Do followers and connections make a difference?
Maybe.
After analyzing data from about 2300 companies (mostly professional and financial services, but also retail, manufacturing and healthcare) we noticed an interesting link between fast-growing companies and the social media footprints of the owners and executives behind them, particularly in terms of LinkedIN connections.
When we looked at Twitter, Facebook and company pages on LinkedIN, high-growth companies usually had a more robust presence than slow- or no-growth companies, but the difference wasn't nearly as pronounced as when we compared the # of LinkedIN connections among owners and executives: High-growth owners/executives averaged nearly 2.5 times the connections of slow or no-growth companies, 500+ vs. <200.
(We ignored Google+ — sorry, Google — and are still gathering info on Instagram.)
It's important to note that correlation is not causation, and the link didn't hold 100% of the time among the companies we sampled.
Still... it makes you wonder what lesson can we learn from this?
Our take is that since LinkedIN reflects real-world contacts more than other social media channels — most of us have actually met everyone we're connected with on LinkedIN — connecting with people in person over coffee, at conferences or networking events, or in any of the random ways our lives overlap still matters.
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