Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?

Why you are, of course, but not because of the number of Facebook page likes that you have.

We all have those things in business that make us feel good – maybe it’s the size of your newsletter list, or perhaps it’s the number of likes you have on Facebook.

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Honestly, these are just vanity stats.

Vanity stats aren’t giving you a true and accurate reflection of what’s really going on in your business

What you have to be constantly thinking about is whether those people are actually your ideal clients. At the time of recording I’ve got an ok 1,000 plus likes on my Facebook page, but that doesn’t mean those people are my ideal clients, it doesn’t mean they will ever buy anything from me, and it doesn’t mean that they will engage in my content either.

I hear people spending money on boosting their Facebook page likes and wonder why? Is it because it makes us look good, raises our visibility, gives us credibility? Well I guess there is an element of that, but wouldn’t it be much more exciting to be engaging with people that totally get and love you and what you do, rather than those that are a bit meh, they can take or leave you? That would feel so much better, don’t you think?

I’d know I’d rather have 200 likes on my page that love what I do than loads of people on there that aren’t my ideal clients. So, if you’re someone paying for them, I’d say don’t. Let your page grow organically like I have.

Despite growing my page organically though I still don’t know if they are my ideal clients. So what to do? Keep encouraging them to visit your website, through a little PS call to action at the bottom of your posts, or sharing some blog posts etc. Invite them to sign up to your mailing list by giving away some valuable freebie that showcases your work. The people on your list are interested in what you do, they’ve given you their email addresses – which is actually a very big thing these days with the amount of noise in our inboxes.

Look after those people on your list give them additional information that you aren’t sharing elsewhere, or perhaps let them see it before others do.

What about those newsletters? Are you worrying about your numbers dropping off? Are people unsubscribing? Let them! If they aren’t staying on your list there may be lots of good reasons for that – the biggest one being – I’m sure you can answer this one for me – they aren’t your ideal clients. If they had any intention of being your client at any point then they would be staying on your list, so let them go, with love.

What about open rates – again they don’t mean much because some people have selected to have images turned off. What that means is that it’s possible that for your stats to count an email as opened, the images will have to have been loaded. Use the stats as a guide, but focus on engagement, new clients. How many people talk about your newsletter? Who replies?

I have people tell me that they love getting my newsletters, they save them but don’t always get around to reading them that week. I could get depressed about that, but I like to take the view that everything happens in its own sweet time and if they were meant to read what I’d written they’d have had the time to read it.

Another one that people get hung up on is website hits. Again, the numbers mean nothing if the visitor doesn’t end up becoming a subscriber or client. Instead of that, measure the number of people that sign up to receive your blog posts using your RSS feed, or the types of posts that are being shared. This kind of information is much more useful to you, it tells you where people are engaged.

I have over 8.5k followers over on Pinterest, which is great. Now most of my followers are interested in my creative boards, I have 1.5k on my coaching specific board, but how many of those have converted to paying clients? Well, I have actually had a few new clients from it, but definitely nothing along the lines of 8.5K, or even 1.5k!

Yes, it might be nice to have a few thousand Twitter followers, but you have to measure those things that really make a difference to your business

Focus on how many people are engaging in your content, what time of day do they engage, what do they share? All of those pieces of information are much more valuable to you.

If you focus too much on the numbers that don’t matter you can drive yourself nuts. Each time someone unsubscribes you start to wonder what you’re doing wrong. The answer is probably nothing, your list is simply streamlining itself perfectly for you, so that those that are on it love what you do.

Yes, all of these things are a way to boost your visibility but they can also impact on your mindset, which is one of the big areas we focus on in my Rock Your Visibility Bootcamp. You have to be kind to yourself.

So, while you are the fairest of them all, don’t let those stats be a reflection of you

They are just a measure, and actually, you want to be focusing on those things that make a difference.

Your call to action this week: Think about where you’re focusing purely on vanity stats and come up with a better way to measure how well you’re doing in your business

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