Resort Fan Growth is Down 25% from 2011/12, but the Raw Increase is Up 20%
Gregg Blanchard /
I recently read a headline that made me do a double take. See if you pick up on the same thing I did:
“Sales growth is the lowest it’s been in years.”
The article, meant to show the poor performance of a certain business, was ironic because even with lower growth, it’s still growth. It’s like saying, “my boss only gave me an 8% raise this year instead of 10% last year.”
A raise is a raise. Growth is growth.
So when we look at how growth of various social media metrics has changed from Dec 2011 to Dec 2012, keep that in mind:
First off, yes, growth is slower this year than last year, but 5-7% growth is still nothing to sneeze at. True, it’s not the double-digit monthly jumps of last season, but it’s still a bit more solid than I expected.
Especially whey you consider raw numbers. In this graph, keep in mind that I equalized the different metrics so 300 YouTube views would be similar in height to 1 YouTube subscriber. No overall scale here, except between the comparisons of each metric YOY so you can see the difference.
Right off the bat you notice that even though 4 of the 5 metrics had lower percentage growth, when you look at the raw increase in numbers, resorts are still gaining a few more fans each month than they did last year.
Percentage growth is down, raw growth is a bit up.
Remember
I think that’s important to remember. Yes, fan counts are maturing and percentage growth isn’t as high as it used to be, but your fan count is still going up at a pretty steady pace.
Should fan growth be a focus? Perhaps, but I think it should be a minor, indirect one (fan growth is often a biproduct of engagement, especially RTs and shares). We’ll talk more about that later, but just wanted to put the “lower growth” some resorts are seeing into perspective.