Get Your Numbers Up

A common request from labels, managers and artists is that we “need to get the numbers up on our social networks”. In essence, although not necessarily intentionally, this can be translated to mean “we need to be able to spam as many people as possible about product x in order for a small percentage to buy”. The thinking behind this is “the greater the numbers we have, the greater the small percentage that buy will amount to”.

If you were running a small sewing shop on a high street and a generous investor gave you the time and resources to market your shop, would you spend this on getting more people to walk past your store? As this is essentially what you are doing when you focus on numbers, and specifically the wrong numbers, to plan and analyse your ‘promotion’.

So let’s look briefly at Twitter and the ‘numbers’ there that really count:

Retweets
@replies
Link Clicks
Followers

Not necessarily in that order but definitely with follower numbers at the very end. The reason for using Twitter as an artist is to engage with people. Ultimately, the success of this can be measured by the amount of conversation you create, i.e. re-tweets and @replies to your account and, from a slightly more commercial angle, link clicks.

Concentrating on keeping an engaging, interesting and entertaining profile that generates lots of interest is far more valuable than increasing followers. The power of conversion is ultimately greater than the perceived value of promotion.