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Comment by no_gravity | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is what he says he loses by doing so.

60000 followers.

No word about losing business. Or interesting discussions. Or inspiration. Or meeting likeminded people. Or getting feedback. Or anything.

I think many people come to this conclusion over time. That the number of social media followers is just a number. With little to no real world impact.

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Sometimes you don't know what you have until it's gone. The number of followers alone doesn't matter, the quality of them does. If this was 60,000 connections in the market of his business, he has done himself some egregious harm. I'm a limited data point, but I did notice that when I left Facebook, some people took it personally. Especially the ones I interacted with often. Imagine someone liking all your posts, then you announce that you are leaving the platform. What does it say to them? Do you not want to connect with them anymore? Maybe there is a type of social media black sheep effect as well.

I'd be curious if Instagram is actually a lead gen for a photography business? Or many small businesses. Might be a quick way to maybe see what someone's posted as a portfolio, but i'm pretty sure more people would just go to the artists website to see their actual portfolio work.

I think Twitter even less so.

Facebook might be convenient for people to message them? But even then, I imagine it's mostly over email.

I think there's a pretty big illusion that social media sites add tons of value to a lot of small mom-and-pop businesses. A good website, email, and word of mouth, and in-person contacts, is likely more effective...

My fiancée found most of the photographers we evaluated for our wedding through instagram. I think her friends have done the same.

I'm looking at tattoo artists and judging them on their Instagram photos. There's a few things like this I would check social media for, but mostly I'm looking at reputation (reviews and writeups) rather than photos and other social presence.

There are a lot of ways to generate leads for business, and general social media shares into the ether do not tend to compare favorably to other channels. If social media is annoying or makes you contort your message, you can almost certainly just use another channel that is less annoying to reach people.

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