For a field supposedly bereft of metrics, social media is full of them.
I have more Facebook fans / Twitter followers / blog subscribers than you do. My tweets get re-tweeted more often, more people are talking about this on Facebook, and every blog post has a hundred comments. And, of course, the crowning achievement, my Klout score is higher than yours.
I’ve had a couple of run-ins lately with social media envy. The first was a blog post that was very popular for all the wrong reasons – I took a position that lots of people disagreed with. I don’t regret that post (or the sentiment it contained), but it did get me thinking on the nature of why that post was so “popular” compared to others on my blog. Certainly, it has been a long understood concept that controversy boosts readership (just ask a tabloid journalist). However, what really made me start thinking on this topic was why would readers engage more just to tell me I’m wrong? Does this kind of thinking carry over into more corporate blogging? Should I start my next vet practice blog with the words “I hate pets?”
Obviously, you won’t find any anti-pet blog posts from me any time soon. But it led me to start reassessing as to why I decided to start blogging in the first place.
The next thing that really set off the social media envy was Facebook. Working in small communities, and have having a very successful Facebook presence on the two major pages I have run as a veterinary practice manager, I believe I am justifiably proud of both the number of fans and the level of engagement, without vast sums of cash being sunk into the pockets of Mark Zuckerberg. My pages have had significantly better engagement, and fan bases than my competitors, or other local businesses. Of course, it is therefore disheartening to come across others who seem to be doing a better job – with more fans and better engagement, even if they are not in your market. Social Media envy I hate you.
The bottom line, however, is that social media envy, like envy and jealously in general is pointless and stupid. The real questions to be asking ones self when faced with social media envy are:
1: Does my presence achieve what I want it to achieve?
2: If someone else is achieving more than I am how can I learn from them and is it even possible for me to do something similar? There is a big difference, for example, in running a Facebook page for a rock band versus running a page for a veterinary hospital or a restaurant.
3: Am I making forward progress and do my clients, and potential clients, like what my online presence delivers for them?
Social media, is a element of a marketing strategy, not a marketing strategy in itself. It is a tool to achieve your goals. And those goals can be quite ethereal. If social media is not working for you, then it is time to try something else or learn from those who doing what you want to be able to do.
It is not a race.
It is not a competition.
It is a tool.
It makes no sense to judge yourself, or even the tool, by how others use it.
Comments, good, bad, and indifferent are always welcome – flame away!
Mike Falconer 
Statistics are amazingly powerful tools, and extremely helpful in marketing, whether online or offline. But where there are statistics, there are people more interested in the numbers than in the results, or the purpose. You might have more Facebook fans than I do, but how is that relevant? I haven’t seen a good statistic for who is better engaged with these fans (to use the old term). And if they are doing something better than you, whether that is social media, traditional marketing, or making pasta, it sounds to me like a learning opportunity, if we could only step past our silly egos.
Tools, indeed. You use them, not the other way ’round.
Another excellent blog post from The Gentleman from Arizona.
Thank you Sir!
I do think the metrics are useful, but they are so limited that it is very easy to get caught up in them when really they have so little value. I share probably 40% of the media I read online – and that is high. But that means there is 60% that I don’t. And I probably comment less than 1% of the time.
Thanks for the feedback Mike.
Mike
@mikefalconer
http;//mikefalconer.net
Hmm – do you think those with ‘social media envy’ may also notice a direct correlation with their levels of competitiveness? You know – the ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ type 😉
As you say, numbers are interesting but only to the extent that they are helping you to determine your point #1 above – am I achieving what I want to achieve? The numbers of ‘Likes’ you may have on your Facebook page is largely irrelevant – the number ‘Talking about this’ is a far better indication of how your ‘social’ media is working.
At the end of the day we have so little control over what actually happens on Facebook , Twitter, etc – the recent ‘Great Klout Meltdown’ is evidence of this (I’m sure some are still in therapy over that disaster 😉 ) – that there’s really no point getting worked up over some numbers on a screen. Much better to spend your energy getting worked up over things you CAN control!