The Follower Contract

How do you use the 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 find it dif­fi­cult to engage their audi­ence con­tinu­ously. One might argue that pass­ive fol­low­ers, ghost fol­low­ers, would­n’t be the end of the world as long as they con­vert into cus­tom­ers reasonably. 

I mean, at least the num­bers look good. No?

The Case For Consistency in Social Media

There’s a big issue with ghost fol­low­ers, which con­cerns reach.

Through their lack of engage­ment and author­ity, ghost social fol­low­ers will severely dam­age your brand’s algorithmic momentum. And no algorithmic momentum means lower reach for your con­tent.

Social net­work algorithms will typ­ic­ally look for engage­ment rel­at­ive to the exist­ing fol­low­ers. What does this mean for a brand? 

It means that long-term incon­sist­ency will inev­it­ably res­ult in ghost fol­low­ers. And there’s a reas­on why incon­sist­ency is krypton­ite for engage­ment. In every single act of fol­low­ing, there’s a crit­ic­al time displacement:

They fol­low (present) on faith (future) from trust (past).

Inconsistency is a breach of trust. And trust is a valu­able com­mod­ity that takes a long time to estab­lish. Now, if such a “fol­low­er con­tract” were an actu­al doc­u­ment, then what would it say? 

The Follower Contract: A Policy for Growing a Coherent Community

Examples of Failed Follower Contracts

When it comes to respect­ing the fol­low­er con­tract in social media, let’s take a look at some of the most 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 decides to focus on grow­ing its reach on social media plat­forms, so it alloc­ates 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 Honor Your Follower Contract

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

PR Resource: Why We Share on Social Media

Why We Share on Social Media

“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:

• We share to make ourselves look smart.
• We share to fit in and to stand out.
• We share to express individuality.
• We share to belong to our in-group.
• We share to be loved.
• We share to pro­voke reac­tions for atten­tion.
• We share to extract sympathy.
• We share to make us feel bet­ter about ourselves.
• We share to get ahead.
• We share to grow an audience.
• We share to com­pensate for our shortcomings.
• We share to get the respect we need.

If you can get social media to work for you, great. But you should also be mind­ful not to let the pres­sure get the bet­ter of you.

“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: Why We Share on Social Media

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