Hello Steemians,
I Logged onto my account yesterday and noticed my following had just ticked over 500. Today I just wanted to take the opportunity to offer some advice and direction when thinking about your following, at the end of the day it is just a number!
It seems that although I have over 500 followers I would be lucky if 10% of my followers are actually actively engaged in my blog. Thanks to those who have been active and engaging - 
A lot of my active followers I have met through creating the #musicdiscovery tag where we share a love of music, and have also gotten to explore other interests on here. I am LOVING this and thank everyone I have so much new music to listen to!
It's the not the number that counts it's the engagement
I remember when I first came to Steemit and, like many, assumed that more followers = more eyes on my content and more money! However this is not how Steemit works - Steemit is a social media platform - this means you have to be ‘social’ and active getting to know people. I am finding the best way to do this is meeting and engaging people who have similar interests. For me this is MUSIC, technology, cryptocurrency, travel and health.
I remember the first time I noticed someone had ‘unfollowed’ me - I was shocked and a bit sad! Why would they want to unfollow me? But now I just about see it as a good thing - if they unfollow you they probably weren’t interested and likely to be engaged in your blog anyway.
I have GINAbot - if you don’t know about GINAbot check out the information about it here. It is a customisable bot on Discord that will give you notifications about pretty much anything on Steemit. One of the things I have GINA notify me of is every time someone follows and unfollows me. This has made it more and more clear to me that the number of followers doesn't matter. Check this for example:
This person follows over 127,000 people on Steemit! They are not even likely to know who I am or see any of my posts. There are plenty of people like this on Steemit who have been around like a week but seem to follow ridiculous amounts of people - I think there idea is that some of these people will follow them back.
Here's another example of someone who follows me and has a reputation of -33! Probably not someone who is going to add value:
I also know from looking through who is following me in the past that there are also more than a handful of bots that are following me. Again they are not likely to communicate or be an ‘active’ follower.
Don't follow to many people
I go through the list of people i'm following often. I think that following to many people is a huge mistake - you are less likely to see the content of the people you are actually engaged with and interested in! If I haven't had some genuine interactions with the person and their blog, or i'm not interested in what they are blogging about then I tend to just unfollow them. You definitely don't need to take it to heart when people unfollow you - it's nothing personal!
Be active in the comments section
I think I have mentioned this in the past but it is important - always reply to people who comment on your blog! People spend the effore reading and commenting on your content, the least you can do is reply. Its amazing the conversations that you can get going in the comments, and where you can connect with people. At times I just surf around on Steemit looking at nothing in particular, but when I find content I connect with I leave a meaningful comment to show that I have read their content and thought about it. Usually people are pretty receptive if you have similar views and interests to them.
Be Yourself!
Lastly, I think one of the most important things you can do on Steemit is to be genuine. Just be yourself, and if people like you and what your about then they will follow and interact with your blog, and if not then that's fine! Plus its much more fun to be yourself and blog about stuff that you have an interest in, rather than talking about what is ‘popular’ and might attract the most attention. The song below sums it up well:
Thank you for reading and being a part of my blog :)