There are two distinct camps when it comes to measuring social media’s overall return on investment. The first camp is all about numbers; in other words, the more followers or fans you have, the more influential you’re becoming. The second camp believes that social media is all about engagement and would rather have 100 passionate fans than 10,000 lukewarm fans.

Every time I side with the former.

Here’s why:

A few months ago, Fast Company released an article titled, “For Brands On Facebook, Fan Quality Trumps Quantity.” The article explains the metrics used by a leading social media firm to determine the value of a single Facebook fan by comparing the correlation of sales to Facebook friend counts and the correlation of sales to this particular definition of engagement.

The result? Engagement wins every time. By a lot. Twice as much, in fact. The data showed correlations to sales of engagement of 90% versus correlations of sales to friend count of anywhere from -5.3% to 40% at most.

So what does that mean for us?

No matter what your goal is for using social media, don’t get so caught up in the numbers that you forget about cultivating engagement.

Instead of trying to get everyone on Facebook to “like” your page, focus on encouraging conversations with those who have already connected to your church on Facebook. Once you do, you’ll not only see an increase in engagement, but you’ll begin to see an increase in fans as well.

How does your church focus on cultivating engagement on Facebook?