“How do I get more followers?”
“Make gorgeous and/or useful things that people want to share.”
After teaching at a conference this weekend, I learned how woefully inadequate this answer is. When an attendee — a woman clearly not a novice — literally rolled her eyes at me, I decided to rethink my answer.
It’s easy to buy followers if you want numbers. You can buy likes and friends, too. A simple transaction lets you grow your organic follower base (people who joyfully follow you because they are your friend, because they like your work) to Kardashian like numbers overnight. Mitt Romney was accused of this during his 2012 Presidential bid. Take heed though; followers do not automatically translate to customers, or in this case, voters.
There are more useful ways to get more followers but none of them are quick fixes. (Here’s a good write-up from HootSuite.) Being an attractive 20 something who looks great in a bikini is a great way to get more followers, though that approach isn’t available to everyone. Shirtless guy with great abs, same drill.
You can spend time curating your feeds, doing nothing but posting “on brand content”, but a friend who has a significant following says that his Instagram feed “looks like a grade school bulletin board. I got a bunch of followers because people saw my stuff and shared it.”
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A few years ago, I worked with a project manager who was moving into content strategy. “Sometimes, I feel like my job is to ask ‘why’ until the client punches me in the face,” she said. Or rolls their eyes.
Here’s how this looks when the conversation is about followers:
“How do I get more followers?”
“Why?”
“Because I have something I’m selling.”
“I should follow you because you want to sell me something.”
“I’m building a platform, I need more followers to prove my value.”
“Why?”
“So I can sell things, or brands will pay me.”
“I should follow you because it’s good for you? That’s why I should follow you?”
I can count on one hand the number of times this conversation has landed on “You should follow me because I think you’ll really like my stuff.” It’s that rare.
Ultimately, I don’t know how you get more followers or friends or likes. There, I said it. Also, I don’t care how many followers I have, which may be why you’re making money and I’m not. I care about making good things. I share ideas and work I care about and I let the follower question answer itself.
That’s why I’ve answered that question the same way for so long.
I’m going to stop doing that. From now on I will respond with another question: Why should I follow you? I’m going to get punched in the face for asking, but it’s a question that deserves a better answer than “Because it’s good for me.”
Build a time machine. Go back to 2007 and join all the social medias. Throw yourself into every new social media platform. Adopt early. Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste. But is that really how you want to spend your time?
Time machine. So hard to get a flux capacitor these days.
What a relief to say so, thank you.
Everyone wants to know the secret. Hey, if we knew it we’d have millions of followers. Oh okay: the secret is to be a celebrity or politician.
This year I decided I wanted to get my Twitter followers up, despite the idea that it is dying due to Instagram. So I’m on it. I find things to post almost every day that interest my followers. And it’s working.
A relief indeed. And yeah, posting interesting things that people subsequently share seems like the WHOLE DEAL. Crazy that it should be so simple.
Love reading your blog, thank you. I’m new to blogging and getting dismayed at lack of followers (although due to some handy hashtags my Instagram is steadily growing) I have decided that the only approach is to not worry or stress about it…..if one person reads my blog and ‘takes away’ something useful then I’m happy. If more then it’s a blessing. If in 5 years I’m still doing it and I can make a little travel funds doing so I’m going to be over the moon…if not, no drama.
That’s the theory!