As an agency that works highly in the digital space, we get questions about social media follower ratios. This is not a new conversation, this has obviously been going on since the beginning of time when it comes to social media, but what does it really mean and what is important in terms of those ratios? I like to liken it to your debt to income ratio—obviously you want less debt and more income. So it’s a very similar balance when as you relate to say Twitter—you want to make sure you have more followers than you are following … but really, none of that actually matters. It’s more of an ego thing—we tell our clients this all the time (although not all of them listen).
Really what it is about is engagement—getting people to comment, reply, reengage. You should really be thinking about this more in terms of conversion that’s really a more important metric to be looking at, and the amplification rate. So how does that conversation, amplified amongst that other community’s network really impact how your brand is being seen on a global scale. So, obviously the positive to negative, income to debt ratio in terms of the follower to following ratio is important. We will actually share an article with you from Tech Crunch that addresses this very issue.
The long and the short of it is, it doesn’t really matter – what really matters for social media is the engagement level and making sure there is an authentic conversation going on. You’ve heard me saying this time and time again—so, you know, it’s really not the size that matters! ;)