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
The Follower Contract
Many brands must rethink their approach to having followers, fans, and subscribers. Having a brand community is your privilege, not theirs. How can you honour their engagement?
Think of every single follower, fan, and subscriber having this agreement with your brand:
Dear Brand,
Best regards,
Your New Follower
Read also: The Follower Contract
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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?
Please support my blog by sharing it with other PR- and communication professionals. For questions or PR support, contact me via jerry@spinfactory.com.
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:
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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