Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the podcast.
And today I want to talk about followers, especially I, as you may already have seen in the title to this episode, I want to talk about losing followers.
And when I say how to lose followers, it might seem like I'm trying to warn you about what not to do. Like I'm being ironical somehow. I'm being sarcastic. I'm telling you by saying how to lose followers. What I want you to think is that you shouldn't lose followers. But I'm actually being serious and sincere. I really am going to tell you how to lose followers.
Because believe it or not, sometimes... that is a good thing. We all create in social media and we are given to understand that having a lot of followers or having a huge platform is a good thing. And that's not entirely incorrect. But while a lot of us create content and talk and write, etc. online, thinking that we are giving people something, that we are bringing change in people's lives, what we remain unaware of is the fact that our followers also change us. And this happens more and more as time passes.
So let me explain to you what I mean by that first. What I mean is that your name is Raju and you start a YouTube channel. You start putting out videos about what you think is good with the world, what you believe in, what you enjoy, et cetera. You talk about your passions and your interests. And you convey information and ideas about the things that you think are important.
And then time passes and you begin to get an audience which is interested in the kind of thing that you're talking about. Some more time passes and you reach a wall. You hit a wall where the number of people who are likely to be interested in the kind of thing that you're talking about is limited. And therefore, you kind of got into where you can be. If you're talking about your interests and not some generic topic that is trending, then you will eventually hit a wall of some sort unless you diversify.
So in order to change things, in order to make sure that your audience, your rate of growth does not plateau, you diversify. You start talking about other things. You start talking about a thing that happened once and got you a lot of views. So you come to the conclusion that if I talk about this more... then more people will come and watch and it works. So you keep doing that. You keep diversifying, you keep changing, you keep making new things, you keep getting more followers.
With time, you eventually get to a point where you are no longer talking about the thing that you wanted to talk about when you started your channel. You're no longer talking about the thing that you are passionate about, and you're now talking about things that people want to hear from you. You got followers because that is what you aimed for. You got more followers than you needed. And that is why you can no longer break free from the cycle that requires you to continuously feed that follower machine.
Not all your followers are the same follower. They're not all good for you. Some of your followers are actually good for you. They want to follow you for the reasons that you want to be followed. But some others will follow you because they want you to do what they want. And that's not necessarily something hard to understand. That is how the online ecosystem works. That is how the algorithm works.
I recently wrote an essay in which I gave the rather insensitive example of someone's family member dying. Suppose your name is Kaju and a family member dies and you make a video about it and that video gets a lot of traffic. Now, conventional wisdom will have you thinking, hmm, this is what people like. Maybe I should do more of it. How will you do more of it? How will you make more videos about the death of your family member without looking cheap, without looking like a sellout, without looking like someone who's fleecing the algorithm for all it's worth by making money using a personal tragedy? You can't. Unless you're shameless. In which case, congratulations!
And the weirdest thing about all this is that these days followers don't even matter that much. Followers, subscribers, whatever you want to call them on social media, they don't really matter much. There are channels with millions of subscribers who get 10 people watching when they live stream. There are channels with small subscriber bases, which are much more loyal and much more regularly viewing their content. There are Instagram accounts with millions of followers. And you'll find that the only people who comment on their posts are those 10 people who followed them since the beginning or worse bots.
These days when you log on to your social media feed, the thing that you see is what the algorithm has decided you should see. It is not based on who you follow, who you subscribe to, etc. The algorithm is now feeding you what it thinks you will watch. And it is right in many cases. You do end up enjoying the things that your algorithm suggests to you. But whatever happened to the follow button?
We have already talked about how the death of the follower is something that is being increasingly talked about, but we don't often talk about why it might be a good idea to lose the followers that are not useful. You do need to lose some of your followers.
For example, look at the email marketing industry. The email marketing industry works this way. You have an email newsletter, people subscribe to it, and then you have an open rate, which means that of all the people who receive the email that you send, how many people actually clicked on the email and opened it? And then there is a click through rate, which means that if there is a link in that email, how many people actually clicked on it?
When an email newsletter owner wants to make money, he or she goes to an advertiser and says, I have an email newsletter. It has this much open rate and this much click through rate. If you put your ad in my emails, a lot of people are likely to click it and buy the thing.
Now, if an email newsletter has 1000 subscribers, but only 10 people open the email and one person clicks it, it's a very bad rate, right? But if an email newsletter has 100 subscribers and 50 of them open the email and 20 of them click the link, then that's a good rate. It's percentage-wise, a better rate that you can put in front of the advertiser who will then say, okay, it's a smaller audience, but at least it's a much more active audience. It's a much more proactive audience that is likely to take action on the ad that is put in front of them.
So from the perspective of the person who owns the email newsletter, it is healthier to lose followers. In fact, many people actually do this. There are several huge email newsletters who send out an email once a year telling people that unless you open this email and click on this link, we are going to remove you from our list because even though you are subscribed, the only thing you're doing is reducing our open rate percentage. So they knowingly, willingly remove people from their subscriber base.
This is unheard of in social media. People don't do this on social media. You will never hear about people deliberately preventing people from subscribing or preventing people from following or removing followers or subscribers because. It's a vanity metric. The only purpose it serves is that someone will come to your profile. They will look at your profile. They'll see how many people follow you. And they'll be like, so many people follow them. They must be doing something good. I should also follow them. And this logic is only, it's a very cosmetic thing. It works on the surface level. It does not really have much utility beyond that.
Because the days of a million people follow you. So a million people will see what you're posting. Those days are gone. The algorithm does not work like that anymore. So what you're faced with is the sad reality that not all your followers are useful or good for you. Having a huge follower base is pretty much meaningless. It has one meaning, which is that it serves as social proof of the fact that you have power and influence. But beyond that, if your goal as a creator is to build a community of people who actually listen to what you have to say, it's kind of counterproductive now.
So how do you go about losing followers? You return to your roots. You remind yourself why you started your channel or your profile and you start focusing on that. You do not pay attention to the people who say, I followed you for XYZ if that XYZ is no longer in keeping with your vision for your channel or your profile. You will lose followers, not by manually removing them or by asking them, but by focusing on the things that you genuinely want to do and things that you started off with the intention of doing things that you want to build a community around. Focus on that, double down on it, triple down on it and lose the people who are not following you for those reasons.
I often get emails from young people who are video editors who have the best of intentions. I'm not complaining against anyone. But they tell me that my videos will perform better if they had more editing, as in if they had more graphics and sound effects and flying text and all that. And I don't often reply to these emails because I want to be kind. But there is a reason I keep my videos plain and simple. There's a reason my videos are just me talking to the camera like this.
Because I do not want an audience who's only watching my videos because... There are flying graphics in them. I want an audience which is okay with watching me just talk. In fact, in case you haven't noticed, this is a podcast. This is a podcast. I end my episodes not by saying thank you for watching, but by saying thank you for listening. Watching is a very passive activity. Listening has multiple meanings. It means more than just hearing what is being said. It means listening. Listening. Paying attention and remembering what has been said.
This is why parents tell children to listen to them, not to watch them, which is not to say that editing is a bad thing, more power to people who edit their videos. But then again, it has to do with the kind of audience they want to build. If they want to build an audience that watches their videos because their videos have been beautifully edited, more power to them. But that is not what I am here for. I am a writer. I want people to watch me because they enjoy my words.
So stay true to why you do what you do. And when you find that a lot of people who are following you are following you for reasons other than that, maybe there is some value in diversifying if all you are interested in is a vanity metric, which you can show to advertisers to get ads on your social media profile. But if your goal is not that, if your long-term plan is not aligned with simply serving ads on your profile and making money that way, then maybe don't go down that road.
Thank you for listening.
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