Saturday was a mixed day with some really great progress being made but also one rider on the floor which is rarely a good thing. I, for one, hate having riders down and really can't stand this "you don't learn until you fall nth times" saying. Who knows, it might be true but I'd rather not witness them! Whether you can or cannot predict something, you still live with the weight of someone's injury on your shoulders.
Thankfully, nothing serious happened but it always casts a shadow on the whole day. Alas, over to the good stuff.
We had our little organisational chat for the London learning group I mentioned a few posts earlier and I am looking forward to seeing how this initiative develops :)
If you would like to learn more about it, click the image link below:
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| https://aspireequestrian.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/aspire-equestrian-cafe-time-london-chapter-i-e-learning-with-a-difference/ |
Now, I've been pondering on something recently. There seem to be more and more tweets and Facebook posts simply calling for more followers or Likes. Some want to reach "milestone" numbers of followers, some just ask "follow me please" or "please like our Facebook page". I might be wrong but to have 500 followers who just responded to that call for action is to me like being in a room with 500 other people who are only there because they got the tickets. They don't care what you are all about or if you have any idea what they do and what their values are.
I suppose, you can get to know each other and maybe network successfully but from what I see, the opposite is the case. People just learn to ignore vast amount of stuff...
When I did my marketing degree, there was no Facebook or Twitter nor much in terms of social media at all. Maybe that's why I look at it differently, I am not sure. What I do know is that I would much rather have 100 people on Aspire's Facebook page who genuinely have interest in what I do and who I can connect with than 10.000 who just clicked "Like" button and never read anything I post.
Same with this blog and Aspire blog. The former is simply for pleasure of chatting, sharing and for my own pleasure of writing things down. If there were 10 of you reading I would still write it. Now, the latter is part of my coaching job. I want it to spread the word about how I work, what my coaching values are and how I teach. It is my mission for it to reach many riders out there but not those who don't really want to read what I write...I want to reach those who might find my posts helpful. I want the audience to grow. However, I don't want it to grow for the sake of growing.
Then there is Twitter. It's probably my preferred social media connection tool after blogging. The calls to follow on Twitter do perplex me. I don't even know how I managed to get all my followers and I do hope it's because at least some are truly interested in my content but I am thinking that there are many ways of getting someone to be interested in what you have to say than simply ask for a follow?
Here is my view for what it is worth. If I am interested in what someone tweets about and engage in conversation with them, most of the time they follow me back at some point. If not, it's not a big deal because I am interested in what they have to say not just in whether they follow me or not.
Like that I have a feed to read that I enjoy browsing through.
Then there are social media competitions...most of the time they are organised to collect email addresses for the business' email database. Again, I don't know if I see much point in this. Let's say I run a competition where 2000 people signed up and so gave me their email addresses. I then use those emails to send my newsletter or a promotional piece. How many of you would actually open the promo email if the only connection you had with me was some Facebook competition? How many of those emails would go straight to the spam folder in your email service?
Below is a screenshot of my Twitter profile. I have never pursued any follows yet my followers numbers is growing everyday - I take it as a proof that if for whatever reason, simply growing your audience is what you are after, it's still unnecessary to ask for the follows...Just chatting with people is enough.
I have an eclectic plethora of interests so follow variety of people but if they are not interested in horses, which is what I predominantly tweet about, it would be a complete waste of their time to follow me back.
I suppose in summary what I am trying to say through this waffle is that quality is always more rewarding than quantity. genuine interest in someone's content is always better than adding empty numbers.
I feel like I may have contradicted myself here with the amount of words I used in this post ;)
What do you think? Do you run social media accounts for your business/blog? What are your views?
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