How Many People do YOU Follow? How Many is too Many?
Hey guys! Recently I've been running a contest where my followers can earn free Steem each week by simply following me and being active. More information at the bottom of the post!
What I realised from this is that many people follow a LOT of people, so what's the point? If your feed is just spammed full of random content from everyone that you don't care about, then what's the point of following them?
My Opinion
I feel like that most people follow too many people, I follow around 60 people, of which a lot are inactive and some post once a week or so, so I get a new post every couple hours on average. I'm happy with this, maybe a new post every hour would be ideal so I can scroll a few every few hours I'm on a break. If I wanted more, I'd just look at the trending or hot pages, which is usually spammed with garbage anyway. My newsfeed is the ONLY bit of Steem that isn't full of garbage.
Honestly, I recommend that if you're serious about Steemit, you should clean out your followings list. Or perhaps just check out your feed and unfollow anyone who posts stuff you don't enjoy, or think is useless! This way you will only be looking at the stuff you care about, unless you're following someone for a financial reward (e.g me for a chance to win free Steem).
Impact
I have more than 1,000 followers, of which I understand a lot are bots but if even 10% of them were real people, I should be seeing more than like 5 comments on each of my posts that I don't promote. The fact that I only get comments and upvotes when I promote my post suggests no one really looks at their newsfeeds, most people just go to the Hot or Trending tabs. I feel like this is a real shame and more people should care about the people they follow! So, if you don't like my content unfollow me now, you're doing both of us a big favor in terms of the long term viability of Steemit.
Discussion
What do you think? How many followings is too many? How many do you have and what is your experience? Any feedback is welcome!
Thanks for reading!
Follow me for more informative posts and your chance to win free Steem every week by simply being active! More information here!!
Dont follow too many people as you will be wasting a lot time to view their feeds !
This is a golden post! I see so many try to hustle the follow & unfollow game to get new followers. My ginabot always notifies me about those :D.
People don't realize that it's the quality that matters, as you say. Make sure that your feed have quality content, comment on stuff that you feel passionate about.
So many panic and want to make a lot of money fast and forget about what really matters.
What you gives to the community, you can't just take you have to give. And after a lot of giving you might recieve.
I don't want a lot of followers, I want followers who are engaged in what I do and are truly passionated about what I post. People who support and engage with my posts.
Not people who follow just to get a lot of followers them self.
Wish I could upvote but I'm out of juice so you get a resteem instead :)
Exactly, so many people try to follow for follow, I see it in comments like followed, follow back or something like that. What's the point? What's the point of 10000 disinterested followers? I'd rather just have 1 person who really cares about the stuff I say.
People forget Steemit is about dedication, not a get rich quick scheme!
Thanks for the resteem, I really appreciate it :)
Exactly :) It might work as a get rich fast scheme for some but definetly not for the masses.
I think it depends on who you follow and the type of content you like as far as how many is too many or few. I am following around 80 people right now, but I do unfollow someone if I find I am not interested in their posts after a while. Since I avoid the hot and trending pages, I prefer my feed to be pretty active. I am an avid reader so I don't mind playing catch up on posts occasionally. I do agree with you about supporting the people you follow. I try my best to do so often with upvotes and comments.
Good points! I often find myself reading and it catches up to where I was before so I just look on the trending and hot pages, but it seems to be the same people each time with content I don't enjoy very much.
I also try to reward my followers with upvotes and I run my weekly competition thing!
I started on this platform thinking about growing fast and that was the first thing I did to start following people but after I started making friends in discord a "Family" understood that it is better to make good content and to follow you because they like your post, when I understood that I did not follow anybody else and it has gone much better for me. I always thank my discord colleagues for correcting me in those things and now that you say it is the whole truth, we should not do that to follow others for win followers. Good post brother.
I think it's the first post I write so much in a comment hahaha.
I too started following a lot of people at the start but soon realised that quality > quantity!
I've yet to really make a lot of friends here but with time things will work :)
I encourage you to write more in comments, it's great! I find commenting is very rewarding!
Quiet friend, I'll be passing by here. I hope you make many friends!!
Honestly I think that many people think about growing fast on the start and they are follow everyone . I understand this because it is hard to start here , you don't know what to write because if they are writing they want interaction from someone and finally don't have any interaction from other peoples . I know it from my example that I am very angry when anyone read my posts... and I am walking into meme categories and I see how cat have after 10 minutes 100 upvotes ...
Yeah, starting is hard. I said somewhere else that Steemit is about dedication, my first few hundred posts probably got next to no payout but as I posted more, more people started following. One thing I think that's quite useful are upvote bots. I use them to promote my posts to gain reach!
It is very frustrating when I see low quality content being promoted though, I try to promote my content based on quality. For example I think this post deserves to be seen so I boosted it a lot, whereas the other post I posted today was only boosted with 3 Steem, basically nothing haha
https://steemit.com/memes/@tybodish/dad-memes @cryptoeater look at this example . I am reading steemit from one year but I started creating articles and content right now , and I remember that idea of this portal was good content, that definietly is not good content . But now there is many Junks :/ And now I know when I am opening steemit my eyes will be bleeding...
wow... seeing posts like this make me sad. I try so hard and get so little upvotes LOL
If it makes you feel better, it's probably just the one person with many accounts upvoting himself!
I have about 200 followers and am following 75 people. My feed get a bit less clutter, but I want my account to grow organically and not follow random people without any good content. Sometimes, less means more.
Exactly! I have just over 1000 followers and just over 60 people I follow. I have been tempted to just follow everyone before but I feel like what's the point? Followers is essentially just a meaningless number at that point.
Wow, 60, that's a good number to aim for :) I try to clean my feed so often but for every unfollow I find two accounts i like :)
Yeah, that can be an issue LOL
Honestly, at the start I followed a lot of people with high rep so I can comment early on them to get upvotes on my comments, but I realised it was so much effort for so little reward. I try to view Steemit now as a social place, I'm trying to NOT care about money as much.
I comment spontaneously, because thats the most rewarding, you answer when something speaks to your heart or mind instead of canned comments which usually turn out mediocre.
That's true, I tend to do the same too nowadays. I began on this platform for the wrong reasons, I was hoping to get rich! Now I just use it for a place to chill and relax :)
Define rich, for some people you may already be. For me it means to have basic necessities covered and not to have to worry while chilling and relaxing and that is already possible for you I think, maybe not where you live right now, but I'm sure there is some beautiful place in the world :)
It's always the age old problem mate. People don't want to read...they just want to be read!
Incentivising people to engage is a good plan :-)
Yeah! That's true. However, I do enjoy reading a lot of my comments and other people's posts! Half of being successful on Steemit is reading! :)
so do I, but the mentality many have sadly is 'quick buck', throw as much dross out as possible. This also makes it more difficult for the likes of us to find the good stuff to read!
Anyway, you have a new reader now so its not a bad days work lol :-)
Your words are good!(why we,re following them!)
Nice post.