Do You Know Who Your Social Followers Truly Are?

Dave Thomas

February 23, 2017

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With millions and millions of people worldwide perusing and using social media at any given second, some may call into question just who their true followers are.

Even in the small business world, knowing which followers on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn pages etc. would certainly be beneficial. If you have lots of fake followers, such numbers are doing nothing to improve your social standing.

With that in mind, how best to go about finding out who is following you?

In some instances, you may even be followed by individuals and/or groups or associations that would in fact prove embarrassing to your brand.

So, do you truly know who your social followers are?

Start Searching and Learning

So that you are better able to understand and in fact monitor those following you on social media, keep these tips in mind:

Public searches – For those running a small business (or even individuals just concerned about their personal social pages), it isn’t as hard as one might think to figure out information about their followers. For instance, you could spend time researching free public records. Doing so allows you to get a better feel for those following you on your social sites, notably whether or not these are the types of individuals you want in your social networking life. If you run a small business that caters to families, having individuals and/or sites following you that promote gambling, marijuana usage etc. is probably not what you are looking for. In researching the most recently available free public records, you will be able to expunge those who are not a good fit for your social needs;
Building a following – Before you can get to a sizable number of followers on one or more of your social networking feeds, you have some work to do yourself. First, make sure you are sending out posts, tweets etc. that are of value to the public. If you run a small real estate business, you’d want to post items related to the home market in the area of the country where you reside. These items can include current housing prices, trends in recent months and forecasts for the upcoming months etc. Infographics continue to be popular with many people, so sending out those related to your industry would certainly be beneficial. Lastly, work on being a regular engager with your social following. Yes, some followers won’t bring much to the table of benefit to you, but others certainly will. When you take the time to cross-promote one another’s valuable social posts, it is a win-win for both involved parties.

What to Do with Fake Followers

Weed out the phonies – Finally, if you have a Twitter business or personal account (you may very well have both), you likely over time have seen your follower numbers fluctuate rather dramatically. Take note that Twitter routinely goes in and removes suspended and fake accounts. In doing so, your follower count will bounce around. To better avoid this issue; knowing who is following you certainly gives you a leg-up on the problem. Although you likely can’t stay on top of fake accounts 24/7, take an hour or so a week and go through your follower list. In the event you have thousands and thousands of followers, yes, it will take you some more time. The goal is to make sure quality people and organizations etc. are your followers, not spam-bots and those with bad intentions towards you.

Knowing who your social followers truly are should be important to you whether you run a small business or just use social sites for fun.

By using free public record searches and being an involved social media user, you can follow your way to more positive social experiences.