Pied Piper of Hamelin and his rats
Today we’re thinking about followers. Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter. There are online companies who guarantee you tens of thousands of followers. Our concern is those followers are actually follow-bots or worse sweatshops filled with drudges at computers. I’m sure many are completely legitimate, but the scale seems daunting on such a short timeframe. Our Kickstarter timeframe ends March 31st, so we feel the crunch. But we really want quality followers, people who grok what we’re doing and care enough to follow along. The Pied Piper did it with a magic flute and we all remember the disastrous consequences.
In social media the golden ratio is nine to one (9:1). You must produce nine (or more) items of compelling content for every one request for help. In short, you must front-load your value. You must work HARD giving people something GOOD so they will trust you enough to FOLLOW. There is no magic flute. But without followers there may be no future value. A conundrum.
We are setting out to bring some significant value to the world. People who already know and trust us, know what we’re capable of, and are really compelled by what we’re doing have already jumped on board. With them (many dozens of them) they’ve brought along almost $5,000 in support. The next question is – how to expand this trust?
As we keep playing on the flute, let us know what you think we should be doing next in the comments.
(Incidently, if you’ve ever wondered what exactly “pied” really means, read through this multicolored thread.)
