The truth about ‘vanity’ metrics
Follower and ‘like’ counts are certainly the most visible social media metrics, but they aren’t the best ones for brand managers to use.
The psychology of vanity metrics for social media isn’t terribly complicated.
I like an old quote from Jay Baer’s “Convince and Convert”: “How much do you think we’d be talking about Twitter followers or Facebook ‘likes’ if how many you have wasn’t attached to your public profile like a goiter?”
Thanks for that visual, Jay.
He goes on to say, “If on every website you visited, you saw a number in the corner that showed how many email newsletter subscribers they had, we’d be putting a lot more emphasis into our email programs.”
It’s true. But there’s more to vanity metrics than that.
Why we love them
Here are three big reasons vanity metrics are so pernicious:
1. They’re visible.
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