I need more followers!

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with my friend regarding what it takes to become a bestselling author. While we argued about various things that make a bestseller, one argument which stood out was having ‘many’ followers. It stood out because I didn’t really understand it.

True, every aspiring writer wishes they had more followers. But how do they do that? I went through various articles and videos telling me how to do it. One of them was ‘Being present on as many social media platforms as you can’ which makes sense because ultimately, your work should get enough exposure. In doing this, one ‘apparently’ important advice I was supposed to follow was this - “Follow as many people as you can”. Now I wondered how this would help me. The answer was right there. “They’ll follow you back.” Cool.

While managing multiple social media accounts is tedious (at least for me), I still did it because, exposure. I followed as many people as I could and it worked. Most of them followed me back. Great! I have followers now. I was really happy that it worked. But my happiness was short-lived. There were quite a few (in fact, most of them) people whose work was not good enough for me and after reading a few of their posts, I unfollowed them. They unfollowed me immediately.

No surprise, there. But I had one question in mind. Did any of those guys who followed me, actually read what I wrote? If they didn’t, it made no sense to simply follow people. What’s the point of having followers who aren’t appreciative of your work? I realized I wasn’t adding any value. I unfollowed everyone whose work I didn’t like and lost many followers in the process.

Yet, I’ve come across a few people who were really appreciative of my work and it makes me happy thinking that I’ve created some value. I’m still trying to get my work as much exposure as it can get and I admit that my followers are increasing at a snail’s pace; at least those who follow me are appreciative of my work and I don’t want to replace this satisfaction with numbers that mean nothing.

I may never become a bestselling author but it doesn’t matter as long as my words can make someone happy. They’re right when they say “Quality matters, not the Quantity.” After all, how many bestselling authors have had millions of followers before they made it to the top?