Never, ever, follow accounts on social media, to gain more followers.

Why is this? For the simple reason that when you follow social media accounts you are not interested in, to gain more followers, how are you going to see the posts from the accounts you are actually interested in viewing? Following more accounts to gain more followers is a bad idea. Is nuts. Is stupid. Is a horrible idea. Is crazy.

Social Media Companies Make Invalid Claims To Make More Money

Why do social media companies make the invalid claim that following more accounts is the best way to gain more followers? Because they can tell their advertisers (including very large corporations with lots of money to spend) they have amazing statistics from those who use their social media platform. All you need to do is look up the major social media companies online (on Wikipedia or a financial reporting website) and you'll see that all the major social medic companies are multi-billion dollar organizations. 

What If You Are Currently Following Thousands Of Accounts?

If you are following hundreds or thousands of accounts, I recommend to start deleting every account you are following which you have no interest in. This way, you will be able to actually see posts from the accounts you are actually interested in.

When Do You Allow Accounts To Follow You? 

It depends if you want random people to follow you. If you only want people you know to follow you, then you set your account to private. If you don't mind if random people follow you, then I recommend to look at every account that follows you and decide if you will block them or not. 

If the account is from a racist, sexist, intolerant, bigoted person and/or who is against Equal Right and Human Rights, block that person. There is Freedom of Speech in many countries but your account is not a country. It is your own account. You can block anyone you want. you review each person's account and if you don't like the type of person trying to follow you, you block them. 

If an account that is following you has followed hundreds or thousands of accounts, such as a realtor, news personality, band, church, a trailer trash account, a local business, attorney, people trying to make money through sex or phone sex, or a private person, and it is easy to tell they are obviously following accounts to gain more followers. When any account like this that is following thousands of accounts, block them. Or if you can tell if its a new account and the business or non-profit is randomly following accounts to gain more followers, block them.

If your account is a business, government entity or non-profit organization, how should you monitor accounts that want to follow you or are following you and you don't know personally? Again, I recommend to look at every one of these accounts. If the account is from a racist, sexist, intolerant, bigoted person and/or who is against Equal Right and Human Rights, block that person. Again, there is Freedom of Speech in many countries but your account is not a country. It is your business, government entity or non-profit organization's account. You can block anyone you want.

More About Personal Accounts

If you are a private person and you never plan to make money from your social media account(s), there is no reason to gain lots of followers who you don't know. This is your account, don't allow anyone who is a mean person or who is following thousands of accounts to follow you. 

If You Are Trying To Make Money From Instagram Do You Still Block Unwanted Accounts?

If you are trying to make money on Instagram, I would recommend that you block all the undesirable accounts which I listed above who are following you because if you have hundreds or thousands of followers who are not interested actually in your business, you will have a false number of followers on your account. 

All businesses should want an accurate number of followers, not an inflated false number of followers. If you have an inflated number of followers on Instagram, then you will wonder why your marketing efforts are not working well. 

How Do You Gain More Followers On Social Media (for fun or to make money)?

There are multiple ways to gain more followers. 

• On your social media home page, you need a very easy to understand description of you or your service or your product. 
• If you have a business website, you must put your website on your social media home page.
• On your social media home page, you need to put the city, state and country of your main office or where you live. No exceptions. Why is this? See the next section below titled, "Why Put The City, State And Country On Your Social Media Home Page?"
• If you want phone calls, then post your phone number, if allowed, on the home page of your account. And always post your business phone number in all your posts. Ask yourself, are you trying to gain more customers and sales or are you trying to turn away business? 
• You need to post daily. This means you need to become a better than average photographer and videographer. And don't find pictures on the internet to post, post your own pictures. If you have a smart phone, you can take thousands of pictures and videos and it doesn't cost you a penny.
• Always post a picture, no matter what you are posting. If you are posting a video, if there is a preview picture, then that is okay. However, if you don't like the preview picture the social media platform provides you, you can always take a screen shot from the video and upload that screen shot, when you post the video.
• Never use acronyms. Why is this? Because we are not using typewriters anymore. There is no absolutely no need to abbreviate things - ever, when using computers. If you want clear communication, you need to reduce using acronyms to zero. No ifs, ands or buts.
• When writing text in a social media post, I am seeing the word "people" written like this: "ppl" (without quotes). When did the word people become an acronym? Writing ppl for the word "people", is very confusing because it is a made up acronym and it makes no sense. 
• When I see bizarre acronyms in the text of social media posts, I have to 1) stop reading, and then 2) try to decipher what the person is saying. At this point, 3) there is a chance I will stop following this account because it is difficult to read what is being posted. 
• If you need to shorten the text in your posts so they fit, you might need to hire a writer so the professional writer can concisely write the message you want people to read. If don't have the money to hire a professional writer because the text in your post is too long, you'll have to use your brain and think about how to shorten and make your post concise, so that people can understand what you are posting about. 
• On Twitter, people will make multiple posts on one topic since there is not enough room on each Twitter post for long drawn out posts. Be sure to number the posts (Example: 1), 2), 3) or 1 of 6), 2 of 6), 3 of 6) and etcetera) so people can find and follow your train of thought on long multiple posts.
• If you are going to write a thread of multiple posts on Twitter, write all your posts first in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Notepad first, and make sure they will fit in each post, then you can posts your entire thread quickly. 
• When you make a graphic, you never, ever, need to abbreviate any word in the graphic because you can change the font size of any word and make all words fit nicely on a graphic.
• On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms, you need to start the post with the country name, that is, from where the post is originating or where the news article is originating from. No exceptions. Always put the name of the country in every post. 
• If you know the city, state and country of the post, then you should always add the city, state and country of the post - always. Why? Because people can't read your mind. You need to always spell out the city, state and country in all your posts. 
• Example: Many people love to abbreviate a state they live in. This is nonsense. Why do people assume that everyone knows the abbreviation of the state where you live.
• CA means California. CA also means Canada. CA also means: Central America, Central Air, Cost Analysis, Cash Advance, Contract Award, Collective Agreement and CA means hundreds of other things.
• You need to have well written text for each picture of video you post. Never, ever assume people understand the picture or video you just posted. You need to explain what you just posted. This means you might need to hire a writer. 
• If you are on Facebook or Twitter, you need to 99% of the time, post websites or links to articles that you are posting about, if the social media platform allows you do to this. 
• Why add a link to a post? Because if you have a business and you are posting a picture from your place of business, you put your business website in the post. Why? Why make the user try to find your website on your social media home page when they could have easily clicked on your website link in the post? 
• People are not only extremely busy but they are easily distracted. A person online has millions of websites or social media accounts they can choose from. 
• When you make it extremely difficult for people to find the link to your business, you have probably just lost a sale. 
• Instagram is an exception to the "put a link in every post" rule. Instagram doesn't allow links in posts.
• If you have a store front, put your address in your social media home page, if it is allowed and put your business address in every single post. Why would you want to make it difficult for people to visit your business? 
• You need to have hash tags for each of your posts. 

Why Put The City, State And Country On Your Social Media Home Page?

• Because there are almost 8 billion people on earth and there are around 196 countries in the world and in addition, people live in territories, islands and remote places on earth. How do you expect every person on earth to automatically deduce where your company is located? 
• I know you think that every should know who you are and where you live. Or if you have a business, you think that all 8 billion people on earth should know your little business as intimately as you do. However, this is wishful thinking and self-delusion. Put your damn city, state and country in your social media profile and all your damn social media posts.
• You might say, "Well, my business is in the USA and I only want customers from the USA, so I don't need to post what city, state or country I'm from." This type of thinking is complete nonsense and makes no sense. 
• If you want customers from the USA, you should post the city, state and country where you are located so that people in the USA know where your damn business is located. This is an extremely important concept. If you don't understand this concept, then please read this bulleted as many times as you need to understand this simple concept.
• By putting your city, state and country in your social media home page, you will also help people from other countries know you are located in the USA and allow them to easily skip over your account if they have no interest in a USA-based business.
• But what about those who live outside the USA and prefer to buy from USA-based businesses? By having your city, state and country in your social media profile and in each post, you'll get business from outside the USA.
• You must spell out your city, state and country on your social media home page. Why? Because people are extremely busy and you want to provide extremely clear communication using social media so people don't skip over your account due to lack of information. 
• For example: CA means California. CA also means Canada. CA also means: Central America, Central Air, Cost Analysis, Cash Advance, Contract Award, Collective Agreement and CA means hundreds of other things. 
• Why would anyone put CA in their social media home page? Do you want to confuse people? Do you want users to block your account because of your inability to understand that people can't read your mind and who don't know where the location of your business is on earth? 
• Why spell out the country? Because there are around 196 countries in the world and people are using something amazing to visit your social media account, it's called the World Wide Web. I hate to break your bubble but not everyone in the world knows by memory, where your business is located. 

In Summary:

I recommend using extremely clear communication and to never use acronyms when using social media: 

• So that people can understand what you are posting about.
• So the people don't block your account because you are not providing enough information.
• People live very busy lives and if you don't provide key information (what you are selling, where you are located and your phone number) then it is easy to skip over your social media account and/or block your account. Who wants to follow business with a trailer trash social media account?
• You follow good social media practices to gain more sales. 

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