I seem to be in a particularly disagreeing mood this afternoon, which makes this the perfect time to share a post that I wrote a few days ago (but didn't publish yet). Here goes.
We see these kind of posts and comments, begging for followers, pop up all around us lately and I don't think it is a positive thing.
It is an understandable thing though. People who just joined Steemit want to earn and they want to earn big. They will think more followers is key in this. While this is partially true, there is more nuance to this.
The follower for follower method
You have gathered a big amount of followers from all over Steemit. You've begged people to follow you through comments and direct messaging. You've joined every 'Followers train' you could find. Even after gathering 400+ followers, your posts earn under $1 almost every time. This is because, although you have many followers, they aren't particularly interested in the topics you write about. These followers have applied the same tactics as you. In that way, they have gathered a huge amount of followers aswell and in doing so, they are now also following a lot of other people. Your posts get lost in their Home feed, because there are simply too many for them to keep up with and the quality they see there isn't the best, so why should they even check it anymore? They don't upvote your content.
The hard worker and consistent good quality method
You write many posts about the topics that interest you. You enjoy writing these posts and you enjoy the discussions they spark. You don't get new followers very quickly, but the followers you gain are interested in your posts. They follow you for how you write and what you write about. Whenever they see you appear in their feed, they click your post, read your article, comment and upvote your content. You might have started out with less than $1 payout on your first articles, even though they were good quality. However, you see the payout prices rising slowly, but consistently. Your followers grow and the comments on your posts increase. You have loyal followers and are building meaningful relationships.
The nuance in the quantity vs quality in followers is not clear to everyone yet and I think it should be made clearer. I ignore most of the comments that say "I followed you, pls follow back", but I feel I could be doing more. I honestly don't have the energy or patience to reply to each and every one of them though, so when I noticed another one of these 'Follower train' posts, I decided to comment there instead.
"I think this is a bit of short-term thinking. How much are these followers worth if they don't like the topics you write about? They won't comment, they won't upvote. And on the other side, you now follow many people who write about a lot of subjects that you might not care about at all. So now your Home feed is filled with articles you don't find interesting. The people you follow for their content get lost inside this feed, so you risk missing interesting articles and they don't get the upvotes you think they deserve."
I gave my comment a 1% upvote, which is mostly enough to reach the top in these kind of posts. I'm thinking I should try to reply to more of these of posts, because in that way, I will reach more people and I will find the target audience I'm trying to reach.
What do you think? How do you handle those kind of comments?
Closing notes
Why I felt this was the perfect time to share this post? Here are a few reasons why:
Not to mention the private messages I get on Steemit.chat. And guess what! Just today I received a private message on Discord aswell. It's expanding...
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