Here’s the deal guys, if you want to be online and be a part of social media, you have to put in the work otherwise you might as well just leave now. So, take a moment and decide what you’re going to do so you don’t waste anyone’s time…especially yours!
It may sound harsh but let me tell you, social media is social. You can’t sign up for baseball expecting to hit a home run while still sitting on the bench. You have to put in the work! You have to train, study the playbook, and do your research by looking at the other teams and seeing who your competition is as well as who you would like to engage with after the game.
Social media isn’t about the numbers because numbers don’t mean anything if there is no engagement. In fact, numbers are a joke if you ask me. Being in social media and working on various accounts, I realize now more than ever how false these follower numbers really are. Of course, numbers are one way to help us understand our reach, but it shouldn’t be our main focus. 1,000 Followers or even a million followers don’t pay the bills. Unless those followers are actively engaging with you your brand, that number means nothing. So do yourself and everyone else a favor and ask yourself:
- Why do you want to be on social media?
- What are you going to post about?
- Is that what your audience would want?
- Who is your audience?
- How often are you really going to post?
- Will you engage with your audience when they leave comments?
- Will you go through your feeds (daily) and engage with people you follow? Key to success right here!
Everyone wants to be a superstar and have millions of followers to help push their message out and get noticed. But it’s just not realistic. Sure you can buy followers to look better, but remember to ask yourself:
- Is this really how I want to get to the top?
- What does this say about my brand?
- If someone looks at my followers and compares it to my lack of engaged followers, how’s that going to look?
Buyers Beware: when a person or company is trying to sell you on growing your followers be wary.
If you are going to go this route, do your research before throwing money at them. I looked up one site that offered this as a service (I won’t name them) with attractive prices for people who are into this and would be willing to purchase. Well, you know me, I like to do my research so I checked out their social following. I mean, they must have a huge following given this is their business right? Plus “everyone” wants this service so that would make sense. Can you guess what their numbers where? When combining their two social networks together, less than 6,000 total followers. Moral of the story, do your research.
Stay tuned for my next post on how TO grow your following without buying followers. For now, here are a couple resources to help get you started on ways to step up your Instagram game:
Please share any resources you have in the comments as I know there are so many out there.