"I Followed You! Please Follow Me Back!"
"Please follow me on twitter!"
"Please like our Facebook page"
"Join our New Social Network and build your following!"

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow....

FOLLOW!!!!

It's Saturday morning, and the world is suffering from a serious case of "Follow Mania."

I blame MySpace... and later Facebook... as the initial culprits that trained a lot of people to believe that the measure of their (self) worth was how many "friends" they could accumulate.

We were taught to overlook the quality of our connections, and instead grew addicted to simply watching the size of the number next to our name. 

Really? A giant contest of DIS-connection that started to make a mockery of the word "friend."

But I digress...

Meanwhile, In Another Part of Town...

I'm sitting in my small art gallery here in town, writing these words. Oddly enough, they were not directly triggered by something I read on Steemit, not by our growing trend of "follow begging," but by something that just arrived in our email here.

Yet another "social platform," suggesting that "people I know" have recommended me for membership. Now, these were "real" people whom I know by name... but we've never had any actual interaction... so why would we have any, now? The typical FOMO-based appeal that preys on our fears that we aren't connected enough.

Because we need more social media, so we can follow more people! And people can follow us!

Don't we?

We Now Pause for a Reality Check!

Let's review, for a moment.

Across Steemit-- and ALL social media-- everyone is frantically trying to "build followings." I get that-- it's part of the "Social Media Game."

But what's yourOBJECTIVE, here?

Presumably, you want people-- real people-- to actually find and read your content (or your product, or your service), and like it well enough that they give it an actual upvote and interaction of significant enough consequence that it makes you feel like your efforts are worthwhile. 

Maybe you do it purely for money; maybe for the ego boost-- maybe some of each... but it still goes to some version of YOUR bottom line, right?

This is the same metric we apply in "real life" marketing, too. 

Quick "Story Time:" In my prior business, we gradually built a "hand picked" list of clients we actually had close connections to, and who were sincerely interested in what we had to offer. When we announced new product releases, we would actually sit down and HAND WRITE personal invitation letters to those people... in addition to bulk mailings to tens of thousands of people.

Guess what? Those 300 hand written invites would generate 3-5 times the business over a single weekend, when compared to the huge bulk mailings!

It's called relationship marketing... and it still works, in this digital age.

Meanwhile, Back on Steemit

Let me tell you something... I'm "following" 428 people here on Steemit-- almost all of whom were hand chosen quite deliberately because they created content I actually read and found interesting-- and sadly I don't have a hope in hell of keeping up with all of them!

In fact, according to SteemReports.com (useful utility, if you're not familiar with it!), in the past two weeks, I have made 232 unique upvotes... so that's barely over half the people I allegedly "follow."

Which leads me to point at the complete futility and uselessness of approaching the "building a following" challenge by either (a) going around and saying "I followed you, please follow me" to the next 5000 people you encounter, OR (b) using a bot (or bribing all your 17 kids with candy) to just arbitrarily follow 50,000 people in the hope that some of them will automatically follow you back.

Don't believe me?

The Pursuit of the IMPOSSIBLE!

Recently, I've come across several new-ish (less than 60 days old) Steemians who were each following more than 50,000 people! 

Now, I know some of you are going to come back to me and say "Hey Denmarkguy! I just went on Steemwhales.com, and there's NOBODY following 50,000 people!"

Well, it may look that way... which should alarm you even further, because that tells you that more than 2/3 of those "followers" are actually 100% inactive accounts that have never cast a single vote, made a single comment or posted a single thing! Think about THAT, next time you consider "buying a re-steem to thousands!"

But anyway, do you really, sincerely, and honestly think that any person is going to keep up with 50,000 people? Not to mention the complete and utter mathematical impossibility of someone actually UPVOTING that many people? 

I know what my answer is.

But who cares about my opinion? The reality was that each of these "mega-following" accounts were actively posting... and earning $0.50 to $2.00 a post... in many cases much less than other active minnows who are using a more personalized and interactive approach.

How come? Because those 6000 people you've lured into auto-following you back... they don't care about your posts! All they care about is the idea that YOU are following THEM back!

What does that add up to, in a functional sense? That every one of these "follower-collectors" are just watching the numbers but not actually doing anything! Which leads to... guess what? Nothing!

"Quality Matters." Commit that to Memory!

This isn't my first rodeo, and if there's one thing I've learned from years in social media, it's that "raw numbers" are pretty meaningless.

Stated a little differently... in most cases (movie stars and big time musicians excepted) simply having a huge number of followers might do a lot to "fill" your ego, but will do very little to fill your pocketbook.

Think of it this way... I can either hand you a $100 bill (quality)... or 10,000 pennies (a pain in the butt). Which would you rather have?

"Yeah, but I'm new and I haven't done anything that people think I deserve a $100 bill for!"

Well... that may be true, but other people were "new," too, once upon a time... but now you're going to argue that you're going to choose to continue to not contribute anything worthy of receiving a $100 bill and join the ranks of the "Penny Miners" who spend their lives filling the world with DUST rather than SUBSTANCE?

Yeah, well... don't come crawling back to me five years from now, whining about how there's "nothing worthwhile" in the world. Remember... you CHOSE that world! If you put nothing of value into the world, how can you expect to get something of value back???

Some Food for Thought...

Social sites and communities are built for people, by people. You simply cannot build a community with code, automation and bots. All you end up with is a wasteland of "code talking to code."

I suppose that's fine, if all you want is a botnet... but keep in mind that then you shouldn't expect Human Beings (aka "new members") to line up to join the party. Because they won't. Think, for a moment, of the "holodeck" on Star Trek TNG... what purpose would it serve, absent humans to interact with it?

There's a good REASON why our voting power starts running down after 10 or so votes: This place was designed to be used by people, not by automation. So stop trying to find ways to use automation to displace the humans!

So here's my unsolicited advice, if you want to keep swimming towards success in the Steemit waters: Just do your best, create engaging content, be social and engaging... and stop worrying so much about how many followers you have, and whether "enough" people are following you. The RIGHT people-- the ones who actually read your stuff, upvote it, and comment on it? They'll find you and follow you!  

And getting back to the "$100 bill vs 10,000 pennies" example? The way I see it, if you keep "mining for pennies," you might get your $100, but you'll end up ruining it for yourself and everyone else, in the process... because there will be nothing left here, just like a piece of land destroyed by a strip mining operation. On the other hand, if you just allow Steemit to "provide" as it was designed... we can all be here, having conversations, 5-10 years from now!

Last, but not least, a quick shoutout to a few inspiring Steemians who indirectly inspired this rant: to @stellabelle, whose tireless urgings to "do Steemit right" always rattle around my head; to @teamsteem who makes me feel fearless about creating "epic" length posts; to @personz who's at the forefront of the war on spam, and to @whatsup whose post Consider the Power of Your Flag yesterday gave me reason to pause and think about how we keep Steemit strong... in the long run.

Final request: If you see some sense in what I am saying here-- please consider RESTEEMING this and help it "go viral." The more eyeballs get to see that the whole "numbers game" is actually relatively lame, meaningless and most likely unprofitable, the better. This is possibly our collective future on Steemit, we're talking about, here-- let's not throw it away!

What do YOU think? Have you found yourself caught up in "Follow Mania?" Would you rather have many "followers" or fewer "true readers" who actually interact with your content? Do you think accumulating large numbers of followers actually works? When you look at your people you follow... do you actually go READ their content, on a regular basis? Or try to, at least? Last but not least, do you understand that social media is a two-way street? As in, you can't just expect people to "give" YOU something, without giving them something? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20170819 12:52 PDT