What Gives? Why Do We All Need So Many Followers?
If you do a search on Google: “How to get more followers” you’ll get 676,000,000 hits. It seems that a large portion of society is on a hard driving quest to be “followed.” Someone in social media marketing has set this up as a big goal for many people, but why? Do we all really need to have as many followers as possible? Some are even buying followers. Why are so many people so desperate to get a large following online?
One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four
I think part of the reason is that many people think of social media as a pure numbers game: The more followers I have, the more relevant I must be, therefore the more successful I will be in whatever it is I am trying to do. More is better. The problem with this thinking is that it doesn’t always pan out. First of all, it doesn’t ask the all important question: what are you trying to accomplish with your social media presence? Secondly, it begs the question: are all followers are equally valuable to you? Why?
Social Media Marketing – The Why Behind The What
For most of my customers, social media is a vaguely familiar “thing” out there, a waste of time and energy for which they have just not seen the value to their business. What they don’t realize though is that the “word-of-mouth” that they tout as the biggest source of new business for them, is exactly what we’re talking about in social media marketing, and it’s got little to do with having a bazillion followers. Conversely, there are those who have asked me to help them get started on social media, and after talking about it together a while we decided that no, it wouldn’t help them at all, in fact, it might just hurt their brand by make them look like a desperate “me too, me too!” company that has no idea what it’s really doing online. It all comes down (or should come down) to the use case. What are you trying to accomplish?
Less Following, More Connecting
I have no interest in being followed by 50 million people. The term: “follower” is awkward anyway, because it kinda sounds like we’re members of some weird Davidian cult. Most of the people I’m connected with (which is my goal in social media involvement if you haven’t deduced that yet) are people who have either found my thoughts interesting, entertaining or helpful in some way or I have found them so, or both. We are connected. We have a relationship and conversations. They are friends, suppliers, clients, peers, colleagues and mentors. It’s difficult to interact and engage with more than a few hundred connections this way, let alone 50 million “followers.” My greatest use of social media has been to connect with people share ideas about their lives, their businesses, about blogging and social media marketing.
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The best is when I get connected with those who have an interest in my ideas and have interesting ideas of their own, and who are generally fun-loving, cooperative, pay it forward kind of people. Ideally, we will build connections not just in social media, but in face-to-face meetings, over a coffee (or a beer) over some mutual project, over a mutual love for the band: Rusted Root or whatever. There’s no magic formula. Essentially, in some social circle or other we can share common ground or can help each other out with networking contacts, knowledge, sounding board, a good laugh, a kind word, etc. That’s what I love about social media. It is what you make it. I’ve managed to build a small, but very valuable network online (take a bow y’all.) You guys are the best.
I would never ask: “What’s it going to take to get you to follow me?” because I don’t care to be followed. I would love another connection though. Why are you on social media? Have you seriously thought about that? What are your goals? Is it just to get more followers? How does that help you? (I’m not trying to be sarcastic) Do tell! Because I’m pretty sure I don’t get it.
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Hi Don, I enjoyed your article. I am on social media to spread the word about myself and the work I do. I use a remarkable relaxation technique that can literally change peoples lives. The results I achieve do test our belief systems and so an opportunity like this to tell stories through my blog, give people the opportunity to watch my you tube video’s and test it for themselves seems helps. I of course would like followers who can interact and be willing to have an input. My goal is to be seen as a leading authority in my work – this I hope is a positive step toward that.
Sean,
Makes perfect sense. There is value, you are sharing a part of who you are. What do you think – Would 50 million followers be important in your case? How would that differ from having, say 1000 very engaged connections?
Geez, Don, don’t you even care about my Klout score??
JK… good post. I agree w/you, it’s about relationships not followers.
Hi Stephen,
I check it every morning. Looks like your on the way to becoming a supahstar! Seriously, there may be cases where those great big throngs of followers makes sense. I’m interested to hear the business case. Thanks for commenting!
50 Million followers would certainly create an amount of legitimacy for any business. In Sean’s case if he had that amount of total followers I would suggest at least 1000 of them would be very engaged and the conversations and word of mouth we all seek would flow.
I’m wondering if you’ve considered the 90-9 and 1 rule in your consideration of the question of engaged followers verses total follower?
That’s a valid argument. I’m curious though, for the average business, if it’s worth the effort to “go large” as opposed to being more focused and engaged with a smaller group. I guess it comes down to whether their branding is based on legitimizing the business or on engaging a carefully selected audience.
Hi there! Would you mind if I share your blog with my zynga group?
There’s a lot of people that I think would really enjoy your content. Please let me know. Thank you
Sure. Please just link back to the post and provide proper credit to Don F Perkins
Thanks
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Thank you for sharing this post, it is great. I agree that you should only have followers who you actually connect with and can share ideas with each other.
Johnnie,
Yes. We all have better ways to spend our time than counting followers… like asking good questions for example. What good ideas have you received lately from your network?
I like the logical progression of the ideas in the blog. It helps a lot in reminding us how important connection with our target market is attaining social media and blogging success.
Yvette
Spot on. Inbound marketing is all about connecting with our audience over the things that matter to them. How does your organization accomplish this?
You are absolutely right Don, it doesn’t make sense to try to forcefully get tons of followers, because even if they are hundreds of thousands, if you don’t have a real connection to them, your message will not be spread across.
Those followers won’t talk to their friends about you and your business/mission, so your efforts and the money you may have paid for more followers become worthless.
Neo,
Yes. Here’s to real connections, and the power of focused crowds.