Social media

People also feel a need to follow some ready-made formula, or to look for rules that only worked in specific contexts. Maybe that's a way to take the first steps, just as we use training wheels to learn to ride a bike, but those same training wheels will be useless if we want to compete among athletes at the Olympics; they'll only get in our way. So don't look for universal rules or laws: you'll find your own path if you stay focused on your customer.

The amount of content being created on social media today is staggering. That's 90 million tweets a day, more than 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, 350 million photos posted daily on Facebook and 95 million on Instagram. In the middle of all this madness, it gets very hard for people to see what truly effective content is, mainly because they follow the wrong metrics, or use them without their sister metrics, a name we coined for the metrics that balance the numbers and bring transparency to the real results, without camouflaging reality.

For example, there's no point in looking at an audience growing 130% a week without noticing that the bounce rate is at 80%, or celebrating that we beat our app install goal by 65% without noticing that our churn is at 70%. Whenever you use a metric, look for its sister metrics; never use them alone.

Used strategically, social media can work miracles for your business. Take the chance to explore exponential concepts, such as how to turn a crowd into a community. These people will be committed to your purpose and will be essential to your business's growth, even without any employment or contractor agreement with you. One step beyond brand advocates, the peak of Inbound Marketing strategies, this group of people is a key differentiator if you want to achieve exponential growth.

It's a universe of opportunities, and countless companies are betting everything on digital channels: you can measure exactly where your money is going and where the returns are most attractive, opening the door to more aggressive strategies such as Growth Hacking.

We must never forget that we are complex beings and that our decisions will always involve two factors: the rational and the emotional. Our point is that the reason a customer went all the way down the sales funnel is never as simple as “found me on Google” or “saw my banner on website X”. Ignoring channels that contribute indirectly to conversions can be a serious mistake.

In the middle of the funnel, where people look for information on how to solve their problems and compare options, they feed their brains with thousands of data points that are processed and turned into information and feelings, which create the perceived value of the brands they came into contact with.

Which brand conveys more credibility and trust? Does this company have a good reputation? Does it have clear differentiators? What is its customer service like? Did someone recommend it? How was your first contact with it, did it surprise you in a good way? Is it focused on price? We could list hundreds of possibilities that change from case to case, including how much weight the user gives to each criterion. For example, price may be a very important purchase driver when we're talking about makeup, but not so important compared with plastic surgery.

The lower the result, the stronger the perception that the product is cheap. A great opportunity to work on more aggressive pricing strategies.

Tapping into your target audience's most intimate channel with strategies based on effectiveness metrics may be one of the most powerful weapons for turning your customer into an advocate for your brand. Keep a close eye on the indirect channels that boost conversions, understand behaviors and seek constant feedback from your audience to apply continuous improvement in short cycles: you'll notice the results come faster than you imagine.