THE UNSALTED

It’s no secret Instagram can be the perfect social media platform to boost your business, no matter what the concept is. There are multiple ways to gain followers and create traffic to your account, but the one I find anything but appealing is the follow/unfollow-strategy. Using this strategy means you’ll follow every other instagram page you encounter (favourably those with less “followers” than “following”), so they’ll notice your profile: a great number of accounts will actually follow you back in return. But here’s the catch: you haven’t taken a genuine interest in their page, so after waiting approximately two or three days you’ll automatically unfollow them, regardless of the result. You’re basically tricking people into thinking you liked their content, only to dispose of them shortly after. That sentence sounded way too dramatic, but you get the picture. I mean, did someone say… dick move?

I understand there are only so many ways you can gain exposure, but this particular game isn’t one I’d advice you to play. There are other, more sincere, methods to reach your goals. Besides: it’s very obvious when someone is using this tactic, and since it mostly pisses me off, I’ll refuse to ever follow you, even if you have a nice content. Unless it’s so superb I can’t ignore it. The funny thing is even the “greater” accounts sometimes succumb to this strategy (I won’t call names, you know who you are. Consider me disappointed. As Unella would say: “Shame. Shame. Shame.”), but I applaud those who don’t and follow you simply because they like what they see (@Nanoukofficial, you da real MVP). There’s no greater way to expand your business than by being true to yourself and others, even if that sounds like it came straight out of a fortune cookie at your local Chinese restaurant.

Follow/unfollow is annoying, deceiving and dishonest. It might get you what you want in a quick time period, but at what cost? Think about it. Would you appreciate it if it were the other way around? And what’s the type of person/brand you’d like to present? You will hit a target, but your audience isn’t genuine. You aren’t genuine. It might look cool, but it’s damaging to your brand, yourself, and other accounts. Which gets me to my final point: perhaps the most important thing to consider is your impact on others. Your follow/unfollow method can and will affect startups and (often beginning) bloggers in a negative way. Growing your social media interaction is tough, and most of us have to work our butts off to build an audience. Having 20x more followers, despite lazy or unprofessional content, will discourage others. I’ve been one of those dispirited people. Some days I still am. I try my hardest to write quality content. It kills me to see a “popular” account with poor, careless writing and uninspired posts. It can be incredibly frustrating to stumble upon an account with thousands of followers, despite the fact they’re not even capable of writing two decent sentences*. It makes me question myself, and my possibility to succeed in what I do. Why not throw in the towel and call it quits? Why work for quality when mediocracy can be ten times as successful? Why. even. bother.

There are so many downsides to the follow/unfollow trend, so stop supporting it and find another way. Because at the end of the day, you’re not doing anyone a favor by using this strategy, let alone yourself.

*It’s all about effort: It’s ok to make mistakes. Hell, I still make ‘m. It happens. The key factor however is whether or not you tried your hardest to create good content. Kudos to you for giving it your all.