“Activate your fans, don’t just collect them like baseball cards.”

Jay Baer

So Two Hairdressers Walk Into A Bar
In the social + digital world, one BIG thing many of us have forgotten is that the online world is no different than the offline world, it’s still all about the people.  It’s one big cocktail party, just instead of hanging at the bar, we are hanging at a new “virtual bar”.

Asking for likes over and over, spamming other peoples pages, collecting likes like baseball cards is kind of missing the point of community building.

To have an effective community online, you need your community engaged.  The real purpose of these platforms are to help us listen, engage authentically, build relationships, have meaningful two way conversations, deliver value, to become discoverable on the web and ultimately grow our businesses through word of mouth and referrals.

Give Them Something To Talk About
What you need is right likes which are the people you are targeting and marketing your services and products to.

The most important number to be mindful of is your engagement rate, on Facebook, that’s the “talking about this” number.  That is the number which represents your real community, meaning people are liking, commenting, sharing, checking-in at your salon or RSVP’ing to an event.  In order to increase engagement, you need to provide content worth sharing (posts, tweets, blogs, pins, etc.) A good “talking about this” percentage on Facebook is between 10-30%. Anything above that is awesome, anything below that just says you need to revise your content and posting plan.

Here is some simple math, we promise…
Talking About This Number (divided by) Total Page Likes = Real Engagement Percentage

So, instead of “collecting likes” like baseball cards, remember first that each like represents a REAL person who has chosen to engage your page and your business.  People want to be loved and recognized and have come to your page to see if there is something of value to them.  If you give them something compelling, relevant, interesting and cool to share, like or comment on, believe us, they will.

For more information on how to craft an authentic, engaging and effective social + digital plan to become more discoverable on the social web, give us a shout on Facebook, Twitter or click here.

PS: We like you, we really like you.  Thank you for being here with us.

(shared with LOVE from your passionistas Nina + Gordon)