Does Follower Count Even Matter? | Bathroom Break #66 🚽

0:01Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and SubjectLine.com. Each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. It is bathroom break time.

0:35This is Jay Schwettlson from Do This, Not That. I'm here with the marketing millennial, Daniel Murray. And today we're getting into a hot topic. Do followers even matter anymore? But before we do that, Daniel, I'm curious about something. Is it too early to start thinking about holiday shopping for you? Are you thinking about stuff for Ari now? Or do you not do that until like October or something? no i i didn't haven't thought about it until you just said it so no are you a over preparer like that uh on the business side i think about like the fact i always know year end comes really fast like after thanksgiving everybody turns it off so if we don't have like pipeline going in now for q4 i get upset but for holiday stuff i'm like a i'm the i couldn't be worse i'm the day before well i mean if we're talking about business stuff i think like like consumer if you're not doing black friday summer money or happened already planned for that like in november you're already behind so it's like the trade-off but when i'm coming to shopping for something i'm i'm like two weeks one week before that sorry well you're a slacker well let's get into it do followers even matter anymore there's all the different platforms there's all different things it used to be followers were everything we had to grow our follower count is that the world anymore it's less the world, but I still think it's important because I think social proof matters on pages.

2:02And let me tell you why. Because if you're on Instagram and you're looking at a business that you want to, and some of your followers or friends follow that company or that restaurant or that product, you're more than likely to be like, oh, they think it's cool. I want to buy from that product also if you have a hundred thousand followers as a restaurant versus 10 followers a restaurant you look like not as legit but if we're talking about like does it matter to get more reach on platforms and other platforms and should it make you feel less important to like post no like the algorithms have changed to an interest base which means that like the algorithms of just feeding, if you have 10 followers, it could circulate in the feed because they just want to put the best content in front of the audience to keep them on the platform.

2:54Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction. And so I do think followers matter. So for example, when I'm about to do business with a new company of any kind, I don't go to their website anymore. I go to the company page on LinkedIn. And if they have like seven followers and they never post, it's a really big negative signal. They don't need to have 30 ,000 followers, but there is some, you know, a threshold of it looking legit. And I think that's really important for your business, whether it's your Instagram page, your LinkedIn page. Listen, you personally, you want to have over 500 connections on LinkedIn.

3:28So you get that 500 plus. There's some baseline stuff that you need to do. That's really important. But I will tell you from a flipping the script, when we talk about circulating stuff. So I recently launched a YouTube channel. and for anybody who cares not that you do it's at schwettleson and we are messing around lots of different formats and different things with uh thumbnails and the reality of it is my shorts are getting a lot more views in circulation even though we have barely any subscribers as compared to people that have 20x 30x the number of subscribers that we have because daniel's point it is no longer just about oh you have a lot of followers it's going to circulate a lot of people It's, is this thing resonating with people?

4:11And then the algorithm picks it up and runs with it. So yes, followers are important, but not from a circulation standpoint. Yes, you nailed it. I think we're in an age where you can be any size company and beat any big company by putting out better content. And I like that, that you're competitive enough. You can compete now on a level playing field, especially on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, TikTok. like that's why people are doing strategies now if you see companies or creators they'll create multiple accounts so they'll have like their main account and they'll have like clips and they'll have this and they'll have that because they know that like they can put like four different clips and the five follow account account is going to get more reach and they're trying to get as many eyeballs and it's a great marketing strategy to stay top of mind as a a marketing But I do think that like for purchasing decisions, like one thing I also think about is many of you are running meta ads, Instagram, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads.

5:14Like when people are running ads, they will click on your profile to see if like you have a good company. And if you don't have followers, like they're going to think like you're not as credible as some account that does have followers. So that is a big thing for that. And then also like we could talk about this too, like LinkedIn and Instagram have broadcast channels now. And like LinkedIn has newsletter, which like if you have followers, like you could, it lasts and you have more traction to get these, the private community group, which you can have as well. So that's also a plus for followers is these broadcast channels for Instagram and then newsletters for LinkedIn.

5:54Yeah. And I think in general, the big takeaway, at least from my side, in terms of followers, regardless of platform, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, whatever, is get very focused on what is the minimum number that you need to have to not embarrass your company. right so when someone goes to the page like all right they're legit and rather than focus on how do we get a zillion people on this platform whatever make sure that you have the baseline across all platforms so you don't have a negative signal out there when people are checking you out you don't even know about it and then you could figure out which one do you want to double down on and really build it up and blah blah blah but don't allow don't lose business consumer or business meaning whatever category you're in because you are looking like you don't have anything going on or your business is not legit because you don't have some baseline numbers.

6:41So back to what we were originally talking about. What were we originally talking about? That's a great question. I have no idea what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. Let me ask you this though. So we just ordered lunch. Daniel and I are actually live in person with each other, staring at each other. You went wrap. I went salad. Are you never, I don't mean like salad, like I'm throwing you shade, like you should be getting salads or something, but it's the same idea you could put a wrap in a salad do you ever just get the salad yeah of course i feel like it depends um depends how healthy i want like you you're trying to shame me and have a greek salad while i get like a messy wrap in a salad which is it's okay it's um but and it also depends on the place like sometimes you just you want a salad when i eat in front of other people i don't like making a mess like i don't order like ribs or something like that and i thought i order ribs a lot i like to eat something i can control what's going to happen obviously you don't care you'll just have it be a free-for-all like it's food like it's like a food fight no that's what knives and forks are for i don't know uh once again we've covered a lot of very important information listen if you're awesome uh throw this up on your story on instagram uh daniel is at the market millennials and i am at jay swettleson we will reshare the story you are cool keep it real Daniel, come on, man.

8:07I got to get back to work. Get out of there. All right. While he's still in there, this is Jay. Check out my podcast, Do This, Not That for marketers. Each week, we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out. Back from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Mark and Millet podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out and it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

8:40Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.