How We Went From 21 Twitter Followers to 26 Twitter Followers in 18 Months

In point of fact, I’m not actually sure how we grew our followers at all during that period. While we all chuckled at the state of our social media enterprise, we did ponder how 6 new Twitter users had followed @coloradowebdsgn over the 18 month period, because we’d had zero social media engagement. No blog posts, no tweets, no Facebook or Google interaction. Nothing.

It felt like we had good reasons for this lack of engagement. We were helping other companies with their engagement!

It’s nice to have a good amount of work to keep one busy, but the reality is, many businesses across many segments will inevitably go through feast/famine cycles, and as tempting as it may be to dive into social media during some downtime, you should only really consider poking this beast if you are prepared to stay engaged even when you get busy again. I speak from personal experience.

This probably sounds familiar to a few of you out there:

– You fire off a few great blog posts – maybe even write up a backlog of four or five posts.

– You decide to commit an hour a day to sending out a few tweets, maybe a Facebook post.

– Nothing happens ever, for anything you are doing.

– You get busy again and happily abandon the whole social media enterprise. Blogging. Pft! Who needs it?

The reality is that cultivating the social and web presence of your business is going to take real, ongoing thought and work. But the payoff can be great over the long run.

Don’t think of social media as a direct means to sales. This usually will backfire on any campaign, and probably leads to more early abandonment than any other factor. Instead, think of your content as a way to demonstrate your unique experience and knowledge on your subject matter. This content can pay dividends for years to come. Often I hear worries about giving away one’s knowledge rather than selling one’s services, but it doesn’t have to be detailed technical training content you share with the world.

But what does any of this have to do with our 18 months of social media dead air?

It’s simple: we had all of his marvelous intention, started off strong, and then, with little immediate return, and an uptick in business, we let our social media and content presence go dormant for a year and a half.

Unfortunately, when you start, then stop, you are sending a different kind of message to your potential customers. If you have a link on your home page “Follow Us On Twitter!” and then your Twitter account shows that you haven’t tweeted for 7 months, the viability of your business may be reasonably questioned by any random visitor who is checking you out.

Fine, you say, but how does one really manage the black hole of labor that characterizes blogging, social content writing, evaluation, more blogging, more content, more, more…

How do we keep the social media flame alive when business is good and resources are slim?

Next week we’ll have a few handy tips that have helped us maintain a viable pace, and healthy, steady social growth.