Great letter, Mack. I’m just finishing up an influencer campaign for a client, their first time ever running one and we had to have many of the same conversations you mentioned. Quality over quantity works almost every time!
Yeaaaaaaah, I see this all the time! People who have hundreds of thousands of follower but hardly any engagement, and it always rings the alarm bells. The same dynamic occurs over on LinkedIn too, with automated engagement pods that use real people's accounts to boost likes and engagement. Sadly, it does work, even if the engagement isn't that genuine.
This is such an important reminder Mack! I think the challenge with Substack is engagement from those not in the app who just receive the emails. That’s virtually impossible to gauge or measure I assume
Hege what a great point! You’re right, those users who aren’t on Substack would need to create an account to engage at any level other than an email open. That does make your effective engagement rate harder to track and it’s another reason why it’s so difficult to compare your progress against someone else. Thank you!
This is encouraging and challenging - it's not all about numbers, but it is about engaging thoughtfully and often. That takes time and effort. And I guess it gets harder as you grow. At what point does it become impossible to engage with everyone?
Hi Lisa! Yes, it’s a challenge, because our ability to engage can only scale so far. At some point we all have to decide who we can and cannot make time for.
I totally agree with you....It's amazing how some people can have thousands and thousands of followers, but very little engagement. I rather have a group of 50 people who really care about my work than 50,000 ghosts.
Love the GymShark story Mack. This is exactly why it’s important to stick with what you genuinely enjoy and follow people that actually interest you, rather than chasing after success just because someone has a big following or because you think you can get something from them.
Hi Bette! I agree completely, plus if you are engaging with the people who interest you, you will be willing to spend more time engaging because it doesn’t feel like work, it’s fun to engage with people who interest you!
Follower count is a vanity metric; engagement is an equity metric.....
I’ve seen nano-influencers (1K–10K) drive 10x the conversions of ‘big names’ because their audiences trust them. The 300K-follower fraud you mentioned is sadly common.
Yes! I have a contact on Twitter who has over 300,000 followers. When I tweet a link out to my latest blog post, she will Quote RT me. She almost never sends a single visitor to my blog from her RT. Yet one time I got RTed by a person with 10,000 followers, and that one RT sent 250 visitors to my blog.
Size means almost nothing, it’s all about the engagement. You know this better than most. Happy Tuesday sis, thanks for commenting!
Smaller can be better for audience size. Engagement does matter a ton.
I wonder what your thoughts are now that there are tons of AI comments all over, and the circular comment for me and I'll comment for you social pods. How does one decipher from all of that without manually looking at each and every comment?
Hey Phil! Good point about the increasing use of AI in writing comments. Seeing more and more of that here and elsewhere. Double dashes are a dead giveaway most times.
If at all possible, I want to see if the creator is proactively engaging on other content besides their own. Like you are doing here. To me, that’s the best community-building tool that creators having, engaging off their platform or account and with others in their space. If I see good engagement on their content and also see the creator is engaging with others, that strongly suggests to me that the creator is a community-builder. And I would rather have that than someone who knows how to pad their follower count.
On Substack? I think you can see clues. For instance, I look at number of subs, and also look at engagement per post on their Substack. It’s really tough to generate consistent engagement on your own content without also engaging with others on their content. Most people won’t stick with one-sided engagement. Now this does depend on audience size to a degree. But smaller creators with under say 500 subs who also have good engagement are typically good about engaging with other creators.
Yes. Here’s what I do: Give give give and I tend to attract people who have the same mindset.
I find the other givers and double-down on engaging with them, dump the people who don’t appreciate my engagement. I view my engagement time as an investment that’s limited. So I only invest my time engaging where I can get the best return. If that makes sense.
It’s not how many eyeballs see your stuff but who those eyeballs belong to.
Sage advice, my friend!
That statement is based on something Seth Godin said years ago about building an audience. I just put it in my vernacular.
Great letter, Mack. I’m just finishing up an influencer campaign for a client, their first time ever running one and we had to have many of the same conversations you mentioned. Quality over quantity works almost every time!
I envy everyone who is capable to operate a sewing machine and manages to let it run for longer than 10min without malfunction :)
When talent meets vision marvelous things happen.
Yeaaaaaaah, I see this all the time! People who have hundreds of thousands of follower but hardly any engagement, and it always rings the alarm bells. The same dynamic occurs over on LinkedIn too, with automated engagement pods that use real people's accounts to boost likes and engagement. Sadly, it does work, even if the engagement isn't that genuine.
Still, a really helpful reminder Mack!
Those engagement pods are ridiculous, Neela recently told me about them and it connected so many dots for what I had seen on LinkedIn!
Isn’t it better to engage with people you actually like? Ah well. Have a good Thursday, Scott!
This is such an important reminder Mack! I think the challenge with Substack is engagement from those not in the app who just receive the emails. That’s virtually impossible to gauge or measure I assume
Hege what a great point! You’re right, those users who aren’t on Substack would need to create an account to engage at any level other than an email open. That does make your effective engagement rate harder to track and it’s another reason why it’s so difficult to compare your progress against someone else. Thank you!
This is encouraging and challenging - it's not all about numbers, but it is about engaging thoughtfully and often. That takes time and effort. And I guess it gets harder as you grow. At what point does it become impossible to engage with everyone?
Hi Lisa! Yes, it’s a challenge, because our ability to engage can only scale so far. At some point we all have to decide who we can and cannot make time for.
I totally agree with you....It's amazing how some people can have thousands and thousands of followers, but very little engagement. I rather have a group of 50 people who really care about my work than 50,000 ghosts.
50,000 ghosts lol. Yes that’s exactly it, Marcus!
Love the GymShark story Mack. This is exactly why it’s important to stick with what you genuinely enjoy and follow people that actually interest you, rather than chasing after success just because someone has a big following or because you think you can get something from them.
Hi Bette! I agree completely, plus if you are engaging with the people who interest you, you will be willing to spend more time engaging because it doesn’t feel like work, it’s fun to engage with people who interest you!
It does make it much more enjoyable for sure Mack! Hope you are having a fantastic week. It’s Wednesday already :)
Thanks for showing how engagement is such an important metric, and also where the life and energy flow. Great to read this.
Hah - a topic near and dear to my heart.
Follower count is a vanity metric; engagement is an equity metric.....
I’ve seen nano-influencers (1K–10K) drive 10x the conversions of ‘big names’ because their audiences trust them. The 300K-follower fraud you mentioned is sadly common.
Happy Happy Tuesday bro..........
Yes! I have a contact on Twitter who has over 300,000 followers. When I tweet a link out to my latest blog post, she will Quote RT me. She almost never sends a single visitor to my blog from her RT. Yet one time I got RTed by a person with 10,000 followers, and that one RT sent 250 visitors to my blog.
Size means almost nothing, it’s all about the engagement. You know this better than most. Happy Tuesday sis, thanks for commenting!
I know this guy who had approx 20K followers at the beginning of Jan 2024 on LinkedIn.
He joined a pod and paid for followers. He would get mad engagement obviously.
Well………he published a book in November 2024
He couldn’t even sell 10 copies lol
no problem at all bro.
LOL sounds about right!
Smaller can be better for audience size. Engagement does matter a ton.
I wonder what your thoughts are now that there are tons of AI comments all over, and the circular comment for me and I'll comment for you social pods. How does one decipher from all of that without manually looking at each and every comment?
Hey Phil! Good point about the increasing use of AI in writing comments. Seeing more and more of that here and elsewhere. Double dashes are a dead giveaway most times.
If at all possible, I want to see if the creator is proactively engaging on other content besides their own. Like you are doing here. To me, that’s the best community-building tool that creators having, engaging off their platform or account and with others in their space. If I see good engagement on their content and also see the creator is engaging with others, that strongly suggests to me that the creator is a community-builder. And I would rather have that than someone who knows how to pad their follower count.
I agree with you. Someone who goes out of their way to engage is a great community building tool.
But how does one see who is engaging with others? Is it as simple as just paying attention or is there more to it?
On Substack? I think you can see clues. For instance, I look at number of subs, and also look at engagement per post on their Substack. It’s really tough to generate consistent engagement on your own content without also engaging with others on their content. Most people won’t stick with one-sided engagement. Now this does depend on audience size to a degree. But smaller creators with under say 500 subs who also have good engagement are typically good about engaging with other creators.
Makes a ton of sense.
And solid point about one-sided engagement. I think the urge is to get get get engagement, but you've got to give give give first.
Yes. Here’s what I do: Give give give and I tend to attract people who have the same mindset.
I find the other givers and double-down on engaging with them, dump the people who don’t appreciate my engagement. I view my engagement time as an investment that’s limited. So I only invest my time engaging where I can get the best return. If that makes sense.
That makes a lot of sense to me. Engagement time is definitely limited.