How Do You Build Your Followers In Steemit?

This weeks topic for @legendchew's Exclusive Blogging Course Giveaway Contest and one that I am once again participating last minute is:

How Do You Build Your Followers In Steemit?

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If you are at least a week old and already have published at least one post here on Steem, then chances are you already know that there are at least three types of followers one will have on this platform: Active followers, Ghost followers, and Dead followers.
Image Source These three are pretty much self-explanatory:

Active Followers - Followers who constantly interact with you and your blog posts (through upvotes/comments/resteems)

Ghost Followers - Followers who didn't engage with you in the last 100 posts (or so they say)

Dead Followers - Followers who haven't been active in over a month

At the moment of writing, I have around 873 Followers, 737 of which are considered Ghost accounts, and 278 of that 737 are considered Inactive or Dead. With these numbers alone, we can conclude that around 85% of the people following me are mostly just for display. Sad but this is the reality of the platform. It even gets more sadder if we start to include bots, alt accounts, upvote fishers, community and trailing accounts.

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The reason why I opened up with these three classification is because I believe that they are somewhat tied to each other. Ask anyone what is the best way to get followers here on Steem and 90% of them will probably say: "Social Interaction!" (with the remaining 10% shouting for "Invest a big chunk of money on Steem because what can't money not do?"). However speaking from experience, it is not always the case.

Take this scenario as an example: Steem Power aside, if you receive one comment on your blog post and that account is being followed by only 20 people, Would you follow the account? For many good reasons, majority of people would not. Why? Again Steem Power and wallet aside, the account looks like a bot or alt account by someone and to be more blunt: it kind of is a "loser" account .:)

But what if that account was being followed by 10,000 people? Not sure on the exact numbers, but a number of people would definitely follow. People feel good when seemingly famous people are interacting with them. No matter how real or fake the numbers are, they will always have an effect on people.

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Of course if the account keeps on commenting (decent comments) on one's posts then the chances of him/her being followed increases significantly with every comment too. :)
Anyway, what I want to talk here is how to increase your Fake and Real Followers on the Steem Platform:
How Do You Build Your Followers In Steemit?

Building Fake Followers!

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Try out different Steem Platforms!

One thing I've noticed after using almost every Steem Platform there is to date is that, like your very first post to the blockchain where you get around 150+ accounts immediately following you after, same can be said by posting on other platforms. Just try posting via @dlive or @dtube and you will probably get 5 new followers. They are of course only auto-following and will most likely never interact with you. :)

Try out different Steem Tags!

Just like trying out different Steem Platforms, there are also accounts that will auto-follow certain Steem Tags.

Using Bid Bots!

Using Bid Bots not only significantly increases one's visibility but it also almost always gets one new followers. I myself have used bid bots in the past using Steembottracker and there are pretty much many bot accounts/alt accounts just lurking over there.


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Building True Followers!

Well this one is no-brainer at all. The fastest and proven way to get true and real followers in almost every social media sites is through Interactions.

Interactions can be in the form of comments/replies, upvotes, a decent amount of resteems, a friendly chat on steemchat, discord, FB and the likes. The more you are in close contact with someone, the more you are likely to be followed and even be supported by that someone.

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Interestingly enough, trying to build your Fake followers will also significantly increase your chances of being followed by real ones. If your niche is art and only have used the Steemit platform to deliver your posts, then chances are people who loves to see art videos from @dlive and @dtube probably have no idea on who you are.

A singer or musician who spends most of his time on @dsound have only little visibility compared to a singer or musician who tried posting via @dlive and @dtube (Man I need more platforms as an example lol). Sometimes it's nice to see a little visual rather than just sounds :)