The Follower Contract

There’s always an invis­ible fol­low­er con­tract.

Why do people fol­low your brand on social media? 

There’s an invis­ible con­tract between a brand and its social fol­low­ing. This con­tract can be described as a total sum of whatever reas­ons a per­son has for fol­low­ing a spe­cif­ic brand. 

However, many brands fail to con­tinu­ously engage their social- and inbound audi­ences. Instead, they remain focused on acquir­ing out­bound audiences. 

Here we go:

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The Follower Contract

How can brands bet­ter under­stand fol­low­er engage­ment? Think of every fol­low as an invis­ible contract.

Rules of Engagement

Dear brand,

• Yes, I’m now fol­low­ing you. Congratulations… to you.
• You now have my per­mis­sion to share more of the type of con­tent that first attrac­ted me to your brand.
• I will determ­ine how to engage on a case-by-case basis based on my situ­ation, not yours.
• I fol­lowed you based on your past con­tent, so don’t be sur­prised if I lose interest (or unfol­low you) if you change your con­tent strategy.
• If you change your con­tent strategy, I might stop enga­ging instead of unfol­low­ing. This won’t be great for your algorithmic stats, but I don’t care about such things.
• To be clear, my fol­low is not a ‘pay­ment’ for your past accom­plish­ments but an ‘advance pay­ment’ for what I expect from you in the future.
• It would be best if you always pre­sup­posed that I’m inter­ested in myself and my friends first and then in your brand — maybe.
• Until we part ways, I’d appre­ci­ate your clar­ity about my poten­tial involve­ment in your cause. After all, this is all about me, not you.

Best regards,
Your New Follower

Think of every single fol­low­er, fan, and sub­scriber hav­ing such an agree­ment with your brand.

Learn more: The Follower Contract

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Brand Consistency in Social Media

Social media algorithms will typ­ic­ally look for engage­ment levels rel­at­ive to the size of a brand com­munity. Brands must stay con­sist­ent in social media to attract a cohes­ive fol­low­ing with homo­gen­ous expectations.

Brand con­sist­ency in social media = fol­low­ers sub­scribe (today) on faith (tomor­row) through trust (yes­ter­day).

Inconsistency is a krypton­ite for social media engage­ment. It’s a breach of trust to sud­denly change the dir­ec­tion of what’s to come. Trust takes time to estab­lish and is too valu­able to ignore. 

Long-term incon­sist­ency will also res­ult in ghost followers. 

Ghost fol­low­ers will severely dam­age your brand’s algorithmic momentum through their inher­ent lack of engage­ment and author­ity. And less algorithmic momentum means less social media impact for your brand.

Examples of Failed Follower Contracts

When it comes to respect­ing the Follower Contract in social media, let’s take a look at some com­mon mistakes:

Example A: A brand quickly increases its Facebook audi­ence, focus­ing on paid ads for free giveaways and sweepstakes. This strategy attracts a crit­ic­al mass of people expect­ing free stuff.

The res­ult? When the brand sud­denly starts ask­ing these fol­low­ers to spend their money, their fol­low­ers lash out.

Example B: A brand focuses on grow­ing its reach on social media plat­forms, alloc­at­ing its entire budget to acquir­ing new fol­low­ers.

The res­ult? When all these fol­low­ers dis­cov­er that the brand has alloc­ated exactly 0% budget to exist­ing fans, they’ll ignore the brand.

Example C: A brand decides to apply a vari­ety of digit­al cam­paigns where each ini­ti­at­ive attracts dif­fer­ent types of fol­low­ers. The brand “suc­ceeds” in build­ing a com­munity of people all expect­ing dif­fer­ent things.

The res­ult? When the brand asks their com­munity for spe­cif­ic actions applic­able to a small frac­tion of their fol­low­ing — crickets.

How To Honour the Follower Contract

So, how can a brand steer clear of breach­ing its fol­low­er contracts?

The Narcissistic Principle

“People want to be loved; fail­ing that admired; fail­ing that feared; fail­ing that hated and des­pised. They want to evoke some sort of sen­ti­ment. The soul shud­ders before obli­vi­on and seeks con­nec­tion at any price.”
— Hjalmar Söderberg (1869−1941), Swedish author

When we share on social media, we share for a reas­on. And that reas­on typ­ic­ally has some­thing to do with… ourselves:

It’s the nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple behind why we share on social media.

The nar­ciss­ist­ic prin­ciple = when we share or engage on social media, we mainly share aspects of ourselves — because that’s what we care about most. ¹Silfwer, J. (2012, July 16). The Narcissistic Principle. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​n​a​r​c​i​s​s​i​s​t​i​c​-​p​r​i​n​c​i​p​le/

If you can get social media to work for you, great.
Make the most of it. 

However, we should all be mind­ful not to let the “online pres­sure cook­er” get the bet­ter of us.

“A status update with no likes (or a clev­er tweet without retweets) becomes the equi­val­ent of a joke met with silence. It must be rethought and rewrit­ten. And so we don’t show our true selves online, but a mask designed to con­form to the opin­ions of those around us.”
— Neil Strauss, Wall Street Journal

Learn more: The Narcissistic Principle

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Social Media Mechanics

• How Social Media Algorithms Rule Our Lives
• The Silent Switch
• Why Subscriber Counts Matter Less
• Why Social Media Algorithms Are Basic
• Dark Social: The Online Interaction We Can’t See

Social Media Psychology

• Social Media Naturals
• The Narcissistic Principle
• The Selfie Generation
• Emotional Maturity and Social Media
• Attention Spans in the Social Media Age

Social Media Management

• Social Media Must Be Managed
• The Follower Contract
• A Community Manager’s Job Description
• No Brand Community for You
• Critical Mass: How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need?

Social Media Issues

• The Social Media Complaint Department
• The List of Social Media Issues
• How Ghost Followers Destroy Your Social Accounts
• Social Media Myths in PR
• Facebook Zero: Your First Fix Was Free

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