Should We Care About The Number of Followers? How Are Followers Gained? Let's Discuss!
Every person on Steemit looks forward to gaining more followers. It's a common pursuit regardless of the number of followers already held or the level of user. While some rely on the quality of their content, many even run follow for follow campaigns to gain more followers. All in all, having more followers just feels right, doesn't it?
But is getting more Steemit followers a worthy goal?
Image designed via Canva.com and background image is free to use from the inbuilt gallery. The little folks are following their mama.
It's an important question that we are going to explore in this post. A mean of all opinions, including the content of this post and your comments under it, will give a way forward to have a common position on followers.
Are Followers Important?
If Steemit is a social media platform, followers are what we call the audience. Without any audience, there is no point sharing your opinions and thoughts. Just imagine a teacher teaching a class full of empty chairs. The whole activity is pointless.
So, having followers is not only good, it is necessary too. You don't want to throw your well created content into a vacuum. There needs to be an audience for you to send your message across. Since Steemit is an interaction based community, let's revisit our basic knowledge of communication skills.
Elements of Communication
For communication to happen, we need four things.
- Sender - The source of the message that needs to be delivered.
- Message - That is to be sent.
- Medium - The platform which enables communication.
- Receiver - The end consumer of content of the message.
Let's view communication in terms of Steemit.
- Bloggers are senders.
- Blog posts and comments are the message.
- Steemit is the medium.
- Other Steemians are receivers and the prime receivers are the followers who can see posts in their feeds.
We can see that for effective communication to take place, followers play an instrumental role as receivers.
If followers are necessary, should we do anything to get them?
This is where the heart of the problem lies. There's no doubt that followers are an important part of Steemit experience. However, the way followers are achieved matters a lot. There are some good ways of gaining followers. But there are some which are not good.
Three Ways of Gaining Followers
- Organic - Organic followers are the ones who saw your content and profile, liked it and saw value enough to follow you for more.
- Scheming - The most popular form of scheming is "follow for follow" (f4f), which mainly came from Twitter. In scheming, followers are gained by joining follow for follow groups/campaigns.
- Fan Following - There are some Steemians with a significant followers all over the internet already. When they come to Steemit, they bring a lot of their followers as well. I can quote many people here but @jerrybanfield comes to my mind immediately.
For personal example, when I joined Steemit, I immediately understood its worth and got on to my personal blog to tell everyone about it.
Many of my 10,000 social media connections (reduced by 9000 due to Facebook permanently disabling my account) shared it and so many people joined Steemit as a result. These people followed me as well. But the majority of my followers are organic; the kind people who chose to follow me for what I do on Steemit.
This is how my profile looks like right now. Thanks to the 3564 amazing people who chose to follow me.
But which one of these ways is not good? I think scheming is the worst way to get followers and that's because the quality of interaction and subsequent rewards is almost certainly zero. As far as my opinion is concerned, the best type of followers are those who choose to be your followers.
Fan following is always a plus and it is well deserved because of the background hard work those people do to gain that popularity. However, it's a luxury that most people do not have.
Let's Discuss!
- What do you think about getting followers?
- How do you think you got your followers?
- What is the best way to build a following on Steemit?
Steem on!
The issue here is not FOLLOWERS but more about ENGAGEMENT. I used to work for a social media influencer company and we always laughed at users that had millions of followers vs another person with 10,000 followers. Unless your Kim Kardasian read on.
Its NOT about the Follower count its about the quality of the follower. Sure you can be a Banfield with 200k followers but do they all vote for his posts? What really needs to happen is you need a quality audience.
Here at steem it seems there are significant flaws in the community due to followers.
Prime example... I have 10,000 followers and get 100 likes. is this a good Engagement? depends on the followers vs a user that has 500 followers and gets 200 likes. way better engagement.
At that company we always used the 1% rule. if you can get 1% of your total follower count to like your posts you have the Average that a normal user gets. and if you can increase this to 3% of your audience then you're great. the problem here is that the mechanic to vote that has a price attached to it creates value... whats worth more a user that posts and gets a $20 vote from 5 people total or a user that gets 300 votes worth 2% total of $5. The thing here on this platform i have found is you need to have quality people that appreciate the content you produce.
Problem is the platform is so difficult to retain followers and their posts that you have NO idea when they post or when to access it to comment organically as well.
Excellent comment and such a valuable knowledge. The 3 % figure came to my mind from email marketing studies that I read when I was actively running my WP blog. It is true that not all followers are actively engaging all the time.
Engagement is the keyword here. To summarize your point, the percentage of engaged followers is what matters the most.
Thank you for the comment.
lmk if youd like the equation to calculate the engagement rate of posts based on users. the problem here is that many times there are automated votes as well that arent organic so that disrupts the organicness of the engagement. comments tend to rate higher on posts, and votes usually are less... youd have to download a 3rd party plugin to see what the weight value is i think
I think getting quality followers is important, not just random followers. Look for example @wwf has only less than 1000 followers but is already a dolphin
Probably for my post and the comments I make
That depends. You can use sites like steemengine to get random followers.
You can use bid bots to appear in trending.
Or you can simple organically earn your followers.
It depends on what the user is looking for. If simply numbers, or quality interaction
Interaction, quality, engagement, comments. These are some common words being used in the discussion because these are the keys.
I know my followers well. I know their level and I know why most of them follow me. Most of them are newbies who found my educational posts useful and followed me. I am thankful beacuase they are my audience. I receive queries and questions on almost all the posts and I love replying to them to the best of my knowledge.
I think Quantity of followers is not important in Steemit. I prefer a whale who follow me than 10 minnow. If a whale upvote and resteem me I will get more return. Am I right? For Example If you (as a whale) follow me and look my works, It is more important for me:)
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I agree that quality of followers is important. Quality, however, is a subjective thing and may mean different things for different people.
I am no whale. I am a humble minnow, may be small dolphin, striving to make a name and help in my own ways. Whales are people with huge stake in the platform. Mine is small still.
Why is it more important to have one person (a whale) read your amazing posts than 10 people? Only cos you hope to get votes and rewards, or cos you care about the people who follow you?
As @ilyastarar mentioned in other comment, quality is a subjective thing.
I reather have 10 minnow follow our blog that actually care about the topic, than 1 whale that only see the financial gain in voting on a post.
always try to be organic and personable. agreed its not about quantity. its about REAL relationships and being consistent with presence.
I think that in concept, followers are beneficial because they're theoretically people who want to read your posts (and hopefully upvote them). However, because so many people follow large numbers of people, the likelihood of them seeing your post are small. Therefore, I don't think the number of followers is important at all. I would rather have 10 engaged followers who consistently upvote my content (either because they like it or they like me), rather than 10,000 followers who never said hello. The only advantage of having followers with SP who don't vote on you is that if you post using Busy.org, theoretically they give you an upvote that increases in size based on the SP of the followers you have. Engagement is more important than number of followers.
Just my humble opinion. :)
I also agree with this point. When I first started on the platform, I found that I was making much more money than I am now with triple the followers. I think it may be due to the followers that I gained. Many like to comment on my post asking for votes or to visit their page. I'm always on the hunt for good content, and sometimes it pops up here and there. I was kind of hoping that this post wood get more into the specifics of the benefits for each proposed way to gain followers, and what stake they have in the platform.
You gained another follower.
Yeah, the followers who comment just for votes can be annoying. I haven't gotten an overwhelming amount, but they're a pain. Look for the ones that actually come back and comment each time. Those are the ones with which to build relationships.
I would like to dig deeper into how following works and how to gain followers. This discussion has inspired me to research share my findings. Thanks for your feedback.
true. gain quality followers and you will have a better outcome. be as real as possible.
Yea. I didn't get any upvotes from almost of my followers. I think we should also consider reading stories and articles that has a low quantity of upvotes.
The best way to gain some traction early on is to join communities like #steemitbloggers and #qurator etc. There are too many complications in how reward is distributed everyday.
I agree with you. My followers are increasing , but the number of upvotes and comments on my posts are still the same. :(
the quality of your followers are more important then the size
Yes, you are right. But, I have no idea, how to get quality followers :(
write about things you are passionate about and the QUALITY followers will follow :)
In my latest post, I have written a poem about investment in finance markets. It’s a poem with an economic philosophy.
I have received 8 upvotes and 8 cents on that post.
Kindly read the latest post on my blog , and let me know what do I need to do to improve my performance on steemit.
Many thanks.
Ok I’ll check it out
Thanks
Engagement is coming out to be the most important word and factor in our discussion. Busy.org gives some weight to SP of followers but, as you said, it's just one tiny benefit of it. I value comments more than upvotes (although upvotes too are extremely important to me). I think the true engagement happens only in comments.
The comments section is where you can find out if your message is resonating with your audience. Some people will leave upvotes and no comment. That's ok, but they're more likely to come back and upvote again if they comment. Therefore, those are the ones that will bring you the most value long-term. They probably like you and not just your material. That's why it's so important to jump into the comment section (like you do) and comment back.
You're one of the more underrated bloggers here (in my opinion). I think as you continue, you'll keep gaining an audience. The stuff you write about is very applicable in everyday Steeming, no matter which UI is used to post.
Discussion
My points;
Great post, by the way I followed you when you posted some tips on how to succeed on steemit a while ago.
Engage. That's the ketword. Reading other comments will help you consolidate the idea that engagement is where success is.
If I may ask sir, why was your facebook account blocked?
I think followers are a must. And my entire model in 2018 on Steemit is to get as many as I can, engage with them and continue to power up.
Like you said, if you are creating content and no one is engaging and reading it...What's the point?
I hope Im getting my followers through great content and interacting with great people on the platform. I am sending people to Steemit via my social networks and email lists as well. Slowly, they are coming on board :)
And the best way I think.....Create awesome content and engage with others on the platform. It's not the easiest solution but it's organic and it feels right!
If you consider steemit as a social media platform than it is really important to have followers.
If you are here to make money the importance of your followers depends on the way you choose.
If you have a whale friend who regularly upvotes you than it's nice to have followers but their importance is neglectable.
If you would like to build a brand than yes, you definitely have to take care of your followers.
Until I just posted a few photos I had only Schemings. I turned this function off in Shadowbot because I met a lot of garbage in my feed. I had started a weekly contest with rewards in SBD and the organic followers arrived. And they are nice and some of them upvote my other posts too.
Quite agreed. It definitely matters what we want from the followers or, to say it more appropriately, what we want from Steemit. Our motivations decide our actions and our actions result in particular types of people. Nice suggestion their about contests. They do engage people. I have done a few so far.
Great post as always.
I have 684 organic followers at the moment. But, The increase in the number of followers has not increased the viewership, upvotes, comments or rewards on my posts. :(
great work grabbing that organically. again the problem is the platform there is NO easy way to search through the people you are following or people following you so you cant get the reach. I have found old tactics like tagging users or sending them a discord link to allow them to become engaged. its a bit annoying but there iS NO Favorites for following. I am actually working on that right now to resolve in a new UI
If the flatform improves searchability and has options like favorites and notifications from favorites, it would be so much better.
Thanks for your input. I hope steemit Platform gets better, the basic idea of steemit is awesome, it just needs some improvements.
All the best to you.
ill be working on that. itll be out in 4 months is my hope. stay tuned
That will be awesome. Good luck.
You write the correct tutorial articles, very well explain. But you do not interact with your audience @ilyastarar, I do not see your participation in the discussion. It feels like people are sitting in front of an empty wall and talking their opinion.
I think if you follow a person, at least say hello and write comments.
This is my opinion and I always reply to everyone in the comments.
Not to forget that I have read all the comments and voted according to my evaluation. You'll see a hierarchy of some sort. Anyway, I do read comments, vote on them if deserved, and try to reply to as many of them as I can.
I noticed that you appreciated all the comments and for that I respect you! And I understand that you are a busy person. But I'm glad that you understand me that it is more pleasant to have a dialogue and for this I am grateful to you!
I wish to continue my habit of engaging with people who comment on my posts. Sometimes, there are obstacle to that and many of my readers understand my limitations. I don't want to be a busy person. Let's see how I keep up. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Based on this post, or my be the one before it too, your opinion is very right. I have not been actively replying to comments for a week now. This, however, is not a norm.
I the ratio of number comments done by other and replied by me is calculated for my nine months on Steemit, I'll probably be towards the top of the list of all Steemians.
This post from five days ago and this one from six days ago is where you can see comments and their replies.
Again, you are very right. What I loved about this post, though, is people replying to other comments. I didn't want to jump in just to see where it goes. I will, of course, reply to most, if not all, comments. I value your comment and thank you for doing it. :)