AND YOUR FOLLOWER COUNT?

Anywhere you look, you’ll see an emphasis on social media followers. If you apply to a television casting, you’ll see a field for “number of social media followers.” Look on the cover of magazines or in feature articles and you might see “5 million social media followers” or ‘social media sensation.” E-mail a possible advertiser for your website and they’ll likely inquire about your social media following. Apply for a sponsorship with a sports nutrition company, and they’ll ask for your social media follower count. It’s not news that society places high value on social media followers, but I feel the need to remind people that these numbers are fake. The majority of social media celebrities and super bloggers have purchased robots/people they don’t know as followers and actually have super low engagement. I’m almost ashamed to have social media with all of the “like inflation” I see.

Shouldn’t engagement, meaning likes or comments, matter more than followers? I have 447 Instagram followers, and on average, 40 people like my posts. That’s an 8.9% engagement rate. Bradley Martyn, a social media fitness celebrity, has 1.7 million followers with an average of 45,000 likes per non-video post. That’s an engagement rate of 2.6%. Obviously, Martyn has more eyes on his posts and makes money by promoting other brands but technically, I have more engagement on some of my posts. Let’s look at Shape Magazine versus social media sensation Paige Hathaway.

MEDIA VS. SOCIAL MEDIA

Shape magazine has 455,000 followers compared to Hathaway’s 3.7 million followers. This is speculation, but I’d have to guess that more people know about Shape magazine than Hathaway in America, at least. In fact, I’d muster up a guess that Hathaway either has or would accept an offer to be featured in Shape. That’s because Shape is a major media publication, with legitimate journalists who have been writing for several years and went to school for journalism. Oh and Hathaway’s engagement rate on her latest Instagram post: less than 1%. The other side of the coin is that I’d absolutely love to interview Hathaway one day, as I’d like to speak with her about her rise to fame and how she thinks of creating new content. She’s an inspiration to hundreds of thousands of people to better themselves through physical activity. What’s not to like?

What baffles me is how there are businesses that hire athletes/Instagram celebrities to promote their product based on a follower count that isn’t real. Then magazines feature that person in their publication, citing that fake number. If I had to choose between being tagged in a post with someone who has 2 million followers, which will likely garner me a lot of followers, or have a writer with 250 followers regularly contribute content to my website because they want a platform to share their ideas and advice on editing articles, which would I choose? I’d take the second option, because their content will inspire more people than I can reach, even it’s only a few. That writer’s family, friends, and followers will read his article and maybe someone else will want to contribute content to my site. Will I get a huge follower bump from that person’s article? Who knows? But I do know that at the end of the day, the message matters more than the follower count.

THE BIG (SOCIAL) PICTURE

I think it’s important to regularly post to and analyze social media activity. I just don’t think it’s the end all be all. In fact, people (not businesses) are smartening up in the fitness industry at least, realizing that some of these men/women photoshop their photos to appear more muscular/lean. On the other hand, I just spoke with a guy that has more than 1 million Instagram followers. He said gets more traction from a social media post that a magazine photo shoot. I found that interesting, but I know this guy won’t turn down magazine photo shoots. What an intriguing conundrum, having so many professional magazine photos that it’s not a big deal anymore to do these shoots. For many of these social media fitness celebrities, the end game is securing virtual coaching clients, charging people hundreds or thousands of dollars for their “expertise” on how to “transform their bodies.” I’ve seen too many “transformation specialists” and “nutrition experts” with zero real credentials posting their “client’s” progress pictures. The photo above is one of the few transformation pictures that is real, not altered at all by photoshop/filters, and was accomplished all on my own.

The moral of the story is that companies seeking spokespeople, ambassadors, business partners or employees should not weigh follower count as a legitimate qualification. The person’s overall mission, reliability to the “average joe” and content strategy should play a factor in considering them as a possible colleague, as that’s what’s best in the long term. I’d just like my audience to know that with me, what you see is what you get: I never photoshop photos, if I use a filter on selfies I’ll announce it, and all of my followers are real, and they enjoy my content.