Random Follows Don’t Bring Brand Awareness, Just Brand Annoyance

Here’s the reason why interaction is so important to me on social networks: random follows.

I’ve had that happening more and more on Google+ lately. This has been a major problem on Twitter already, but it still makes me wonder… I know I don’t say anything of importance nor am I someone in the public spotlight, so why do certain people follow me?

More often than not, someone’s following me as a way to get me to be aware of their product/brand/service/etc. The problem with that is that instead of making me think “oh… that’s interesting”, it annoys me instead. It looks like a form of unsolicited advertising to me. If we’ve had a prior interaction, then it makes more sense to me. It would seem that we had a mutual back-and-forth where we enjoyed the conversation we had. Unfortunately, this never seems to be the case.

Now, I know there’s nothing I can do about this as it’s just the way of public social networks, but that doesn’t change the fact I’ll still find it as nuisance. A nuisance I guess I’ll just have to deal with.

(The other half this problem are services that offer “GET A BAZILLION FOLLOWERS!” that just randomly start following people with no criteria. If you want brand awareness, don’t use services like this. Instead, interact. It’ll go a long way.)