I was asked if facebook/social media stats measured progress and/or success. here’s my answer….
my thought on measuring stats/content is this. Do people show up at my shows? that is the bottom line.
when papa grows funk was playing every monday night, my goal was to get 1000 people to come once every 2 months. That would give me an average of 100 people a night and would generate enough money to sustain each week. it took 3 to 4 years to achieve that, then Katrina hit and we didn’t re-achieve that number till 2008/09. that was with very little social media help and strictly on word of mouth, sweat and perseverance.
so now i’m at it again with a new project and trying to achieve if not beat those previous pgf goals. we haven’t reached those numbers yet, but here’s why I’m optimistic that i have a better chance this time around. through the campaign and philosophy of Bands to Fans i feel i am casting a wider net that’s reaching an older audience. since beginning a somewhat steady weekly show at Chickie Wah Wah, we are doing dismal numbers as expected at the worst time of year. but the audience that comes out is completely different every single week. which tells me the potential pool of fans is much wider than when pgf started. in the early days, pgf had the same 20-30 people show up every week then it began to rotate. it’s an audience that doesn’t go out as frequent as the younger, disposable, income crowd. my audience has families, jobs and responsibilities so getting out of the house is much more difficult than the people i was playing to at the Maple Leaf on Monday nights.
also, when i talk to these fans, more often than not they strike up a conversation based on one of my posts, sometimes about a song on the record, a question about Allen Toussaint or city we recently played. they are informed and know something about me. i’ve had people comment on how they enjoy reading the posts on my page. i’ve had industry people mention the posts on the page as great examples of how to present links, photos and comments.
so what do the numbers / stats mean? i couldn’t tell you. as far as “show-type” posts (post begging for people to come out to a show), boosted and unboosted, have reaches of 5-6000 and 10-20 people show up. sometimes they reach 1000 and 50 people show up. last week, the chickie wah wah unboosted post had 7000+ reach and it was our best turnout since the debut show in April. I can’t tell what the stats mean, it’s inconclusive based on real world numbers.
Maybe one way to look at the stats, is that it measures how well we get through the Facebook algorithms and filters, so that we can see how long the legs of a post have. that’s just a guess…..
i believe they help the overall picture and its the optimism in me that thinks all of this will pay off down the road. I believe it definitely boosts the good will of my brand. and that’s why i think it’s a valuable investment of time and money.