Forget the stats.
Forget the followers.
Forget the connections.
Forget the likes.
Forget the dislikes.
All these metrics were happening long before social media and we found a way to ignore the daily churn and not get hung up on them. This isn’t to say you should treat those that have connected and follow you as numbers that grow your network but instead think of them in the context of the real world.
When you are giving a presentation or talk, there are invariably going to be people that stand out and leave.
Perhaps they are in the wrong room, perhaps it’s not what they thought it would be, perhaps they don’t like you (it could, will happen). Are you going to stop your presentation, follow them out the room and ask them why they are leaving and what you can do to get them back?
Doubtful, you’d be alienating the rest of your audience.
And when you tell people about the presentation you gave are you going to tell everyone the exact number of who was in the audience, what their backgrounds were and what industries they worked in?
Probably not, instead you are going to focus on how you delivered a killer presentation and how the crowd reacted and what you learned.
So yeah, forget the statistics and focus instead on the interaction, the feeling and the result.