Community Over Followers
size matters, but so does your mindset
A smaller, highly engaged community is worth SO much more than a large, unengaged one.
Think about it:
50 Followers = restaurant full of people
250 followers = wedding full of people
500 followers = auditorium full of people
1000 followers = conference room full of people
2500 followers = cruise ship full of people
From that perspective, do you still think your audience is small?
For all the good I find in social media, the biggest negative I see on a regular basis is the drive for superficial success. The apps have lead many of us to believe that more is better—more likes, more follows, more content, more platforms…the list goes on. I’m here to tell you (as I tell all of my clients) that that’s simply not true.
Though let me be clear: there is nothing wrong, of course, with having a large presence and accumulating new followers. In fact, I tell my clients that if their follower number isn’t increasing steadily we have some auditing and strategic revising to do! The problem comes from accumulating followers for superficial clout and other uninformed reasons.
If you have a million followers but only 300 care about you and your work…
The purpose of this post is simply intended to shift your mindset away from hyper-fixating on follower count as primary metric of success.
The truth is a much more refreshing fact: a smaller, highly engaged community is worth so much more than a large, unengaged one.
A smaller community allows for genuine, meaningful connections to thrive. When individual followers feel that their comments, shares and messages are valued, they develop an emotional connection to you.
Why is this important?
Followers will actively continue to engage with you, ensuring they continue to see your posts and have the opportunity to continue to consume your content.
Instagram will position you in front of new, likeminded individuals on their Explore Pages, leading to that steady stream of potential new followers already interested in what you’re sharing, coming into your space at a speed that allows you to maintain your engagement capabilities.
Audience loyalty! As I like to say: when you have a loyal community, you can do just about anything. They will support you, promote you and root for your success (all of which can actually lead to growth in followers).
Time to Self-Audit
This all assumes your audience is filled with the *right* followers. Your content is not meant to be consumed by everyone. You wrote a book that falls under a specific genre, targets certain tropes, aligns with certain readers. Who are they?
I encourage you to scroll through your followers and find the ones that fit your reader personas*, and post for them—even if there’s only one. Post for them.
Once you make this strategic edit, you’ll start to shift into the leader of a growing community filled with readers excited to buy your book and help you succeed.
*I’ll do a full post on reader personas for your author brand at a later date.