I see social posts in which the authors thank their followers for getting them to a certain follower count, and I receive Instagram messages promising me that for just a little money I can get tens of thousands of followers.
I definitely ignore the latter messages, and personally I ignore the former messages also.
Because follower counts don’t matter.
Just because Bredemarket has X followers doesn’t necessarily mean that Bredemarket will make lots of money. I could use viral tactics to attract countless followers that would never, ever purchase Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services.
In fact, I could live just fine with 25 followers…provided that they’re the RIGHT followers.
But while this is normally true, I’ve run into a couple of instances in which follower counts DO matter. Because you need a certain heft to get the large companies to pay attention to you.
My invisible WhatsApp channel
A little over a month ago I started a WhatsApp channel devoted to identity, biometrics, ID documents and geolocation. Why?
I began mulling over whether I should create my own WhatsApp channel, but initially decided against it….
I’d just follow the existing WhatsApp channels on identity, biometrics, and related topics.
But I couldn’t find any.
From https://bredemarket.com/2023/11/29/announcing-a-whatsapp-channel-for-identity-biometrics-id-documents-and-geolocation/.
So I started my own to fill the void, then waited for similarly interested WhatsApp users to find my channel via search.
But there was a catch.
Although it isn’t explicitly documented anywhere, it appears that using the WhatsApp channel search only returns channels that already have thousands of subscribers. When I searched for a WhatsApp channel for “identity,” WhatsApp returned nothing.
As a result, I found myself promoting my WhatsApp channel everywhere EXCEPT WhatsApp.
Including this blog post. If you want to subscribe to my WhatsApp channel “Identity, Biometrics, ID Documents, and Geolocation,” click on the link https://www.whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaARoeEKbYMQE9OVDG3a.
My non-linkable YouTube channel
I also have a YouTube channel, and you CAN find that. But it also suffers from a lack of subscribers.
On Monday I received an onimous-sounding email from YouTube with the title “Your channel has lost access to advanced features.”
The opening paragraph read as follows:
To help keep our community safe, we limit some of our more powerful features to channels who have built and maintained a positive channel history or who have provided verification.
Ah, verification. I vaguely remember having to provide Alphabet with my ID a few months ago.
The message continued:
As of now, your channel doesn’t have sufficient channel history. It has lost access to advanced features. This may have happened because your channel did not follow our Community Guidelines.
While I initially panicked when I read that last sentence, I then un-panicked when I realized that this may NOT have happened because of a Community Guidelines violation. The more likely culprit was an insufficient channel history.
Your channel history data is used to determine whether your content and activity has consistently followed YouTube’s Community Guidelines.
Your channel history is a record of your:
Channel activity (like video uploads, live streams, and audience engagement.)
Personal data related to your Google Account.
When and how the account was created.
How often it’s used.
Your method of connecting to Google services.
Most active channels already have sufficient channel history to unlock advanced features without any further action required.
From https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891124#channelhistory.
Frankly, my YouTube channel doesn’t have a ton of audience engagement. Now I could just start uploading a whole bunch of videos…but then I risk violating the Community Guidelines by getting a “spamming” accusation.
As it turns out, there’s only one “advanced feature” that I really miss: the ability to “Add external links to your video descriptions.” And I’m trying to tone down my use of external links because Alphabet (on YouTube) and Meta (on Instagram) discourage their use anyway.
But for now the previously-added external links to videos such as this one are now disabled.
Perhaps if I post long-form videos more frequently and get thousands of subscribers, I will get enough “audience engagement” to restore the advanced features.
So if you want to increase my YouTube follower count, go to https://www.youtube.com/@johnbredehoftatbredemarket2225 and click the Subscribe button.
So let’s get followers
But the question remains: how do I get thousands of people to subscribe to my WhatsApp channel and my YouTube channel?
Perhaps I can adapt a really cool TikTok challenge to WhatsApp and YouTube.
You can create the exciting Savage Challenge on TikTok and ask your audience to participate in it. In this challenge, people will have to learn and follow the choreography of Megan Thee Stallions’ highly loved song, “Savage.”
From https://www.engagebay.com/blog/tiktok-challenges/
I’m not familiar with that particular song, so I’d better check it out.
Well…
I’m not sure if this fits into my “sage” persona.
And if I go to the local car wash with a baseball bat and start knocking out car windows, I may end up in jail. And that usually does NOT increase the follower count. Because as Johnny Somali persumably found out in Japan, you can’t film videos when you’re in jail.
Bredemarket 