Why should people follow you? Not why should they buy, but what are they getting by choosing to have you in their social media feed or subscribing to your email list?

Most marketing managers I speak to aren’t short on things to talk about or ‘push out to subscribers.’ You’ve got the webinar to promote, the event to mention, the product update, that new case study, the internal initiative that needs a bit of airtime… and suddenly your content calendar is full.

But it’s full of you.

You get wrapped up in day-to-day marketing and forget the part that actually keeps people around. So the title of this article is a deceptively simple question to bring back into your day-to-day planning.

Followers vs Buyers

Following isn’t buying, and that’s the point here. A follow is a tiny commitment. It’s someone saying they’re interested enough to keep you in their peripheral vision. Buying is a bigger commitment. It’s trust, budget, timing, internal buy-in, risk, reputation, etc etc.

You may have buyers who are also followers, but you’ll also have plenty of followers who are not yet buyers. Then there are followers whose value isn’t in their purchasing power, but in things like advocacy or influence.

And just to be clear: the goal isn’t ‘more followers’ for the sake of it. It’s building an audience of potential buyers and the people who influence them, not chasing vanity metrics or going viral for randoms.

So it gets messy when we treat all followers like buyers. If every post is essentially “buy this / book this / sign up / click here”, you’re constantly asking people to make a buying decision when they’ve only agreed to pay attention.

6 Reasons People Follow (And Stay)

If you want to grow your social media following, you need to be able to articulate what someone gets by sticking around. Here are six strong reasons people tend to follow companies online:

1) You help them understand something. If knowledge and expertise are what you sell, this could be a good way for your brand to attract and engage new followers. How can you translate complexity into clarity? Can you explain a new trend that helps someone sound smarter in their next meeting?

2) You give them ideas they can actually use. Get practical and offer real value with things your followers can implement, like practical prompts, checklists and templates. This is the kind of content that tends to get saved. If followers are saving your content, you’re winning.

3) You make them feel seen. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is name what they’re already experiencing. This requires tapping into the emotions your target audience feels during relevant experiences. If you’re targeting finance teams, perhaps you could post a month-end meme using jargon only they will get.

4) You show how things work behind the scenes. This one is an oldie but a goodie. People love to see the process and learn how the magic happens. Share a little bit about how you do things and why.

5) You’re present (you reply, you engage, you’re human). People follow energy. If your page feels like a ghost town, they’ll scroll past just as they would walk past a billboard on the street. But if it feels like a conversation where they have real access to you, they’re far more likely to stick around.

6) They get exclusive updates from you. This one is especially relevant for buyers! They follow because they want first access to launches, new products and services, limited availability, event announcements, behind-the-scenes updates and offers that don’t go anywhere else.

Let’s Talk Calls To Action

If every post is a hard CTA like ‘buy this, book this, click this, sign up,’ then you’re training your audience to scroll past you unless they’re ready to purchase right now. And a lot of the time, they’re not.

A healthier approach is to plan for different Reaction Goals®. This means different posts are designed to trigger different actions and not everything is a conversion post. This is where the soft CTAs come in. For example, some posts are meant to:

• get saved (useful)
• get shared (relatable or smart)
• get comments (sparks conversation)
• get watched to the end (builds understanding)
• get a DM (feels personal)

Hard CTAs are still important; they’re just not the only tool.

I worked with a client where the marketing manager completely got this. They were happy for me to create engagement posts designed to build loyalty and community, including little in-jokes that only their buyers and followers would understand.

It worked brilliantly. Their followers felt like they were part of something.

Then the CEO would see those posts and message the marketing manager: “What’s the point in this? There’s no link. What product is it promoting?”

And that’s the misunderstanding in a nutshell.

If you approach social media like every post must justify itself with a click, you’ll struggle to build a following and you’ll struggle to get engagement. And if you don’t have engagement, then when you do post the link to the product or service, fewer people see it, fewer people trust it, and fewer people act.

Consider the posts that don’t “sell” as the ones that make selling possible.

A Quick Challenge For You

So I’ll ask the same question again: why should people follow you?

Step 1: Who are you trying to attract?

Be specific. It’s not “everyone” or “business owners.” Try “In-house marketing managers in B2B services” or “HR leaders in global organisations.”

And be inclusive in your thinking. You’re rarely speaking to just one group. Depending on your organisation, you may also be creating content for future employees, partners, the press… and even internal stakeholders.

Step 2: Choose 2–3 follow reasons

From the six above, pick the ones you can genuinely deliver consistently. You can develop this further by identifying the types of post and topics you could add to your rotation that deliver these benefits. Then test them.

Step 3: Use these prompts to draft your sentence

Here are some openers you could use as a starting point:

• “You should follow us because we help you ___ without .”
• “Follow us for ___, ___, and ___.”
• “We share so you can ___.”
• “If you’re trying to ___, we’ll help you ___.”
• “We make ___ feel less overwhelming by ___.”

Now tighten it into one clear sentence.

If you struggle with this at first, that’s a good thing. It means you’re about to up your game 🙌