Organic Followers - Your Social Media Currency

One of the greatest philosophers Aristotle has this to say about Friends, "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." Another all time wise man, King Solomon states; "One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." These statements depict friendship as an emotional connection. In fact friends are viewed to have an inseparable connection. I would vouch for my friend and they can sacrifice anything on my acount. However, the advent of Social Media has literally redefined the meaning of friendship. In 1990 a British anthropologist Robin Dunbar in studying the relation between brain size and average social group, suggested that, "....humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships." But we find in Social Media, an average person doubling that number. Some celebrity profiles have friends that run into millions per account. 

What Social Media defines as friends, is not the normal intimate relations that we have as friends in the real world. However the principles of acquiring these friends remain the same. Take note that different Social Media Forums have different names for relations. On Facebook you can have up to 5000 friends but if you opt to have followers or are running a business page, you have unlimited followers. Instagram and Twitter has followers, with an unlimited maximum. In LinkdIn there is a combination of connections - those that you have a two-way relationship with. You can also follow someone, where you will be able to see all their updates by they do not see yours. In order to avoid confusion, for the purpose of this article we will refer all Social Media relations as followers

Organic Followers

Organic depicts originality. It has become a popular word nowadays with the advent of genetically modified foods. In Social Media it is possible to modify followers. Organic followers are those that we attain naturally. It could be that they have always been in our circle of friends, and we connect on Social Media. I believe that there are primary and secondary Organic Followers. The primary Organic Followers are; family members, school mates, workmates, members of professional associations and church mates. In the second group of Organic Followers will be; those from our neighborhood, those in the same profession with us, same industry, share similar beliefs or those we share friends on Social Forums. Although relations may not be intimate, we share something in common and they would not hesitate to either vouch for us or confirm our authenticity. Basically they provide social proof about us. These are the followers who will always like our content, will not hesitate to comment and or share our work. However it does not follow that they can automatically be converted to sales when we market ourselves in Social Media Forums.

Paid/Bulk or Mass Followers

As the name implies, these are the modified followers. There are several ways that one can amass these followers. On Twitter one can follow a large number of people each day and wait for them to follow back. Then you go and unfollow those that did not follow you back, and you could artificially inflate your followers. This is called Aggressive Following Technique. On Facebook and Twitter, you can pay a 3rd party who has thousands of 'zombie' accounts to follow you or like your page. This is called Zombie Account Following. In all honesty, this is a wasted investment because for starters you risk your account being suspended, above that, you will be living a lie. Your brand can never grow when you are being followed by 'zombies'. In Facebook others use Like-Gates to entice followers. In order to qualify for a contests one is required to like the Facebook page running the contest. Large numbers can be attracted, but be rest assured they will pay no attention to your other efforts as their only interest will be the contest. Since only a few are going to win, those that feel unfairly treated have a potential to actually bad mouth your page inflicting damage to your brand. Boosting our presence on Social Media Forums will with no doubt make us visible to potential markets that we have no relations with. But an astute Social Media Strategist, will make sure that we have a healthy social proof from Organic followers before engaging in any paid media.