This is for all those who share my frustration: brands need to stop focusing on Instagram following alone!
I’m genuinely pissed off at too many small, beautiful brands focusing on the wrong things and missing out on amazing opportunities to grow. They need to do better, and not just for their own sake but for us as well!
Yes, yes, I know, Instagram is still one of the most popular platforms on social media, and it is a great way to market one’s products. But it’s not a bloody research tool! And it certainly can’t compete with TikTok.
In addition, it’s a very volatile and unstable platform:
- it seems to be on a mission to make promoting anything as difficult as possible: each “update” makes the user experience worse
- It’s a platform that causes needless misery to a shit-ton of people
- and it’s a platform that misleads both, the consumers and the brands.
Why am I talking about this? Because I’m sick and tired of being told ‘no’ by people who haven’t got the slightest idea what they’re talking about. People who are working for my favourite brands.
Basically, years ago I had an amazing outfit challenge to launch that I had put a lot of effort into. I approached brands and the only metric they cared about was my Instagram following. This meant that they MISSED everything of actual relevance:
- they missed the fact that I’m a professional in Online Marketing with 10+ years of experience
- they passed by a strategic, inspiring collaboration opportunity.
- And if they pass me by, how many other amazing, talented content creators are they passing by?
This idiocy needs to bloody well stop! Prepare yourselves for strong language ahead. I might get some hate for this but BRING IT ON!
Why Brands Should STOP Focusing On Instagram Following Alone
We’ve talked about this so many times, but I’ll say it again: Instagram is a FAKE platform. It’s full of fake content, fake followers, fake accounts, fake, fake, fake. And that is the core reason why I am urging brands to stop focusing on Instagram following alone in their decision-making.
Fine, if Instagram is your chosen marketing platform, that’s all good. Just FOCUS ON THE RIGHT THINGS, PLEASE. And by that I definitely do NOT mean follower numbers. Because let’s face the ultimate fact, the smaller the number, the more genuine the following.
Of course, there’s no benefit for a brand to collaborate with someone who has 200 followers on Instagram, that’s not what I’m saying. But how many brands check
- whether the content on the accounts with huge following is in correlation with their brand values
- if the 50 000 followers actually are human? Because bots don’t buy shit!
Buying followers couldn’t be any easier these days, but will those fake followers do anything for the brand? OF COURSE NOT! Bots don’t care about or interact with the brand. So, why focus on such a useless number?
And if brands really wish to pee in their own cereals, they can keep on ignoring the biggest shift in social media we’ve ever seen! ⇓
1. TikTokification of social media
TikTok is the undisputed King of social media! No wonder the American platforms are wetting themselves with fear: their greed prevents them from ever being able to come up with something so ingenious!
And now it’s already too late for them: the TikTokification has changed the whole fabric of social media. Most importantly, this inspiring app has centered the users:
- follower counts don’t matter, the actual content does
- even the smallest creator/brand can go viral with just one video
- popular content is shared globally, not rigorously targeted to a small fraction of consumers
- the algorithm bloody works!
The final point was the last drop for me: Instagram is nowadays just a way to keep in touch with people I know. Which is exactly what happened to Facebook! TikTok, on the other hand, is where I consume content. A lot of it!
And the simplest reason for loving it so much is the fact that I can teach the algorithm exactly what I want to see. And then it does exactly that. No more force-feeding paid and sponsored content that is not relevant to me in the slightest, no more useless scrolling.
Brands who overlook the social media users, like Meta does, have lost the game a long time ago. So, for brands to keep to clinging onto these obsolete platforms is a waste of money and effort. They should stop focusing on Instagram following alone.
2. Instagram “updates” are alienating users = your customers
Then there’s this other thing: no matter how many followers you have, and how real they are, Instagram limits your visibility on the app more and more all the time. Every single “update” that they’ve rolled out since 2020 has only made the user experience worse.
This is an interesting direction strategy-wise… Because it’s literally making Instagram the platform that none of us should focus on!
In its hunger to serve huge corporations that bring money to the platform itself, it ignored the users and all the millions of brands that aren’t on the platform for the sole purpose of gifting money to Meta. I think it’s fair to say that this shows rather egregious incompetence from Meta’s direction.
3. People online are shifting towards original content creators
If the plight of greed-driven social media platforms wasn’t bad enough already, the actual consumers aren’t making their lives any easier. TikTok didn’t just democratise content creation, it also brought us back to basics:
People don’t want influencers telling them what they should buy anymore. People don’t trust someone who’s been paid to say something to actually, genuinely mean it. And rightly so!
Instead, consumers are looking for genuine, original opinions from content creators, which means that blogs are coming back! (If they ever left.) This benefits both the content creators and consumers.
Just compare running your own website to having an account on Instagram. Which one requires actual effort and skills? I mean, C’MON! And which one do you, as a content creator or a brand, actuall own?
Building a following on your website is so much more valuable than on Instagram or any other social media platform. It’s finally time to stop focusing on Instagram following!
And when we add a newsletter to that, we can seriously forget about Instagram follower counts altogether. The numbers never change: people are 40 times more likely to buy from your newsletter than your Instagram advert.
I rest my case.
If you’re considering launching a newsletter, start here:
How Can Brands Do Better?
In the olden days there were marketing departments that spent days, perhaps months researching potential advertising channels and collaboration opportunities. But nowadays too many seem to think that no research is needed. One number will suffice: Instagram following… Idiots!
I shutter to think how much money brands have wasted on collaborating with inexperienced “influencers” only because their follower count on Instagram was deemed big enough.
And how many brands have needed to do some ramifications when an “influencer” has effed up a campaign completely. This often leads to harm to the brand and its reputation. So, it’s time to stop focusing on Instagram following alone!
Instead, when looking for partners to help your brand with marketing efforts online, focus on the following criteria:
Is There Talent and Engagement?
When will this lesson be learned; Instagram follower counts aren’t realistic marketing data. Instead, there is other data that gives a brand much better insight on whether an “influencer” (somebody ban this word, please!) is a potential advertiser or not.
The focus should definitely be more on the quality of the content and the engagement rate, rather than a follower count! One can buy followers, but they cannot buy engagement.
Yes, there are ‘engagement bots’, but y’all know what that means, right? Heart eye emojis as comments and that’s that. Not exactly engaging, eh? And the bots sure as hell aren’t buying anything from you.
In the meanwhile there are people, who create the most amazing content but only have 1K followers. The difference is, these are REAL followers. And those followers are invested in the creator and their life journey. This means they trust the creator!
Actual people that exist, breathe air and interact with the content creator. THESE are the followers that brands should be focusing on. Because these are the followers that have the potential of becoming customers.
Brands should stop focusing on Instagram following and awarding fraudulent “influencers”. They will hurt your brand and dem bots ain’t ever gonna buy shit from y’all.
Brands need to learn to recognize mutually beneficial collaborations
Figuring out who’s a genuinely good collaboration for brands doesn’t take much time or effort. Yes, do check the follower count, but don’t focus on that. Instead, check their engagement rate and go a step further:
- Do they have a website? Check it out.
- How does it look? Is it professional, how much work has been put on it?
- Is this person able to produce more than a photo with a filter?
- Do they have a newsletter?
- How’s their domain authority?
If you’re someone hiring social media “influencers” and just found yourself going “umm, what’s ‘domain authority’?” then sweetie, I’m sorry to say, you shouldn’t be doing the job you’re doing.
You’re apparently not capable of deciphering actual professional content creators from those who just like to take photos for da Gram.
Finding the talented, quality content creators among all the others is not hard. It takes more research than just checking one number on an Insta bio, but not so much research that it should be ignored.
And here’s me being an absolute bitch: despite the headline hinting so, I’m not going to do your work for you. I’m not going to give you guidelines how to recognize a good collaboration opportunity. Because if you struggle in this regard, you don’t deserve the collaboration opportunities anyway :)
Final Thoughts
This is so frustrating, especially in these times when all information is right in front of us. But at the end of the day, there really is just one loser: the brands who fail to live up to the standards of the online world.
If a brand is willing to risk their reputation and hire an unprofessional “influencer” due to their big Insta following, they may as well have a collboration they deserve. Even if it may blow up on their faces.
Perhaps things are changing for the better as we speak. I hope so and I’m aware that change always takes time. TikTokification certainly helps! Brands should stop choosing the “easy” road to success and stop focusing on instagram following alone because nothing good ever comes easy.
Or what do you think? Am I barking at the wrong tree here? Is Instagram follower count really that important? ♥
Follow me on Instagram and use #styleoutlandish to showcase your style! I’m always on the lookout for outfit inspiration. Get to know me better by listening to my podcast, Random Rambles. If you wish to work with me, check out my services here!
