I see posts almost daily touting "I'VE GOT 400 FOLLOWERS" or "500 FOLLOWERS YIPPEE" but what, is anything does it really mean. I can remember the excitement of my first 100 followers, I almost couldn't believe that that many people were interested in my writing... and then it was 400, then 600... now it's almost 900, but what does it mean?
Not much, I'm afraid. As it turns out 800+ followers doesn't mean the 800+ people are reading your posts. If you want a realistic indicator of how many "followers" you really have, wait a day and check how many people viewed your post. For example, I wrote one of the best chapters of a story I'm doing yesterday and out of 882 followers, I got 27 views. Quite a discrepancy wouldn't you say?
Clearly, I'm not discouraging people from encouraging followers by posting quality content (not begging). It's fun to log on in the morning and see that I've gained 4-5 new followers... but put it in its proper perspective. In terms of how many people actually follow you in any meaningful way... the "Follower" list is deceptive and in my opinion irrelevant.
You are so right.
I just posted my thoughts (and investigation outcam) on this issue, and the automatic "follow bots". I think this starting to become a problem latelly .
Then I found this your post. We are close in our findings
Send me a link... I'd like to see it! I'm worried about another related issue I'm going to write about today!
It is right at the top of my home page. Well , here is the link:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@onealfa/i-got-500-followers-oops-not-really
You make some great points!
Oh... You're just admiring the top of my head!
Agreed, the view count is the only useful metric I can see. Even payout is unreliable because of the HF reward pool effects and bot votes.
Absolutely! Chapters of the same story that were paying $150 a week ago are paying $15.00 now... I can't believe my writing has gone downhill that fast!
100% agreed...
It's still a nice little dopamine hit to see when you've gained a few bots who don't vote 😉
Surprisingly painful when you lose a follower (I've lost 2, I doubt you've had the experience)
🙂
I lose one every once in a while... I don't pay that much attention any more.
After your post, framing it the way you did, I still look, but the relevance is attenuated.
If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
I regard Steemit as a chronicle of my story for my nieces and nephews to peruse when I've moved on...
If I've had a positive influence in their lives; and they want more... Here it is.
The blockchain is forever.
I know the feeling. I never dared to tell anyone the truth about my life (especially my kids) When I grew up being a "bastard" was something to look down at. I also didn't want people to know about childhood sexual abuse. But now I'm old and I wanted someone to know the truth so I wrote it all out as a story and published it here.
Good for you!
I've learned that becoming an adult is letting go of the (self-perceived) shame of your past.
We're all broken in some unique, beautiful way that makes us who we are...
My brother, of the Vidalia onions,
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that one day you're going to have a better past.
Your past starts today, beginning tomorrow.
Well said, My Brother, well said!
There seems to be such a general fixation on accumulating followers, and celebrating milestones, but it just didn't make a lot of sense to me - maybe because I'm still a newbie. So, thanks for the confirmation that I'm not a total idiot about it (ok, so maybe just a partial idiot).
Having said that, when I clicked on your post (thx squirl, for resteeming), it brought a huge smile to my face! I had to do a double-take because my chocolate lab had about the same look on his face a little bit ago. I think he's fed up with me sitting in front of this stupid computer. Time to go enjoy some of the beautiful day outside. Thx for the smile. :)
ps: I guess I really should learn how to do actual emoji's...Nah! Maybe another day.
I use Imgflip meme Generator. It's incredibly easy to use (even a monkey can do it)
I'm happy for you for achieving 883 followers.
You're right what matters is how many are happy with your posts or how many are online when you post something.
Sometimes when you post your article, there are chances of getting 100 views and sometimes just 27.
But we are happy steemers and enjoying our work.
Stay blessed
You're doing a great job @richq11
Well I guess my "followers" are taking the weekend off. Better wait until Monday fro any good stuff! Thanks for your kind words- they help!
Dont worry im on the weekend shift!
LOL... Me too. I think I'm going to do one of my Kid stories today.
Dude you are so right. I remember writing a post at 100 and getting about 7 votes. I thought then who's actually reading my stuff?
I'm sitting around 700 and it's meaningless when you get 60 views.
There are so many here now it's impossible to keep up and I try really hard.
You have to accept a low % of 'followers' are really following your thread.
You just have to keep on trying and hope you resonate with people.
Good post buddy. Read, voted and commented
Amen.. I hit 900 today and usually wind up with 35 views!
I'd say the majority of my followers are garbage accounts. Garbage as in they won't be voting for me again. I see a lot of them have more followers and even more steem power than me but they also are following that many or more. You aren't going to get many votes from a person that follows 1000 other people. Especially with a limit on votes now.
You're right... I'm just trying to ignore it! For some reason 885 followers and 27 views just didn't add up.
This is so true. I am still waiting on quality friends, of which I like to think most of those who follow me are...perhaps I too am deluded in this thinking...but I will not post my best content before it's time.
Best of luck @richq11 !
Thank you... as for quality followers, I may have 50.
was just heading out for work, lol...I think I'm addicted to my feed ~smiles~
this is now coming to my full first 2 weeks...I'm just this old (flips universal peace sign)
I hope you may find me to be your 51st in the near future.
~peace out...in~
Later Brother
Very true observation! It may not mean much in terms of who is actually reading your posts but is certainly a status stamp afterall first thing people notice on a profile is the number of followers they have and in most cases I believe the first thing we think is wow this guy/gal has a good reputation and surely has value to share, me personally I have never thought wonder how many are reall follwers real viewers or real readers
I don't think I've looked at 5 profile pages the whole time I've been on here. I just go by posts... If someone consistently puts out good content- I follow them.
I like your stuff, that's why I'm following! Oh, and you get my 2 cents worth of upvoting as a bonus! Have a great weekend.
You too... I think I'm going to do one of my Kid stories today... And every 2 cents helps! Have 19 back!
so true...
I wonder what level of 'discount' should be applied to all numbers steem, in general?
Good question, I think you would have to do something like ratios... views:followers or $$$: followers or $$$:views... Something like that.
math is hard.
I have noticed, back before HF19 when I was getting hundreds of votes..that only a very tiny percentage of those that voted...actually viewed what they were voting on...WAY less than ten percent.
I know... you can track votes on Steemstats in real time... It's amazing! If all those 1%'ers actually read my stuff, I'd be as popular as Stephen King lol!
I've made some 'test' posts...total nonsense...In fact I got it from the Chomsky Bot ..took about five minutes.
...it was as popular if not more so than posts that I'd spent hours composing.
...very discouraging.. to me.
very ENcouraging to spammers..
I know the feeling! I posted a picture I took just because I thought it was cute and made $40! Twice what I made on posts I worked hours on!
yup...
SO..
I'll continue to make MANY posts per day...
to make the lovely $$$$
.
.
hell I might even name them
Bot Bait
posts
humans can ignore
them
.
or something..
.
but.
..
I'll make a few for actual thinking peeeples..
I always enjoy post that most would deem unpopular topics (because it shows you have the balls to say what you think) and like many previously stated, chin up @richq11 as it is the weekend and many are busy :)
I know... Myself included! Good day for some old Sherlock Holmes movies!
I totally agree, dear friend. It's nice to see the number of followers that we have, but it seems just an illusion... I have more the 800 followers and just about 30, max 50 upvotes on my post, the same number of upvotes that I had in the "300 followers" time. "Don't worry" I say to myself "Stay positive and steem on!" ^_^
That's the right attitude... Just keep doing what you're doing!
Totally right Rich . If they are following they should be reading
Thanks... I agree! I've got 896 now and have no idea who most are... whoever they are, they're not reading my stories!!!
I have yet to post how many folowers just becuse, as you said. it doesnt matter, those are folks just yelling for attention, look at me!!
I post a few contents and not saying I am expecting great returns right now, but i am planning to get a bit more involved in this community and try posting better content. for now its just reading learning and re-steeming articles such as this.
Comments are an important part of the platform... There's a guy on here that makes a fortune just commenting.
Does not play well with others! Haha! You are right. Keeping it real and right sized. Thank you. 🐓🐓
You are right , but here followers are gain to upvote you,so thats why everybody are gaining more followers just to upvote not to read.
Well, in that case, rather than my usual $60+ I made $17.20... If that means anything!
But if u had 100 followers u would made &1
Its sad but you are absolutely right. Started noticing that ever since i hit 100 followers. I support and follow the ones who upvote and comment the most on my post usually.
Me too unfortunately! I have about 50 that I actively interact with.
Those posts lost their charm once these people came along and started farming for followers. It lost all meaning. We used to have to earn a following by, like you said, posting good stuff and hoping people would come along and discover you.
Some would prefer to treat each other like a statistic. I saw one new member working hard(sarcasm, he was spamming) to get followers and now has over 2500. His posts get maybe 10 views and earn pennies.
That's a fine way to make yourself look like a failure.
You got that right!!! I know I'm no William Faulkner, but I work really hard on my stories... It gets depressing to have 800+ "followers" and 27 actual readers. What am I doing this for???
You're doing this because you enjoy it. Same damn reason I'm here. No matter how odd things can be here at times, I just keep plugging away, and so do you. You can never think that they think you're doing poorly. They didn't look, so how would they know!
Point well taken!!!
What you say is completely true, the big factor for knowing whether you've got peoples' attention is not just views, but of course when somebody finally hits that upvote button because that means someone actually took the time to read it and click the button to support you.
What I would say though is, followers can at least be a reasonable indicator of how much reach you have, because if you finally post something people really like the ones who have you on their feed are most likely to see it.
It may be if you have a ton of followers but no upvotes people simply haven't seen any content from you yet that they're genuinely interested in.
As long as I've been here, I sincerely hope you're wrong
lol well don't get me wrong, views and follower do account for something just like on youtube and so on, but it's no guarantee that they've actually looked at it all properly or like it enough. The same goes for when you look at view on your website and unfortunately they all turn out to be bots :(
When such a high percentage of the people following you are also following 10,000 others in the hopes of a follow back, they're never going to upvote you. I was wondering about this same thing myself and started checking into new followers and a high percentage are very new and are following an unwieldy number of people. What must a feed look like with 10,000 inputs? I only follow people whose work I really like. When I open my feed I want every post to either be content I'm interested in or at least content that took effort.
Hence why I'm following you 😊😉
Hang in there!
Thanks Buddy... I went through the list of people I was following and cleared out almost 300! My feed is so much more manageable lol! I sat going WTF is that???
Yeah I cleaned some as well. At first I felt bad but then I realized I'm not doing anyone a favor by following if I'm not ever going to engage with them. It's just false hope.
Aw, I see I made the cut, thank you!
You're one of the good ones... I actually know who you are! It was the ones where I was saying to myself, "Who is this... I have NO idea!"
What's that, 3.5% ? Does this sound about right in terms of marketing/conversion? Here not an expert - perhaps someone does have good insights? Theoretically, the higher the number of followers, the greater the active readership should be exponentially. However, day of week, time of day, other geopolitical events may play a bigger role than we hoped it would.
Whatever the case, you got a few real followers - and these are the ones that are engaged! Happy weekend.
Absolutely correct! I just wonder what the other 825 are doing on my list! I figure I have about 50 people that are actively engaged... maybe 30-40 of which actually communicate.
Thing is, we cannot prevent someone from following. Just prevent us from following them... Maybe it is good to have many, even unengaged peeps that follow, and one of those Headlines/thumbnails may just spark their interest enough to become engaged people...
I guess! I promised myself not to think this weekend... I'm so burned out from living my stories I can hardly see. I'm just posting some fun stuff today & tomorrow and back to the grind Mon.
@richq11 while its fun to see your followers go up, for a long time now I feel like most people are trying to get a following so they result to the old method of following everybody in hopes of a follow back but really this isnt helping anybody.
You're right and I'm worried about the overall effect on the platform. I'm going to do a post today!
Very great point Rich - the number of views per post is far more relevant than the number of followers one might have. Now if all of your followers are viewing your posts, then that is pretty significant. However that's pretty unlikely so I guess we'll have to settle for getting as many upvotes as we can! ;)
I'd settle for 100 out of almost 900! I'm concerned about the effect all of these new "followers" are going to have on the platform. I'm going to do a post about it today! (After I have some fun!)
Awesome idea but make sure you find some time to relax and have fun today too. That way you can write a second post about the wonderful Sunday you just had! ;)
I'm about to to a fun squirrel story! Thanks!!!
Sweet, squirrels are cool and pretty funny. True story - I once made a friend with a baby squirrel until his mom got pissed lol
At one of our cemeteries, we've had them for pets for years... I'm working on "Roland" right now!
I could totally see a squirrel being a great pet and Roland being a cool name for it!
I did a post the other day on the Maldives and you are totally right. As i have over 400 followers you would expect people to least have a look. I received 13 votes and quite a few comments but these comments were from people that were not following me. Makes you wonder
I know, I looked this morning and have 910 followers. I'm lucky to get 35 views and keep getting the "Good story... don't forget to upvote and follow me." I'm starting to flag them. Maybe they'll go away... and I want to see your piece on the maldives- I missed it (never too late for an upvote)
Of course you are right. But, you know, it's like playing for our inner child :) It is clear that at the end in the "point of coincidence of interests" will remain, probably the third part, and maybe even less.