As a recovering CPA and a “systems guy”, I like metrics. Metrics can be helpful in helping us understand what’s happening in a system and may even help us set priorities and make decisions.
But sometimes, we can go a little crazy with them. Sometimes, I think we have metrics for the sake of having metrics.
A while ago I posted about Crazy CRM Math and how metrics like “expected revenue” have become standard even if though they provide no real value and may even be misleading.
Today I was reminded of one of my pet social media metric peeves when I read
“There has been a lot of debate in terms of the ideal following-follower ratio”
Seriously? Why?
We all remember that social media is a set of tools for communicating, right? If you are reading this post, I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that you have been communicating for at least 50% of you life, fair? Have you needed this metric to decide who to talk to in your daily life? Or do you rely on things like what they say (content) and how they say it? Maybe how well they listen? Can they disagree without being disagreeable?
Here’s one of the nice things about Twitter and social media – you don’t need a ratio to gain insight into peoples’ behavior because you can observe the behavior directly.
You can see the conversations they are having. You can determine 1) if they talk about things you are interested in and 2) the likelihood that you will have a conversation with them in the future.
This idea of finding the “ideal following-follower ratio”, reminds me a lot of what goes on with search engine optimization (SEO). People who produced useful information received lots of attention (links). That attention led to success. We all want success, so we try to figure out their “secret”. We see they had lots of links, so we try to find ways to get lots of links without having to do the work of being helpful and creating useful information. Then Google makes a change and … is this sounding familiar?
IMO, if you are approaching social media purely from an SEO point of view, you are missing the point and wasting your time. If you want to be successful with social media, try focusing a little less on the math and more on the conversation.
