It is interesting to meet so many people struggling in the business world who strongly feel a fake popularity in the social spaces will produce sales of their product or service. The old adage if enough people see the product someone will buy is probably in these people’s business plan. Unfortunately, their drive to gather millions of eyes to view their product/services is wasted if they are in an overly saturated market and are not interested in interacting socially with their community.

Where Things Go Wrong

In many of the conversations I have with people who come to me for business strategies they strongly feel their weak sales are due to them not appearing popular enough online.  Many have even hired consultants who tell them they need to appear more popular online if they are going to generate any sales.  The main thing wrong with this viewpoint is ‘appearing popular’ and ‘being popular’ are two totally different things. A person or business’ popularity is something only the savvy consumer determines, not the number showing on a social network profile badge.

Even when most of these people have tens of thousands of friends and followers on their Facebook and Twitter accounts they blame their inability to get more people to Like their page, or get more Followers on Twitter, as what is holding them back from success.  This is when they start to travel down the dark path of covertly obtaining popularity..or paying to look cool!

Negative Impression

You probably have received emails asking you to LIKE a person’s Facebook Page..or to Follow them on Twitter.  Sometimes this is a sincere request but most of the time it is a blatant effort to boaster their number of fans so they appear well liked.  Their basic thinking here is if someone sees someone else who has a high number of people following them that person must be offering something of value in order to gain this much popularity so they feel they need follow this person. 

That is not what happens.  Very seldom does anyone follow another person because they have a huge following. In the actual real world most consumers see people with huge followings as possibly being one of the many who have artificially gained popularity by opening up the flood gates to anyone being allowed into their community…or gain influence from someone or thing that pushed people to follow them. Unfortunately, this is what many business people think how the game is played.

Pressure Cooker Economy

It is really unfortunate the failed economy we have been in for the past few years has produced a very crowded market for all businesses. The high unemployment has forced millions into self employment who have no clue on how business is done in today’s cold consumer driven marketplace. The tragedy increases when they bring old school methods of marketing into a rapidly changing world of social media.

It is true a million eyes seeing something will generate interest from at least a few.  The keyword here is ‘Seeing’.  Having a million friends on Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean all million see what you, or anyone, offers.  Anyone can produce a report reflecting whatever someone wants it to report.  None of the traffic reports to any social platform or web-site can be validated that a REAL LIVE person stopped by to see what someone offers. 

As the markets get even more crowded more pushing and shoving will occur making doing business online very arduous.  Those who know how to be social and engage will lure consumers to their space, where as the those who are just promotional will lose traction online.

Realities

What really tells how well a product or service is received by the public has to do with how well the consumers like or dislike the product/service.  The only way to find out is to ask them..yes..this is called engaging in a conversation..not a Poll or Survey..or contest..just flat out talking to them.

In today’s social spaces most of the content being posted is missed or passed by most people who artificially LIKE something online or are not really interested.  Many times they just LIKE the page because someone asked them to or to get a free prize.  Even the loyal true friend will more than likely only see less than 1% of content for a person/place/thing who has thousands of other people vying for attention.

To get anything out of social networking there has to be..I’ll repeat..Has To Be…engagement.  The more engagement with the community in a none promotional manner the more REAL popularity will be gained.  Consumers are looking for people and businesses who Get what social networking really does. 

Engagement produces loyalty and loyalty produces sales.

Bottom-Line:

So the moral here is:

• be social, not promotional, in the social space.
• dedicate amply resources to being social for the long term.
• seek advice from people who understand ‘Social’ and have vision into where Social is Really going.

This should produce popularity.  Let me know how I can help.