Followers Don't Matter Anymore
Followers Don't Matter Anymore
Followers Don't Matter Anymore
Followers Don't Matter Anymore
Followers don’t matter anymore
If there was one content hill I would die on right now, it’s that followers no longer matter.
The legacy influencer/content space worked something like this:
Amass a bunch of followers
Brands calculate a blended CPM rate based on your number of followers
Brands would pay you that rate for a sponsored post and cross their fingers that it performed well
This made sense as the meta because social platforms delivered content based on a follower model.
Your feed would consist of content only from people you followed. The Discover tab, which wasn’t really used, would show you things from people you didn’t follow.
But the dominant user behavior was to scroll the feed.
When Tiktok came along, everything changed.
It started showing people content based on what they were interested in, regardless of who they followed.
And it turned out, people liked this much better.
So all social platforms quickly followed suit.
This meant that anyone, with any amount of followers, could go viral at anytime.In other words, followers no longer mattered.
Now, if you are reading this and wanted to push back, you might say, “Well followers obviously still matter a little bit. Having a lot of followers means your stuff will get amplified further/faster, even if the majority of people that see it aren’t followers”.
And you’d be wrong.
I’m looking at Alex Hormozi’s Tiktok account right now. He has 780K followers on Tiktok and his last 3 videos have 1.2K, 4.6K, 12.1K views.
Followers do not matter.
Okay, so if Kallaway’s right and followers don’t actually matter, where are the opportunities?
The biggest opportunity is the arbitrage between what brand marketers think matters (followers) and what actually performs (reach).
Day after day, brand marketers are getting burned overpaying legacy influencers that bought their following for huge campaigns that don’t perform.
That means there’s daylight to rearchitect the way brand marketers pay for placement. I’m working on something here.
The other opportunity is to start making content, native for a platform, immediately.
If you wanted to be a content creator in the past, starting from zero was a huge disadvantage. The only way to win was to spend years slowly building the foundation.
Now, you don’t need to wait. If your content is high quality, you can reach millions of people overnight.
This also means that legacy influencers with large followings and low engagement are significantly overvalued.
I’d expect lots of these creator-led businesses, funded on the promise of large owned distribution, to go out of businesses.
Ironically not because of poor management, but because of poor distribution.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you enjoyed this post and want more like it, you should subscribe to me weekly creator journal, Blueprint. Each week, I share metrics, ideas, frameworks, and experiments designed to supercharge your thinking about content & brand building in the modern age.
Followers don’t matter anymore
If there was one content hill I would die on right now, it’s that followers no longer matter.
The legacy influencer/content space worked something like this:
Amass a bunch of followers
Brands calculate a blended CPM rate based on your number of followers
Brands would pay you that rate for a sponsored post and cross their fingers that it performed well
This made sense as the meta because social platforms delivered content based on a follower model.
Your feed would consist of content only from people you followed. The Discover tab, which wasn’t really used, would show you things from people you didn’t follow.
But the dominant user behavior was to scroll the feed.
When Tiktok came along, everything changed.
It started showing people content based on what they were interested in, regardless of who they followed.
And it turned out, people liked this much better.
So all social platforms quickly followed suit.
This meant that anyone, with any amount of followers, could go viral at anytime.In other words, followers no longer mattered.
Now, if you are reading this and wanted to push back, you might say, “Well followers obviously still matter a little bit. Having a lot of followers means your stuff will get amplified further/faster, even if the majority of people that see it aren’t followers”.
And you’d be wrong.
I’m looking at Alex Hormozi’s Tiktok account right now. He has 780K followers on Tiktok and his last 3 videos have 1.2K, 4.6K, 12.1K views.
Followers do not matter.
Okay, so if Kallaway’s right and followers don’t actually matter, where are the opportunities?
The biggest opportunity is the arbitrage between what brand marketers think matters (followers) and what actually performs (reach).
Day after day, brand marketers are getting burned overpaying legacy influencers that bought their following for huge campaigns that don’t perform.
That means there’s daylight to rearchitect the way brand marketers pay for placement. I’m working on something here.
The other opportunity is to start making content, native for a platform, immediately.
If you wanted to be a content creator in the past, starting from zero was a huge disadvantage. The only way to win was to spend years slowly building the foundation.
Now, you don’t need to wait. If your content is high quality, you can reach millions of people overnight.
This also means that legacy influencers with large followings and low engagement are significantly overvalued.
I’d expect lots of these creator-led businesses, funded on the promise of large owned distribution, to go out of businesses.
Ironically not because of poor management, but because of poor distribution.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you enjoyed this post and want more like it, you should subscribe to me weekly creator journal, Blueprint. Each week, I share metrics, ideas, frameworks, and experiments designed to supercharge your thinking about content & brand building in the modern age.
Followers don’t matter anymore
If there was one content hill I would die on right now, it’s that followers no longer matter.
The legacy influencer/content space worked something like this:
Amass a bunch of followers
Brands calculate a blended CPM rate based on your number of followers
Brands would pay you that rate for a sponsored post and cross their fingers that it performed well
This made sense as the meta because social platforms delivered content based on a follower model.
Your feed would consist of content only from people you followed. The Discover tab, which wasn’t really used, would show you things from people you didn’t follow.
But the dominant user behavior was to scroll the feed.
When Tiktok came along, everything changed.
It started showing people content based on what they were interested in, regardless of who they followed.
And it turned out, people liked this much better.
So all social platforms quickly followed suit.
This meant that anyone, with any amount of followers, could go viral at anytime.In other words, followers no longer mattered.
Now, if you are reading this and wanted to push back, you might say, “Well followers obviously still matter a little bit. Having a lot of followers means your stuff will get amplified further/faster, even if the majority of people that see it aren’t followers”.
And you’d be wrong.
I’m looking at Alex Hormozi’s Tiktok account right now. He has 780K followers on Tiktok and his last 3 videos have 1.2K, 4.6K, 12.1K views.
Followers do not matter.
Okay, so if Kallaway’s right and followers don’t actually matter, where are the opportunities?
The biggest opportunity is the arbitrage between what brand marketers think matters (followers) and what actually performs (reach).
Day after day, brand marketers are getting burned overpaying legacy influencers that bought their following for huge campaigns that don’t perform.
That means there’s daylight to rearchitect the way brand marketers pay for placement. I’m working on something here.
The other opportunity is to start making content, native for a platform, immediately.
If you wanted to be a content creator in the past, starting from zero was a huge disadvantage. The only way to win was to spend years slowly building the foundation.
Now, you don’t need to wait. If your content is high quality, you can reach millions of people overnight.
This also means that legacy influencers with large followings and low engagement are significantly overvalued.
I’d expect lots of these creator-led businesses, funded on the promise of large owned distribution, to go out of businesses.
Ironically not because of poor management, but because of poor distribution.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you enjoyed this post and want more like it, you should subscribe to me weekly creator journal, Blueprint. Each week, I share metrics, ideas, frameworks, and experiments designed to supercharge your thinking about content & brand building in the modern age.
Followers don’t matter anymore
If there was one content hill I would die on right now, it’s that followers no longer matter.
The legacy influencer/content space worked something like this:
Amass a bunch of followers
Brands calculate a blended CPM rate based on your number of followers
Brands would pay you that rate for a sponsored post and cross their fingers that it performed well
This made sense as the meta because social platforms delivered content based on a follower model.
Your feed would consist of content only from people you followed. The Discover tab, which wasn’t really used, would show you things from people you didn’t follow.
But the dominant user behavior was to scroll the feed.
When Tiktok came along, everything changed.
It started showing people content based on what they were interested in, regardless of who they followed.
And it turned out, people liked this much better.
So all social platforms quickly followed suit.
This meant that anyone, with any amount of followers, could go viral at anytime.In other words, followers no longer mattered.
Now, if you are reading this and wanted to push back, you might say, “Well followers obviously still matter a little bit. Having a lot of followers means your stuff will get amplified further/faster, even if the majority of people that see it aren’t followers”.
And you’d be wrong.
I’m looking at Alex Hormozi’s Tiktok account right now. He has 780K followers on Tiktok and his last 3 videos have 1.2K, 4.6K, 12.1K views.
Followers do not matter.
Okay, so if Kallaway’s right and followers don’t actually matter, where are the opportunities?
The biggest opportunity is the arbitrage between what brand marketers think matters (followers) and what actually performs (reach).
Day after day, brand marketers are getting burned overpaying legacy influencers that bought their following for huge campaigns that don’t perform.
That means there’s daylight to rearchitect the way brand marketers pay for placement. I’m working on something here.
The other opportunity is to start making content, native for a platform, immediately.
If you wanted to be a content creator in the past, starting from zero was a huge disadvantage. The only way to win was to spend years slowly building the foundation.
Now, you don’t need to wait. If your content is high quality, you can reach millions of people overnight.
This also means that legacy influencers with large followings and low engagement are significantly overvalued.
I’d expect lots of these creator-led businesses, funded on the promise of large owned distribution, to go out of businesses.
Ironically not because of poor management, but because of poor distribution.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
If you enjoyed this post and want more like it, you should subscribe to me weekly creator journal, Blueprint. Each week, I share metrics, ideas, frameworks, and experiments designed to supercharge your thinking about content & brand building in the modern age.