When you want to grow your following on sites like Twitter, being part of writer lifts can quickly boost your numbers. But, are they really worth the effort? In my experience, not really. Then again, it all really depends on your end goals in social media.
After all, having thousands and thousands of followers might be the reason you’re on social media to begin with. In fact, a lot of kids make quite a bit of money by being a “social influencer.”
Maybe I’m just too old to really care, but I’m not one to stress about those kinds of numbers.
7 Reasons I Avoid Writer Lifts
Keep in mind, these are reasons that pertain to me, as a creator. You may not care about any of these reasons. But, there is a bit of logic behind why I don’t do these kinds of online events.
It’s not because of the fact that I’m just a bit on the anti-social meter. It’s more to do with how I want to grow myself, my blogs, and the YouTube channels as a brand.
1. They Are Often Not Your Target Audience
In most cases, people who jump into writer lifts, follow-for-follows, and sub-for-subs are more interested in the social number over the content. This means it’s highly unlikely these accounts will actually care about what you create.
People who follow you simply because you followed them are less likely to click links, read posts, watch videos, or otherwise consume your content.
In other words, they are not the people I’m trying to target and engage. The people who genuinely follow my social profiles because they are interested in what’s next are the ones I’m trying to target.
If I can’t build a following based on merit, then that’s on me. At which point, I work to improve what I create.
2. I’m Not Really Interested in A Lot of These Accounts
The vast majority of people doing writer lifts are accounts I really don’t want to follow. That’s because they don’t offer anything that is engaging for me.
This is because I actually visit each person’s account and see what kind of stuff they put out on the Internet.
And that’s fine…not everyone is going to be your target audience. You can’t please 100% of the people 100% of the time.
As a writer and blogger, I am well aware that not everyone likes what I publish. And I don’t need the ego stroke of having tens of thousands of people follow a Twitter account they have no interest in reading.
3. Little to No Interaction
Out of the few people I’ve had follow my account on Twitter thanks to writer lifts, very few ever interact with me. In fact, I can count them on one hand.
That defeats the purpose of social media, really…to be “social.”
And I’ve tried to incorporate others into conversations and such. There is just not enough engagement from most of those who followed me because of the hashtag.
4. Follow Only to Unfollow
Periodically, I do a purge of my following list. I compare who I am following to those who are followed back. If I see that someone from these writer lifts unfollowed me, I unfollow them.
A lot of people will follow or subscribe to a social account in the hopes you’ll reciprocate. Afterward, they clean up their lists and remove your account from the people they follow.
This is actually quite a common practice. Most people won’t bother to purge their lists, which means it’s often safe to do something like follow-for-follow to inflate count numbers.
But, I’m kind of funny like that.
If you don’t provide value to me or if what you post is not all that interesting to my audience, I’m not going to keep you in my following list.
5. No Real Impact On My Content
So writer lifts or self-promotion threads are intended to help spread interest regarding your content. Sharing your books, blogs, YouTube channels, and more gets it in front of more people.
However, I have yet to see a serious impact because of these social threads.
No one comments, shares, mentions, or suggests they have consumed anything of mine from the writer lifts. And, I surely don’t have a massive influx of traffic.
In fact, the traffic numbers all stay relatively the same.
6. I Don’t Care About Social Clout
One of the most common comments I see on Twitter is how someone is close to a certain number goal of followers. To be honest, I don’t even know how many followers I have.
People are so wrapped up in the numbers game on social media that they are blind to quality.
I’ve seen videos of Tik Tokers have a meltdown on camera because someone else had more followers. How is this a life priority?
Then you have “influencers” who try to get a free pass at life in exchange for mentions. The entitlement is strong with some of these kids nowadays.
7. I’m Generally Not Very Good at Promoting Myself
And lastly, I’m relatively bad at promoting myself anyway. In fact, some of my fans put in more effort than I do when it comes to highlighting blog posts or new videos.
Though a lot of the time, it’s because I’m too busy to really put much thought into the process.
And, I also suffer from a bit of impostor syndrome still. This means I really don’t think my stuff is all that grand in the first place.
It’s All Personal Preference
In the grand scheme of things, participating in writer lifts or self-promotional threads is more of a personal preference. If you genuinely get something out of the experience and enjoy these, who am I to say you’re doing it wrong?
I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who live for these kinds of things. After all, you can potentially meet a lot of interesting people.
For me, though, it’s just not something I can really get into doing.
I’ve never had the best of luck in these kinds of promotions, whether they’re on Twitter or Twitch. And instead of stressing out over the numbers, I prefer to work on creating better content.
I want people to follow or subscribe to me because they think I offer something of value to their lives.
Now, I get how some people want as many followers as possible in the hopes of landing a sponsorship. A lot of brands use social clout as a gauge for how much they’re worth.
But, it’s just not for me.
I Simply Prefer Organic Growth to Writer Lifts
There’s really nothing inherently wrong with writer lifts. They can open all kinds of potential and benefits. At least they seem to do so for some people.
In the meantime, I’ll side on doing what I can to organically grow my social presence. I don’t need numbers to feel like I’m a success or that I am someone of value.
Because the people I interact with the most already know I am.