Hi all! I have a product question for anyone who has worked at / ran an early stage social company. How did you deal with the issue of at the beginning the engagement metrics we want to show to users (number of followers, likes, etc) are really low because of the low number of users on the app? Do apps just show it anyways (i.e. 5 followers, 3 likes) or are there other metrics / ideas we can show to start the engagement wheel going? Thank you so much!

There is no direct connection between the product and people's engagement in social media. You can create a public that promises to launch a new product that will solve the user's problems in the future (when it will be ready). While the product is not yet available, you can write helpful posts that solve some pressing problems of your target audience. Each such post is easy to boost - for 10-15 dollars, you can get about 100 followers and lots of likes on Facebook (provided that the ads targeting, audience pain, and post content match each other). When launching the product, you will already have a loyal audience with a high engagement rate. To succeed in that strategy, one should concentrate on a psychological portrait of the audience long before creating a product.

Thank you so much! Apologies I was thinking more within our app when we don't have enough users to increase the followers WITHIN the app (Vs. our facebook / insta pages etc)