Why I Bought Followers, and Why I'm Trying To Get Rid of Them Now

In the fall of 2019 I was feeling in a bit of a rut professionally. I had moved to a new country, on a new continent, with a different language, and very different daily responsibilities. I still had my marketing job from back home, and I still had this website and my Instagram page for Riri's Discoveries.

I knew that while I was living in Sweden, I would have a little more time on my hands to work on my online personal training business. In reality, I actually found myself struggling to juggle all of my responsibilities while also trying to experience and explore my new home. 

So one day I though to myself, people trust people with followers. If I can just get myself enough followers, spreading my message will be easier. I'll finally be able to reach the people I want to reach. 

So I shopped around and found a few websites that could deliver a few hundred followers here, a few hundred followers there. It was a rush to sign on to my Instagram after that and see all of the followers rolling in. Finally I would have the numbers that would make me legitimate in the eyes of passing Instagram-ers. 

But similar to The Mask above, it was all fake. And I knew that, but for a little while I was okay with it. For a little while even I was convinced of it, despite knowing that I had paid for inactive and ghost users to follow me.

This new year I have put a greater emphasis on honesty in my life. I work with kids right now and I am always telling them that it is better to be honest, even if you think you might get in trouble. 

So I've decided to use an Instagram cleaner service to remove all of the inactive and ghost users who follow my account. 

Knowing what I know about social media from the marketing work that I do, successful social media is about engagement, not just followers. If I am going to be putting myself out there and sharing my fitness journey with people on Instagram, I want those people to want to engage. After going through the cleaning process I could be left with 1000, 100, maybe even just 10 people, but if those people are actually seeing the posts and the stories, and they feel comfortable to engage with me and what I put out there, then I feel like I am actually staying true to my purpose.

I am really focused on using my social media, website, and now YouTube - for good. When I became a personal trainer I knew that I had something special to give to people. I know that it won't be helpful or useful to absolutely everyone, but that's okay.

So if you're one of the ones that are left after I purge the users who are inactive, or who follow but don't engage, then thank-you. I hope that moving forward I can put out the content that you want to see and that you find helpful.

Don't forget to do something good for your body today, friends. See you in the next one :)

x. Riley

p.s. I put out my first YouTube video this week to go with my blog post on habits. You can check it out below :)