1 + 1 = 30,000 In Social Media – Three Ways To Extend Your Reach

Social media is a funny thing. The math within social media marketing works as if it is out in the cosmos, where time and space are bent. What am I talking about? Well, some of the normal math found in business, either it just isn’t applicable in social media or the normal way we think about calculating it offline is very different to how it actually works within the social graph.

Years ago we heard that if you had an unhappy customer they would tell 10 people and how damaging that would be to your company. They said if you created a happy customer, they would at least tell 1 to 2 people. Boy have those days disappeared!

With social media the math is just a bit different. An unhappy customer now days tells their 1,000 Facebook friends. Several of those share the story and picture to their 500 friends EACH. Additionally, the unhappy customer tells their 2,200 Twitter followers, and many of them RT your post to their followers. It doesn’t take too long before social media math has hammered your failing with a customer to 30,000+ people. Did I mention this all occurred in just a few seconds? Do you understand it will continue on for several more days if it is a bad enough issue, with images and blog posts growing from the buzz?

Yes there are down sides to social media and the arithmetic can be troublesome when you screw things up, but the upside of the medium far out weighs the negative possible scenarios if you do things right! Social media math means that when one person shares your one post, that can equate to 30,000 people being exposed to you, your brand and its content.

Use Social Media Math to Extend Your Reach:

What do I mean by extending your reach? Well just as in the negative example above, you can extend your follower, friend and fan base extensively when your content is shared. This is why a well thought out social media content strategy is so important. An effective social media marketing program that has content at its core is a must!

There are three main goals you should have for the content you post in social media:

1) Conversation – The content you create and/or post to your feeds should be relevant, valuable and interesting to your target market. When you are getting this right, it will often spark conversations or opportunities for conversations with your target audience. Conversations around relevant content will do three important things: 1) Build relationships with your prospects 2) Create opportunities to drive ROI 3) Extend the reach of your brand due to their friends and followers now seeing you in their feeds.

2) Shares/Likes –  Just like conversations, when the content you post is shared by your friends, fans and followers you realize a significant jump in potential viewership. The more your content is shared, the more a few key things occur: 1) Extended reach and visibility of your brand and content 2) Community growth occurs as some of that extended reach decide to friend, like and follow you also 3) The number of clicks/views of the content you shared will increase.

3) Action – Ultimately the goal of a social media marketing program, when done properly is to create end result actions that achieve a return on the investment made. The more effective you are at doing number 1 and 2 above, the more people will want to know more about what YOU do. This often culminates in review your account bio, information page and clicking through to your site, pages or other links. Furthermore, doing these things effectively will also spark inquiries and opportunities for deals right within the social graph.

Take the time and invest the required resources to understand your target market and develop an appropriate content strategy. That strategy must be a consistent daily stream that takes into account the above extended reach elements for the best results.