OnlyFounders

061: Vanity Metrics vs. Reality: The Ethics of Buying Followers and Beating the Algorithm

• Matt Lo & Anne Gillaspie

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0:00 | 23:01

In this episode, Matt and Anne tackle the murky world of social media vanity metrics, debating whether a high follower count is a valuable business asset or just a digital mirage. Anne shares her temptation to artificially inflate her audience to serve as a resume for her speaking career, while Matt strongly cautions against the ethical and algorithmic consequences of buying bot followers. They also explore the strategic differences between B2B and personal branding, why boosting top-performing organic posts works for some but not others, and how understanding platform "buckets" can help you predict a video's virality.

🚨 Stuff You’ll Want to Remember:

  • "If you're not posting every day, someone else is. And social media is a numbers game. It eats data. So you have to feed it." — Matt

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