Followers are the people who choose to connect with a company’s social account to get updates when new content is posted and engage with the brand. It can be thought of as a company’s audience or community.
While the term Followers is standard across most social platforms, Facebook and LinkedIn offer alternative names. Facebook uses the term “Page Likes” to represent the number of followers for a business page. While LinkedIn uses the term “Followers” for business pages, the site offers two layers of connection for individual accounts - connections and followers.
LinkedIn Connections are more like followers on other social accounts and is counted when an individual sends a connection request to another individual. In order to fully connect, like with Facebook, the person who receives the request has to approve it. Followers, on the other hand, are more passive in nature. They want to see the individual’s content and potentially engage with it, but for a myriad of reasons may not want to formally connect with that person.
Followers is a purely quantitative metric that falls under the vanity metrics umbrella. The number of followers is less important that the number of relevant followers. If an account has 1,000 followers, but only a very small percentage are from people who fall within a company’s target audience, it is counterproductive to the reason for creating a social presence. Other metrics, such as Engagement Rate, can paint a fuller picture of relevant followers.
When gauging the health of a social account, the number of followers can be a relevant metric and has its place in analytical reporting. It can serve as a barometer of the growth of the account and is useful to monitor when starting a new social account. A decline in followers can also be monitored, as this may signal a potential issue that needs to be resolved.
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