Do you want to be popular or do you want to make money?

Popularity and success require different tactics, so you have to decide between fame and fortune. Ask yourself this:

What’s more important for your business right now?

For most, the answer is as obvious as the balance in your bank account: you need fortune, not fame.

Popularity has its perks. If you’re financially comfortable, you can afford to take the time to build up a larger audience so that you can eventually pitch them your services or products. If your business is already succeeding, you can rest on your laurels a little to network with peers in your industry and create bigger opportunities down the line.

But you’re fooling yourself that getting tons of retweets on Twitter is going to put money in the bank. You’ll need to rethink your decision – or you’ll end up with a huge following but no rent money.

The biggest difference between success and popularity is how you measure results.

For success, you don’t count followers, fans, or even subscribers. Instead, you count the number of leads your marketing generated. You keep tabs on how many of those leads turned into sales and paid work. And you calculate how much money you earned in three months, in six months, in 12 months.

In short, it’s all about money.

It’s the opposite for popularity.

• You’re still counting numbers, but instead of money,
• you’re counting how many people follow you on social media.
• You’re keeping tabs on the retweets your status updates get.
• You’re calculating how much your following grew in three months.

In this case, it’s not about money.

This is a really simple way to determine whether your efforts are pursuing success or popularity. If you’re doing a marketing campaign on social media, for example, you may be getting lots of retweets and likes and shares – but you’re counting the number of sales you make.

In that case, you may appear to be pursuing popularity, but the fact that you’re counting the money as a measure of whether you’re doing well means you’re pursuing success.

The same goes for the reverse:

• if you launch a new website and ask people for their opinions on social media,
• you’re counting the likes, shares, and retweets.
• You’re not counting the money – because there isn’t any.

That’s pursuing popularity.

The next time you want to make a big move for your business, ask yourself honestly what results you’ll be measuring: popularity or success?