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Today’s social media isn’t what it was when you first found it.
What was once a place to share your non-choreographed, amateur vacation photos is now a key tool that companies and creators alike use to brand themselves and sell, sell, sell.
At first glance, the #1 way we placed value on the creators is their follower count.
Now, we’re too smart to still do that.
Some of these platforms have been around for 10+ years now. Everyone has loads of followers today (whether they’re real or purchased) — adjusting the metric that can prove a creator’s expertise and strength.
Follower count is old news. The new way to track a creator’s impact lives in the comment section.
Not all comments are equal. Some comments are much less valuable than others. Other comments are about as fake as the hundreds of thousands of bot followers that accounts pay for nowadays. At FIVE, we’ve dug into helping creators build a community that is going to provide quality engagement at scale.
You may see a post with 2,000 comments, but comments such as “awesome post”, “love it”, or “🔥🔥🔥” are surface-level and don’t provide value.
In other words: You can’t learn much from Kim Kardashian’s IG comment section.
Even crazier, many accounts pay others to leave these types of comments on their posts — not just an everyday Mary and Steve, but celebrities and athletes you love, too.
Closed communities that include many of the most famous names in the world exist simply to pay for and to trade comments amongst one another. I was blown away at the famous, instantly recognizable people who would participate in this. It’s real, and it shows why the quality of engagement matters when trying to build a community.
FIVE is pretty much the opposite of those communities. It’s for the people who are getting real, genuine, curious engagement. It’s for experts of their craft who get asked countless questions in their comments section or daily DMs. Our goal is to help creators who are experts in their field connect and engage with people and followers who want to and/or need to learn from them.
Creators can make their accessibility a business, creating a community that needs their thoughts and expertise. Through subscription access, experts can turn their comments sections and DMs into an online business unlike anything possible on other social channels.
If you find that more and more people are reaching out to you with thoughtful comments and questions across your social presence, you may have an opportunity to start a new community and establish a new business around your area of expertise.
Let us help you sow the seeds of your new online community today.