ENGAGEMENT OVER FOLLOWERS

As a full time blogger a large portion of my job requires social media activity, I'd probably guess it around half. Whilst the likes of Instagram and Facebook are a bit of fun for most people, it may seem that it's the 'easy' part of the job, but you'd be mistaken for thinking that. Posting a quick photo with a seemingly fitting caption isn't the hard task, though capturing said photos can be, it's building a loyal and engaging following - that's the difficult part. There may be a small amount of social media influences who gained a following quickly and authentically for one reason or another, but the majority have to work hard at it day after day, and it can be a pretty gruelling task, especially today in a era of bots and fake followings.

Over the past six months I've noticed a small shift in the way a lot of brands are working and ultimately what they're looking for from a blogger or influencer in terms of social media. I'm still regularly asked what my following is, but it's often proceeded by (for me) the most important question, 'What is your engagement rate'. I think engagement rates are so key now moving forward and any savvy brand should be looking far more at that, than any follower number, especially if they actually want people to see what they're looking to promote. I sent myself off on a quick test along Instagram and immediately noticed that bloggers with smaller followings, tended to have a much higher engagement level than those with sometimes ten times the amount of followers. Something that a couple of years ago I wouldn't have thought anything of, because it was drilled into everyone when working with brands that their follower number was what mattered. Now, it's a different story. What does this tell us though? I'm not sat here saying that those with large followings and low engagement have bought their followers, far from it, but we all know that in the blogging world followers can flock for a variety of reasons and in my eyes, giveaways are one of the most obvious causes for the stark contrast in followers to engagers. Compers will follow a blogger in order to potentially win a prize, but their account is being used for nothing other than to enter competitions and therefore will never engage with the blogger again unless it's for that purpose. What I like to call a 'ghost follower'. Then we look at the follow, unfollow game. With apps like socialblade disappearing into oblivion, it's on the rise now more than ever and again see's a huge increase in followers but quite often these followers wont engage and it ultimately results in the same problem, low engagement rates.

Engagement is so important and I really wish more brands looked into it, because in truth the people who engage are truly the ones who are seeing the content. A blogger may have 18,000 followers but if only 120 are interacting with their photos then that influence isn't over the 18,000, it's over the 120. I liken it to having a gardening magazine on the shelf in Tesco, that store might see 50,000 customers walk through the door weekly and thus you'd be impressed, expecting a large amount of sales but in reality you're getting less than 100. If you put it into a garden centre where you're only seeing 10,000 people each week, but 500 are grabbing up the magazine - it makes more sense to opt for the garden centre right? Even though the flashy supermarket has the big numbers, it doesn't really have the people who are interested and looking in the right direction. The same works for blogging.

I know engagement isn't always genuine, with comment pods, instant threads and every kind of social media promotion tool there is out there, you're bound to wonder how you can really trust the figures you see. The truth is, you can't. But bloggers who participate in those threads in my mind aren't truly cheating the system, yes the engagement is forced BUT, it's still engagement. Those numbers are real because each one of those likes or comments has been typed or clicked by another human, looking at that photo and genuinely interacting. The motives might be questionable but it's still there. I can honestly say from comment pods I've participated in previously, I've seen so many products or heard about a variety of places that I never would have otherwise. So even when I haven't been looking to be influenced, I still have, which is why for me engagement will always be top dog in the numbers game.