SPECIAL SERIES == Are Followers Still a Thing? Let’s Get Real 🎯 <== | BATHROOM Break #66 COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That

Daniel Murray: Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break, that extra 10 minutes. You either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom

Jay Schwedelson: or

Daniel Murray: both,

Jay Schwedelson: but I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is gonna be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schon from the Do This Not That podcast@subjectline.com.

Jay Schwedelson: Each episode in this series, we are gonna go over with. Tips about different marketing topics and if you want to be in the bathroom, fine. Just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. It is Bathroom break time. This is Jay sch Wetson from Do This Not that. I'm here with the marketing millennial Daniel Murray.

Jay Schwedelson: And today we're getting into a hot topic. Do followers even matter anymore? Uh, but before we do that, Danielle, I'm curious about something. Is it too early to start thinking about holiday shopping for you? Are you thinking about stuff for Ari now or do you not do that until like October or something? No, I, I didn't, I haven't thought

Daniel Murray: about it until you just said it, so, no.

Daniel Murray: Uh,

Jay Schwedelson: are you

Daniel Murray: a over preparer like that?

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, on the business side, I think about like, the fact that I always know year end comes really fast. Like after Thanksgiving, everybody turns it off. So if we don't have like, pipeline going in now for Q4, I get upset, but for holiday stuff, I'm like a. I'm the, I'm couldn't be worse.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm the day before, like, oh,

Daniel Murray: well, I mean, if we're talking about business stuff, I think like, like consumer, if you're not doing Black Friday, cyber Monday or haven't already planned for that, like in November, you're already behind. So it's like. But when it comes to shopping for something, I'm, I'm like two weeks, one week before that, sorry.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, you're a slacker. Well, let's get into it. Do followers even matter anymore? There's all the different platforms, there's all the different things. It used to be followers for everything. We had to grow our follower account. Is that the world anymore? It's

Daniel Murray: less the world, but I still think it's important because I think, I think social proof matters on pages.

Daniel Murray: And let me tell you why. Because if you're on Instagram and you're looking at a business as you wanna, and some of your followers. Friends follow that company or that restaurant or that product. Like you're more likely to be like, oh, they think it's cool. I want to buy from that product. Also, if you have a hundred thousand followers as a restaurant versus 10 followers, a restaurant you look like not as legit.

Daniel Murray: But if we're talking about like. It doesn't matter to get more reach on platforms than other platforms. And should it make you feel less important to like post? No, like the algorithms have changed to an interest base, which means that like the algorithms of just feeding, if you have 10 followers, it could.

Daniel Murray: Could circulate in the feed because they just want to put the best content in front of the audience to keep them on on the platform.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction. And so I do think followers matter. So for example, when I'm about to do business with a new company of any kind, I don't go to their website anymore.

Jay Schwedelson: I go to the company page on LinkedIn, and if they have. Seven followers and they never post. It's a really big negative signal. They don't need to have 30,000 followers. But there is some, you know, uh, threshold of it looking legit. And I think that's really important for your business, whether it's your Instagram page, your LinkedIn page, your.

Jay Schwedelson: Listen, you personally, you wanna have over 500 connections on LinkedIn, so you get that 500 plus there's some baseline stuff that you need to do that's really important. But I will tell you from a flipping the script when we talk about circulating stuff, so I recently launched a YouTube channel and for anybody who cares, not that you do, it's at sch swen and we, we are messing around with lots of different formats and different things with, uh, thumbnails.

Jay Schwedelson: And the reality of it is my shorts. Are getting a lot more views in circulation, uh, even though we have barely any subscribers as compared to people that have 20 x 30 x the number of subscribers. That we have, because Daniel's point, it is no longer just about, oh, you have a lot of followers, it's gonna circulate to a lot of people.

Jay Schwedelson: It's, is this thing resonating with people and then the algorithm picks it up and runs with it. So yes, followers are important, but not from a circulation standpoint.

Daniel Murray: Yes, you nailed it. I think we're in an age where you can be any size company and beat any big company by putting out better content, and I like that, that we, you competitive enough.

Daniel Murray: You can compete now on a, on a, a level playing field, especially on Instagram, you, YouTube shorts, TikTok, like, that's why people are doing strategies now. If you see. Companies or creators, they'll create multiple accounts. So they'll have like their main account and they'll have like clips and they'll have this and they'll have that because they know that like they can put like four different clips in the five follow account account is gonna get more reach and they're trying to get as many eyeballs.

Daniel Murray: And it's a great marketing strategy to stay top of mind as a a marketing team. But I do think that like for purchasing decisions, like one thing I also think about is. Many of you are running meta ads. Instagram, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, like when people are running ads, they will click on your profile to see if like you have a good company and if you don't have followers, like they're gonna think like you're not as credible as some account that does have followers.

Daniel Murray: So that is a, a big thing. For that. And then also, like we could talk about this too, like LinkedIn and Instagram have broadcast channels now and like LinkedIn has newsletter, which like if you have followers, like you could, it blasts and you have more traction to get these. The private community group, which you can have as well.

Daniel Murray: So that's a also a plus for followers is these broadcast channels for Instagram and then. Newsletters for LinkedIn.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, and I think in general with the big takeaway, at least from my side, in terms of followers, regardless of platform, you know, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, whatever, is get very focused on what is the minimum number that you need to have to not.

Jay Schwedelson: Embarrass your company, right? So when someone goes to the page like, all right, they're legit. And rather than focus on how do we get a zillion people on this platform, whatever, make sure that you have the baseline across all platforms so you don't have a negative signal out there when people are checking you out, you don't even know about it.

Jay Schwedelson: And. And then you could figure out which one do you wanna double down on and really build it up and blah, blah, blah. But don't allow, don't lose business consumer or business meaning whatever category you're in because you are looking like you don't have anything going on. Your business is not legit 'cause you don't have some baseline numbers.

Jay Schwedelson: So back to what we were originally talking about. What, what were we originally talking about?

Daniel Murray: That's a great question. I have no idea what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast.

Jay Schwedelson: Let me ask you this though. So, um, we just ordered lunch. Daniel and I are actually live in person with each other, staring at each other.

Jay Schwedelson: You went rap? I went salad. Uh, are you never, I don't mean like salad, like I'm throwing you shade, like you should be getting salads or something, but it's the same idea. You could put a wrap in a salad. Do you ever just get the salad?

Daniel Murray: Yeah, of course. I feel like it depends, um, it depends how healthy I want.

Daniel Murray: Like you, you're trying to shame me and have a a Greek salad while I get like a messy wrap in a salad, which is, it's okay. It's, um, but, and it also depends on the place. Like sometimes you just. You

Jay Schwedelson: want a salad? When I eat in front of other people, I don't like making a mess. Like I don't order like ribs or something like that.

Jay Schwedelson: Not that I order ribs a lot, so I like to eat something. I can control what's gonna happen. Obviously you don't care. You'll just have it be a free for all. Like it's food, like, it's a like a food fight. No, that's what knives and forks are for. Well, I don't know. Uh, once again, we've covered a lot of very important information.

Jay Schwedelson: Listen. If you're awesome, uh, throw this up on your story on Instagram. Uh, Daniel is at the marketing millennials, and I'm at Jay Sch Wetson. We will reshare the story. You are cool. Keep it real, Daniel. Come on man. I gotta get back to work. Get out of there. All right. While he's still in there, this is Jay.

Jay Schwedelson: Check out my podcast. Do this, not that for marketers. Each week we share. Really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing, and I hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out back

Daniel Murray: from my bathroom break. This is Daniel. Go follow the Marketing Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series.

Daniel Murray: It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out, and it could be anything from email subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a, a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out later.