It Doesn’t Matter How Many Followers I Have

Duncan Riach
2 min readDec 30, 2018

I have recently started sharing more on Instagram. I have noticed that when I include tags, people follow me. Soon, however, those people unfollow me again. I imagine that it’s because I didn’t follow them back. This seems like a game of “I’ll follow you if you’ll follow me.” I used to play this game a long time ago on Twitter.

The objective of this game seems to be to simply maximize followers at all costs. There’s no interest in the quality of the followers, no concern about whether they will enjoy or utilize your content. The only criterion is that they played the game of follow-and-follow-back.

I want the kind of follower who reads one of my articles and feels so much resonance with my content that they automatically follow me. They follow me simply because they want to know when I have more content available. I want to build a relationship with my followers.

I could have one-hundred-thousand followers who don’t care about what I’m publishing, or I could have one follower who reads and utilizes at least some of what I write. I prefer the latter. I don’t care about being able to brag about how many followers I have. I want to trust that someone, somewhere enjoyed, or benefitted from, my effort.

Even if I had no official followers, I have myself. I read and re-read most of my articles dozens of times. I integrate in the process of refining them. I learn from them. They inspire me. But even if I was not able to read them over again and again, I would benefit simply from the production of them, from the practice at distilling and expressing the topics that I choose to focus on.

I’m not here to impress you or to make you think I’m special or important; I’m not special nor important. I am here to entertain you, to inspire you, to provide a different perspective, and to support you in letting go of all of those limiting beliefs, that unnecessary straight-jacket. My intention is to support you. If you follow me, then I hope you enjoy the ride. Sometimes I will console you and at other times I’ll kick your ass (metaphorically), but it will hopefully always be in your best interest.

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Duncan Riach

Top Writer. Self-Revealing. Mental Health. Success. Fulfillment. Flow. MS Engineering/Technology. PhD Psychology. duncanriach.com