Of course this post comes in the wake of a huge outing of Bloggers / ‘Grammers who decided to cheat the system. By buying fake followers, enlisting bots to comment and like posts and totally abusing the follow/unfollow method (which in my eyes, is terribly shady) they climbed to the top, wangled holidays to far-flung destinations and worked with dream brands. It’s safe to say that the Blogosphere was fuming and I was one of them. As someone who works bloody hard on both my Blog and Instagram content, by growing organically, it really takes the biscuit when other’s haven’t put in the hard work. I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon too much, which is why I tried to put a positive spin on it…
In the wake of this I really tried to keep positive. And whilst it was simply wonderful that people were getting caught out, we needed to keep those who were genuine and authentically growing their following didn’t get disheartened.
I put a shout out (and various threads) on Twitter and HUNDREDS of you shared with the community your favourite Instagrammers and it was so lovely to see everyone pull together and make something good of the really, piss-poor situation. I created another post on Instagram where other creators that I might not interact with on Twitter could post their top 5 fave accounts, and bloody Nora, did I stumble across a bunch of beautiful feeds because of this. My following count went up and I didn’t care at all because I was supporting so many talented people in the industry. I’m pretty sure a lot of people’s follower counts also went up in that one single day as well.
It made my heart swell knowing that I had created a supportive space in pretty bleak times.
By doing this, it proved that once again that hard work does pay off and no matter what, good will always outweigh bad. I really do hope that those that have cheated their way around the system can take a long hard look at themselves and not only admit to the community what they did was wrong but also to themselves (because it looks like a lot of people are in denial about the whole situ.)
We are community that work tirelessly to prove that we are an industry to be taken seriously, that our voices really do need to be heard. It just taints everyone when people go things about the wrong way. It’s simply not fair on all levels.
For some, the web is their safe place, a place where their voices are heard, a space for those wrapped up in the 9-5 have a creative space to let our brains offload and those who do this for a full time job that rely on creating an authentic following to pay the bills. How unfair is that some could have ruined this for some?
I say, we don’t let it happen.
Ask around your blog friends if they have an affiliate link for that gorgeous pair of shoes you want. Make sure you take the time to send a comment to your favourite blogger on their latest post. Click follow on that gorgeous account – don’t give two shits about your follower to following ratio! Let’s just support each other when times do get low because I know we are a resilient group of people that can make a light of the bad times.
So go on, share some love here with your fave Bloggers, Instagrammers, Tweeters! I wanna know who I’m missing out on.
