Most professionals in the social marketing world will tell you that providing consistent content is key to gaining followers and expanding your audience online. Sticking to a schedule and making sure that your content stays inside your viewers’ feeds is important, but there’s one tried-and-true adage you need to consider:

Put Quality Over Quantity. 

By consistently delivering a higher quality of service, you not only set yourself apart from your competition, but gain a following that, in turn, creates a strong culture behind your brand. Many of the top Fortune 500 companies attribute their massive success to the culture in and around their company. That culture is more valuable than any amount of followers on Twitter or Facebook, as loyal fans will help you to grow your business in a positive way. That’s what we in the business call Evangelism Marketing.

Evangelism Marketing was first championed by Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist of Apple Computer. He now holds that same position at Canva, one of our favorite online graphic design tools.

In a nutshell, Evangelism Marketing is a fancier name for Word of Mouth Marketing. In an Evangelist Marketing scenario, your customers do your marketing for you. They feel so strongly about your product or business that they will “spread the word,” thus helping you grow organically. The goal for those customers is not to gain perks, but to simply spread the love for the quality of your posts and, ultimately, your business.  

One of the biggest things to remember as you grow your business is that your brand’s image is important! If you fill your audience’s social media feed with content that isn’t of the highest quality, you run the risk of boring them or seeming unprofessional. Though your business may be growing without quality social content, consider yourself viewing a business for the first time on a social platform. If their content is all text, of low quality or filled with copy-pasted Google images, you may find your first impression to be underwhelming.

By providing a good mix of quality content, you could change that first impression into a surprise and a delight for your audience. Then, in time, they will evolve from being online “fans” to champions of your brand and invaluable Evangelism Marketers for your business. That, in the long run, will be far more important than raking in page views or gaining a few “Likes” on Facebook.