Do Followers Matter?

I lost 100 followers on Medium.

So after posting for today on my publication, You Have Only 15 Minutes the webpage refreshed and I had my profile show only 26 followers. I thought it was a glitch and I refreshed again. It still showed me 26 followers. Now, this was truly annoying, surprising, and pretty much fucked up!

I had 217 followers less than 20 minutes ago. It should have been a glitch. Yes, it was a glitch and I was able to see it only after opening the homepage on Incognito, where no sugarcoated cookies can fool you.

Anyway, this got me thinking. It got me thinking of the instant feeling I had when I saw 26 followers. What if I lost followers for real? Was that going to hurt me? I felt the loss and I was trying to understand the feeling. It was slight sadness mixed with range. But why? Why did it matter?

We tend to forget that sometimes followers are real people behind the screens (well, most of them, bots excluded). Imagine having all of your followers stand in front of you as a crowd and you staying there on a podium. All those people are listening to you with full focus. Are they?

Not exactly. Let’s be honest. If you had all your followers in front of you the chances care that you wouldn’t have all their attention. If you analyze them, most of them have followed you for the sake of a follow back. The other part never has the chance to see your posts since they follow many people.

So you’re left with a truly small percentage of followers who truly like your content and are exposed to it. And a smaller fraction of that number reads your stories to the end before clapping or leaving a comment.

But the chances are so slim that you wouldn’t be able to notice them. Does this mean that followers online don’t matter? Well, they do, but quality followers are like closer friends. Sometimes you meet a lot of people but you still have only a few friends who want to have a coffee with you, grant you their attention, and listen to your sentences until the end.

Online, in order to attain quality followers there are two ways:

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