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14 Comments

You don't need a million followers to make an impact.

A few numbers that will change the way you think about social media metrics and audience size...

• If you get 250 video views, that's the equivalent of you performing in front of a sold-out comedy club.

• If 1,696 people subscribe to your newsletter, that's like every NFL player giving you their email address.

• If 9,314 people download your podcast, that's the equivalent of everyone at a sold-out Duke basketball game listening to you talk.

• If 68,000 people read your blog post, that's like having an entire Super Bowl crowd read your writing.

You don't need a million followers to make an impact.

  1. 7

    Another method is multiplying the number of visitors on your website by the average time on site.

    You'll soon discover that people spend an incredible amount of time looking at the things you've built!

    1. 1

      Nice way of looking at it

  2. 6

    Yes! I recently shared the same perspective on Twitter. It's crazy to think how quickly numbers lost their meaning in this social media age, where everybody is talking about 100,000 views as being "low"

  3. 5

    Thank you so much, I've recently passed that 250+ views on my vid on Youtube.
    At first, I see that number is very small, but after reading post I definitely changed my mind. Thank you again for such a great post :)

  4. 3

    Well, even though it´s nice and somehown uplifting, it doesn´t pay bills. e.g. I´m close to 500K views on Quora, but that doesn´t help making money. If I get 20-30K impression on Twitter each month, it´s the same. People subscribing to an email list is different since you can sell something to them and they already trusted you with the email, so that´s a benefit, the rest is just numbers, don´t say too much at an early stage of a company

  5. 2

    I agree with you in that you should not lose gratitude towards your following.
    However, context is key. For me personally, having 1,696 subscribers would be amazing. For the kardashians (replace with any international brand), trying to sell their products, even a million views could indeed be quite low due to a much higher contribution margin.
    Again, I agree with the core of your statement, especially regarding our IH community!

  6. 1

    Views and followers are nowhere near the same as engagement.

    More views is never the goal, less views with greater engagement is.

    We gotta keep a healthy perspective on numbers, we should never chase numbers but to chase the result.

    You wrote:
    "If you get 250 video views, that's the equivalent of you performing in front of a sold-out comedy club."

    If you performed in a club, where people have chosen to travel to and paid £8 a ticket (on average) totalling £2000, well done you. - 250 people watching a video on youtube...It really is not the equivalent :)

    1. 1

      That's absolutely true.

      But you're also thinking through the prism of a headliner. Most comics aren't headliners.

      They'd kill for the chance to open for a sold-out crowd of 250 people (who paid to see someone else), but then will feel crappy about getting "only" 250 views of a video.

  7. 1

    @joshspector awesome and refreshing insight! Love this perspective.

  8. 1

    Awesome - thank you for the shift in perspective 🙌

  9. 1

    Perspective is key...this is helping me think about our recent launch in a new light. Very easy to lose sight of modest or incremental gains.

  10. 1

    What a great way to put those numbers into context. Bigger never means better. I think a good question deeper down the road is: How do you get those 250 comedy club visitors to watch the whole show?

    1. 1

      ... and the next one? :)

  11. 11

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      You sound like a pessimist and misunderstood the point.

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