I had a recent experience of posting something to Instagram that I thought was really great – humourous, empathetic, and important; the stuff I’m really proud to share. It’s been an idea sitting in an old sketchbook for years and I think I’d just been too afraid to execute it for fear of not being able to produce what I could see in my mind. Anyway, when I did and put it out in the world, I was really disappointed with the response.
In terms of ‘likes’, it performed poorly compared to other stuff I’ve posted, recently. Was it the wrong day? The wrong time of day? Was it Instagram’s algorithm? A lack of hashtags? I went into ‘analysis overdrive’ trying to work out what to do differently next time.
Then, almost 24 hours later, one of my picture book heroes, Bruce Whatley, came across it and we had one of the most meaningful exchanges I’ve had on Instagram in a really long time. Not only that, but it inspired him to go dig up an old book and share it with his audience, which resulted in even more nostalgia and conversation. No marketing guide ever asks us to measure that.
See, when I first posted the image, I was focused on the wrong thing – numbers. How many likes and how much visibility will this work receive? But, it was decidedly the wrong metric/s.
Whenever we think of ‘marketing’ we think about it in the way that social media companies have trained us to think about it – impressions, likes, clicks, conversions. We focus on the numbers. That may be meaningful for them and their business model, but that’s not the only way. There is another lens through which to judge success, a lens trained on relationships, meaningful conversation, and connections amongst one another that run far deeper than surface-level numbers.
It feels ‘riskier’ to focus on qualitative, not quantitative metrics, but if the work is good enough, it’ll cut through anyway. I don’t know about anyone else, but good qualitative metrics to leave a deeper and more lasting impression than the fleeting quantitative ones.