Click rates, followers, engagements, opens, subscribers, unsubscribes, likes, laughs, loves.
We’re living in a quantitative world. No matter which social media platform you’re using, the numbers supposedly don’t lie. It’s how we measure our success. Every one of these platforms offers ‘analytics’. A way to track your success and effectiveness of what you’re posting. The problem is, the numbers they’re tracking (and giving us) are the ones important to their own success, not the success of the individual. After all, the assumption is that we all want to scale and grow everything, right? Just as a company would.
So, like I did, you spend your life trying to optimise; trying to bump up the numbers that they give you to play with. It goes a bit like this: Last time I posted a photo of my cat, I got ten extra followers, that’s more than any followers from any other post. So, now I post more pictures of cats. Right?
Well, yes, that logic is excellent if your goal is to increase followers or, as the businesses say, “To scale your business and become an influencer”, to “Build an audience”. But what if ‘scale’ isn’t your goal? Where are the dashboards and metrics that provide insight into the quality of the audience?
To be honest, I’m over it. I’m really tired of ‘building my audience’. I’ve spent the last five months not posting to Instagram at all. And, as I suspected, my follower count is dropping at a relatively steady rate. It’s Instagram’s way of saying, “Hey you! Don’t lose your followers! Come here! Keep posting. We need you!”
These platforms we use reward behaviour that they want us to perform, and as a by-product, subconsciously encourage us away from posting stuff that, quite possibly, is the real stuff people want to see; stuff that creates a raw and realistic picture of what life is really like. It might not necessarily be aspirational or dreamy. It’s probably the stuff that doesn’t make you feel ‘hashtag blessed’, or, worse yet, be algorithmically successful.
When I surveyed my mailing list, what was the number one thing people wanted to see? The mistakes I made. The crap work. The work that tells every other person that I’m a human that does 4000 versions of something I hate to find the 1 version of something that ends up in a picture book. In other words, they wanted to see the work that I feel too embarrassed to show and the work that will make my Instagram feed look like a car crash.
Dance to the (algo)rhythm
I know what kind of posts Facebook rewards. I know what kind of posts Instagram rewards. I know what makes those little lines on all my dashboards tick upward letting me know that I’m doing a ‘good job’. Keep it all consistent. Keep it on-brand. Post regularly. Make sure people can glance at your feed and get an instant idea of what they’re signing up for. And I can play their game; these platforms aren’t that sophisticated. But now I’m thinking their game sucks, and it’s time to try something new.
Dancing to a different rhythm
I’ve recently been asking myself what’s truly important to me. What will bring me and my art practice the most significant rewards? I’m questioning whether the data that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram value as businesses are actually what I care about.
As it turns out, it’s not.
Ever since I started this crazy picture book journey, I’ve been interested in one main thing – making a positive impact in the world. So, with this lens, I’m now experimenting with setting my own metrics.
Exhibit A – My mailing list.
First, we shape the tools, and then the tools shape us.
I use MailChimp to send out a quarterly newsletter to those who like to hear from me about what I’ve been up to once every three months. And, like most people, I want to know whether the effort I put into them is worth it.
It usually takes me a few weeks, working an hour or two a week, to put one of these together. I try to keep the content of them relevant to what I think my audience wants to know. It’s highly visual and quite personal. Because it’s not a social feed, the rules are slightly different. The algorithms aren’t serving content, I am.
I’m one of those people who loves feedback. When I send out a newsletter into the big wide world I’m the guy who sits in the dashboard refreshing it every few minutes to see who’s opening it, what are they clicking on, when are they clicking on it. Here’s what Mailchimp thinks is important to me:
1. Open rate
2. Click rate (per unique open)
3. Audience change
4. Forwards
5. Last clicked
The list goes on.
So, when I first started, I had no idea what these numbers meant. On their own, they aren’t that useful. Then, after a while, I saw a trend. It looked like people click on listicles the most (articles that start with phrases like “10 tips for…”). Next most popular, images of art that aren’t mine. My open rate is higher on Tuesday mornings than it is on Thursday afternoons. My click rate is higher if I send out curated content I’ve found on the internet as opposed to links to my own stuff.
Huh. Interesting. But useful?
If I want to play the game that Mailchimp wants me to play, then great. I can change what and when I send emails out, and those numbers will definitely go up. But, at what cost? Do I end up becoming a ‘good curator of other people’s content’ for people who aren’t interested in me anyway? Is that what will help me become a better artist or teacher?
I know I’m taking a simplified and pessimistic view of this data. But bear with me a moment.
It comes back to what I really want to know; when I switch off the dashboards and insights and numbers and ask myself what I really want the answer becomes clear. What I want to know is whether I’m increasing my connection with my audience. I want to know how my content is making people feel. Do people care about what I’m telling them? Am I adding enough value into someone’s life to even bother doing this? And what value is it adding to mine?
So, I made a fresh start. I decided to make up my own set of metrics. Ones that I think give me a more explicit indication of whether what I’m doing is fulfilling the goals I want to achieve. These are metrics that no ‘service’ offer. It’s up to me to track them. So here they are:
- Does anyone bother to reply? And if so, who?
- How did it make them feel? Angry? Sad? Happy?
- How does it make ME feel to receive each response.
When you start to consider these metrics before you create content, it’s surprising what sort of content it unlocks. Instead of posting highly visual photos of other people’s work (e.g. ten best social media artists to follow), I start to think about telling personal stories so people can get to know me better. Instead of posting pictures of cats, I think about telling people about the impact that their financial support is making in my life, and the lives of others through the charities I support.
It’s different. It’s not how Mailchimp or any e-marketing textbook would frame ‘success’, but it makes me feel really good.
Numbers Shnumbers
Whether Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or are doing it purposefully or not, the algorithms they’re using to serve content are rewarding behaviour that, in the end, gives *them* as much reward as possible – and that’s scale. The number of eyeballs on the platform is what’s important to them. And, just like billboards placed on highly used motorways, it means they can reach more people with advertising and therefore charge more money for that space.
No matter how sure I am about this decision to change what content I share in the world, I still have fear. I fear I’m about to ‘cannibalise’ my social media accounts. I’ve spent a good chunk of time building a pretty modest following, but I’m about to start posting things that probably won’t make the maximum number of people hit the like button or the follow button.
But I know that when I do feel that intense pressure that these platforms will put on me to influence what I post, I’ll return to this article and read me to myself. Hopefully, that’ll be enough because I’m not measuring success by analytics dashboards anymore.