Don’t Melt the Growing Snowball Effect of Your Social Media Campaign

A successful social media campaign is a lot like a snowball. You have to take great care in creating it and honestly, it starts off small and fragile. But with a bit of effort and a solid push down the proverbial social networking hill, that snowball (SMM campaign?) can grow into something much, much more. I need to point out that at the end of the hill, that snowball is still a snowball – and we all know that snow melts. That is to say, regardless of your successes and the sheer size of your snowball, it is still fragile and requires care on your part to remain intact. The same goes for your social media campaign. You can grow it as large as you like, but just because you’ve initiated a fantastic ’snowball effect’ in growing your number of followers, without care your campaign can still fail.

I was inspired to write this post while reviewing my email earlier this afternoon. I had a few new Twitter messages letting me know that more people were now following me. How cool is that!? Twitter users the world over find my profile and follow me without any provocation. Following that train of thought, I remembered when I first created my Twitter profile. If I wanted followers, I had to hunt down individuals using Twitter search or sites like HubSpot and start following them. Sometimes that wasn’t enough, occasionally I had to initiate a conversation to get noticed and followed back. That was a lot of work. At some point, my snowball-like Twitter profile gained momentum and began growing – seemingly on its own. This snowball effect should be a goal for your social media campaign, and flagged as a turning point.

So, before I lose you all to my weak analogy here, I’ll point out the 2 sides of this social media snowball effect:

• The Beginner’s Snowball: When you first start your social media campaign, the work involved in creating your snowball is entirely your own. It’s tough, and time consuming. The realization that at first 100% of your followers have to “found” is huge. Just realize that if you put in the time and take care in growing your campaign, eventually it will begin to share that task with you. As your hard work pays off in followers, the sheer momentum of your campaign will begin to draw in more followers.
• The Bottom of the Hill: The tendency for many is that once the social media campaign has reached this critical mass of attracting followers the work is done. Don’t be deceived! It is tempting to rest on your laurels and just watch the followers flow in. The truth is that if you back off – i.e. stop conversing, participating, etc. – you run the risk of losing followers and killing all of that momentum you earned. Just keep in mind that with you and your campaign working together, you’ll maintain that awesome snowball effect and with any luck you’ll never reach the bottom of the hill!

In short, don’t melt your social media snowball. Nobody likes puddles. Seriously though, it’s important to monitor your social media campaign’s success through several metrics – including that of the growth in new followers. And I like to remember that with any online marketing activity – you only get out as much as you put in. Work hard, work smart and look out for my snowball!