I agree with Armando and Shaun, customers bring you revenue, social media followers do now. I would go even further to say that social media followers represent a cost center, an expense, because you need to have a paid employee or a contractor to manage social media followers and keep the brand message consistent.
Businesses exist because they have paid customers. It's that simple. Regarding hardware startups, I just published a case study about FitBit vs Jawbone: http://www.anagard.com/blog/2015/05/06/case-study-bootstrap-vs-venture-funding/ In just three years FitBit took 70% market share for fitness trackers with only $83M in venture capital funding and yesterday they announced $100M IPO even though valuation is $1B. FitBit has to thank paying customers for the success. In contrast, Jawbone, their competitor raised $518M, took 19% market share and is in debt today -- epic fail.
Please call if you and your team need outside feedback.