You Don't Need 10,000 Followers

Originally posted on Linkedin as an article.

I was in pitch meeting about a year ago with a potential client and within minutes they said, “We want 10,000 followers.” They kind of gave me a smirk as if I wouldn’t know how to respond to such a request. I smirked back a little and said, “Has anybody ever asked you to speak in front of 10,000 people? Has anybody asked you to speak in front of 1,000 people?” The answer was no to both, so I then went on to ask, “Well why would that many people follow you?” 

In a lot of markets, followers have become a currency and a status symbol instead of being viewed as real people. If you give a person who is bad at managing money more money to solve their problems, they just end up having more money problems. The understanding of this idea hasn’t fully translated to social media, however a company with no strategy, content, or plan just assumes if they have a lot of followers that will solve their marketing problems.

 A visual practice we do with people in our consulting meetings is to visualize a room of how many people 100 people actually is. If you had 100 people who actually were interested in what you had to say and what you were offering, what would you say to them? Then what if you were able to return to this same room at different times this week and they would be here waiting for you; what would you say to them on the second go around? And how would you plan for it? That is a great place to start the foundation for your marketing strategy and understanding the opportunity social media provides.

The next step is to begin to answer the questions on why those people in that room are willing to listen to you over and over again. Is it your photography? Your face? Your product? Your message? Your passion? You quickly realize it’s a combination of what is unique to you as well as what you are good at. You might even notice some luck involved.

The reality is that 10,000 followers might not be what you need. For some it is, and for some that is easy to obtain. For others it’s a vanity metric to show off but it doesn’t really mean anything. Our ego likes followers, but our true self understands having the opportunity to speak to even just 20 people and that having their attention is a true honor we all take seriously. 

So if you really want to grow your online following, brand equity, and have people be loyal to you and your ideas, move away from vanity and into community. If we can all learn to appreciate the honor it is to have this much attention and opportunity to communicate at this capacity with one another, more growth will take place. If we take it for granted, we end up simply selling to one another. But if we can slow down and see the room, and see the needs, and see each other, and help each other find solutions, then we end up building something much more than just “followers.”