Are You Social? Be Frequent.

Man and woman stretching in a gym

Are You Social? Be Frequent.

Reach vs. Frequency. The age old cage match of media planning and the dilemma confronting advertisers since forever ago. It goes like this: Given finite resources, the decision to pay for maximum reach buys you more people exposed to your message at the bare minimum number of times. Paying for more frequency, the number of times a person is touched by the message, necessitates dialing down the number of people you reach.

What to do?

In Julie Chance’s post, Reach vs. Frequency, she argues correctly that dialing up the frequency wins out, referencing Seth Godin’s classic Permission Marketing in which he uses the analogy of seeds and water. “If you were given 100 seeds with enough water to water each seed once would you plant all 100 seeds and water each one once or would you be more successful if you planted 25 seeds and used all of the water on those 25 seeds?” It’s obvious, yet the allure of a large audience persists.

Social media dangles that same bait. How many Followers do we have? How many Likes did we get? Where’s our Subscriber count? It’s true. If you’re not growing then you’re stagnating, or worse. But here’s where reach and frequency work together today. Replace “Frequency” with “Consistency” or “Regularity.” Fast forward, and the terms you use to describe your content marketing goals become more analogous to a fitness regimen. Because the truth is your message, your branded content…your story, in addition to needing to be “authentic,” needs to be shared frequently, regularly, consistently. Only then does transformation occur.

It’s cliche to say, “You wouldn’t only post to social platforms for one month, walk away, and expect your audience to grow in perpetuity.” Logic tells you it’s imperative to reinforce your messaging in an ongoing way to get results. But logic won’t grow that audience. That’s why we made the “LiveLaunch” service hassle-free, a video communications platform with memberships available. Subscribe longer, pay less. Just like at the gym. We can also accommodate custom plans. “Trainers” are standing by.