Say you have 200 followers on social media. Will the social media platform (Facebook, Instagram, etc) deliver your update to all 200 followers, meaning all 200 followers will see everyone one of your posts on their timeline? Not really.
The truth is no one knows the truth about how many of your followers will your update on social media. If you are an admin of a Facebook page, you get a number on how many people your post has reached. But that doesn’t mean these people see and understand the message in your post. Instagram does a better job with the heart button. When you receive a heart from someone, that means that someone on the receiving end stops looking at your post and then decides to take a small action, which sends a signal that he or she sees your post.
So what should we expect from social media? When you post something on social media and hope people who see your post take action, what is the outcome you should expect?
I use the 1% + 1% rule.
The first 1% is the percentage of your followers who will see, on just receive, but they will see and understand what action you want them to take.
The other 1% is out of the first 1% – the followers who understand your intention, the percentage of people who will take the action you desire.
If you have 10,000 followers on Facebook, for example. You publish a post about your latest product, and you want your followers to click the link in the post to transact with you. 1% of your followers will see and understand what you want them to do, that is 1% of 10,000 = 100. And then 1% of the 1%, which is 1% of 100, would eventually choose to transact with you.
As you already know, the actual result depends on other aspects, but that is how I set the expectation for my social media campaigns.
“That is not enough,” you may say.
Well, it depends. If you have 1 million followers and apply the 1%+1% rule, that is 100 people that will transact with you. If each one pays you $1,000 every time to post something for them to buy, for most creators, that is probably more than enough.
“What if I only have 1,000 fans, or 100 fans, or even less?”
The 1%+1% rule still applies, but you can change it. I will talk about how in another post.