Why Numbers Mean Nothing
Hits, fans, followers, impressions, clicks — all of these different variables are essentially measurements of the same exact thing. They quantify the number of times that people have visited your website, or viewed a particular post on Facebook, or clicked on a link that you sent out to your followers on Twitter. In essence, they are the most basic way for you to measure the success of your various online campaigns, because they give you a sense of the raw number of individuals that have interacted with those campaigns.
But they ultimately mean very little. Yes, having a Facebook ad that reached 10,000 unique people is a pretty substantial number of impressions. And having a website that sees a few hundred thousand visitors a month is also a pretty significant number for any website. A Facebook ad can literally see hundreds of thousands of impressions and not receive a single click. A website, on the other hand, can receive millions of visitors and have none of them go beyond the website’s homepage, the initial point of contact.
Success Is Measured By What They Do After The Initial Contact
Which is why success isn’t measured by how many clicks you get, or how many visitors, or how many fans or followers a website or Facebook page receives– success, particularly as it pertains to your online marketing campaigns, is measured by what visitors do beyond that initial action. With regard to a website, do they visit other pages? For example, if you are running a website for a restaurant, are people looking at the menus? Are they making reservations? Are they clicking on links to your social media pages?
That’s why a simple click or a visit it essentially meaningless. It shows nothing because beyond the initial curiosity in learning about your site, it doesn’t show interest. Interest is what drives customers to do more than just feign curiosity — it convinces them to make a reservation with your restaurant, or to buy a product on your e-commerce website. 
Now, consider your social media presences. Your last tweet may have been sent out to 500 followers, but how many retweeted it? Do you even know how many clicked on the link? Ensuring that you are keeping track of who clicks on your link, and how many people are sharing it is important not only because it quantifies the number of people that are interacting with your links, but also because it gives you a better sense of who is interested in your links, if anyone. And measuring that is extremely important in helping to determine the ROI of your online marketing campaigns.
The Importance of A Content Strategy
Hence the reason why creating a content strategy is so important. Certainly, the conversation with customers begins with a click, or a like, or a follow. Unfortunately, that is only just the beginning. It’s the content beyond that, like convenient contact or reservation forms, compelling blog posts or interesting pictures about your business that fans can only find on your Facebook page.
A content strategy is something that takes all of these different mediums into account, including websites, Twitter streams and Facebook pages. And creating a strategy with intriguing content will ultimately make your numbers, regardless of how small they might be, speak much more loudly.
Still, acquiring and developing those numbers is certainly important. The more exposure your website and social media presences have on the world wide web, the better.
But beyond being a way to stroke your ego, numbers don’t really mean a lot. It’s what you do to engage those ‘numbers’ beyond that initial contact which will ultimately determine the value of those numbers. Do nothing, and they are worth nothing. Continue that conversation, engage them and make them become fans and customers of your business, and they could certainly be worth a pretty penny.
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester NY Social Media company specializing in advertising, web and graphic design, and SEO.