people have chosen to devote their time to that user.

Followers are cheap…and fickle. If you lower the bar to followers or (gasp!) resort to get-thousands-of-followers-quick schemes, you compromise something in the process.  And don’t think that your real followers won’t be turned off by your constant “I got 135315325235235235235 followers in three days…click here to do it too!” tweets…they will, and they’ll leave for a more personalized experience.

Follower counts mean a bigger audience…sometimes. If you have thousands of followers on Twitter, you have a bigger chance of being retweeted, and a RT from an account with a large following means an even bigger potential sphere of influence.  However, if 99% of the RTer’s followers are bots and MLM get-rich-quickers, it probably won’t make a difference. 

“How” is always more important than “how many.” How did you get a follower?  How do you communicate with them?  How do you use social media?  These questions are always more important than “how many.”  A small audience of hand-picked, responsive, communicative, and engaged followers is always better than a huge “audience” of unengaged, uninterested followers. 

Follower counts are just one metric. Clickthrough, conversion, conversation, Web traffic…these statistics should always go alongside follower count.  Allowing follower count to trump actual results is extremely shortsighted…the equivalent of letting your obsession with Nessie (who will never appear) interfere with your awesome vacation to Scotland.

Myth busted:  It’s all about quality. The obsession with follower counts obscures the true power of social media…facilitating conversation and democratizing content creation.  Yes, follower counts are a great way to gauge your social media account, but focus on adding value and creating quality with every connection and you’ll thrive whether you have 2 followers or 20,000.

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