Increase Quality over Quantity

An American psychologist asserted that one of the basic needs for human survival is to be recognized or acknowledged by others. Being recognized by others helps you feel great joy in life, and when this desire is met, it gives you confidence and a sense of accomplishment.

With the recent development of smartphones, social media channels have become a widely-used medium for fulfilling this need. It is not difficult to show yourself off with pictures and words showing what food you ate, where you went, and what you bought. Although these articles may occasionally have a bad influence on human relationships, social media is undeniably a space we created to showcase ourselves to many others. This is how trends are created. The places people share become must-see places and to-die-for restaurants. Most of the time, we evaluate the response with the number of “likes.”

The number of “likes” that a post receives for social media marketing is also very important. It really is not difficult to click “Like,” and it is a significant factor in increasing exposure to many other people. As one follower clicks “Like,” the chances of their friends seeing the post increases, and that increases the chances of one of those friends also clicking “like” to share with their friends. So recently an increasing number of companies have become more aware of the impact of “Likes” in social media marketing. Following this, the number of “Likes” has become a factor on whether or not the online marketing campaign was a success. For the past few months, more clients than I would have thought came to ask for marketing advice that focused its priority on the number of “Likes,” regardless of anything else. Each time this happens, I try to explain that the reach of the page is more important than the number of “Likes” and it’s understandable how most people do not like hearing that. This may be due to the common belief that if there are many “Likes,” in social media marketing, their marketing is successful.

In truth, it is not difficult for experts to increase the number of “Likes.” However, if you market for the number of “Likes,” then your ultimate goal changes. You first create great content from the get-go and maximize your reach to receive many “Likes,” but later on, your content will change to generate as many “Likes” as possible, regardless of the quality of the content. Also, you can arbitrarily increase “Likes” by paying for them. The most important goal in marketing is to effectively reach out to many people regarding your products or services, but if you put out a lot of content just to increase the number of “Likes” you have, what kind of message would that send to consumers?

Unfortunately, there are still a surprising number of companies that are consumed with the number of “Likes” they receive. It might be a misdirected desire to receive more attention than their competition, a psychological warfare with the number of “Likes,” or even be acknowledged as more well-known than their competition through this approach. While it is not incorrect that the number of “Likes” is a performance measure of success, but there is no point to marketing if random people like the content, rather than the targeted market. Also, if you are not able to get the same reaction and a similar number of “Likes” in following postings, people will quickly notice this and it could hurt the image of your brand. Especially because the social media algorithm minimizes exposure of the page or posting if the reach is lower than the number of “Likes.”  It is important to understand that there are risks similar to this.

If you want to properly promote your marketing, you must set clear goals and explain what direction you are going in.  If your goal is merely raising interest through thoughtless posts, consumers may react initially, but they will soon lose interest because the posts have nothing to do with them. If you convey quality content to the properly targeted consumer audience, later they will be the first to react and search out to you. In the end, quality is more important than quantity.