The follow to follower ratio

Social media advice says , “You want much higher followers than people you follow.”

Think about the opposite, what if you had no followers and followed a million people? What would that mean?

It would mean you would never come to understand the thoughts or works of any particular person you follow because with that many people being followed seeing more than a couple of posts from the same person is unlikely.

People follow you on social media because the work you do is interesting. They want to see a pattern, be inspired, learn something, or work together with you. The reason the follow to follower ratio naturally skews towards more followers than people being followed is because there aren’t an overabundance of people putting in effort AND documenting it in the world for others to see and learn from.

Everyone has aspirational identities that they would like to build on, following others doing the work you aspire to is the first step. Doing so allows you to see the patterns in the work, to understand where you would like to head. Most stop at this step, however, the goal is to get to where you have people who follow you, and to do that you have to eventually get to doing your own work. The more you do, the more your ratio starts to shift as you become one of the “few” worth following.