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Why “Follow for Follow” is a Bad Idea

Be more strategic

David Andrew Wiebe
4 min readJun 21, 2021
Why “Follow for Follow” is a Bad Idea
Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

Everybody, their dog, and even the fleas on the back of their dogs want a bigger social media following.

Which is fine. We all know that we can do so much more as creatives and creators on the back of a larger following — we can send traffic to our websites, grow our email lists, get more sales for our eBooks, develop a long-term relationship with our audiences, and more.

But of all the tactics people employ to grow their followings — from posting daily to paying for fake followers — the all-time worst idea to grow your following is categorically, “follow for follow.”

Follow for Follow is a Specific Tool for a Specific Situation

For the uninitiated, follow for follow means following someone on social media with the (unexpressed) expectation that they’re going to follow you back.

Now, please understand what I’m saying. Most tactics and tools, outside of complete black hat, “this might almost be kind of illegal and might even violate the terms and conditions of the social network,” all is fair in the game of social media — even follow for follow.

But recognize that follow for follow is a specific tool for a specific situation. Even the best philosophies…

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David Andrew Wiebe
David Andrew Wiebe

Written by David Andrew Wiebe

Empowering independent artists to share their passion, build devoted fan bases, and turn creativity into income.

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