Curious Accounts

Followers are key here on Steemit to get your posts noticed. It has stood out that a few posters have many followers in a very short space of time, recently and it has prompted me to look at what strategy they are employing to get followers.

Listing of accounts with > 500 followers and less than $50 in account value gives 24 accounts.

Account	Followers	Following
lukekelley	613	5250
aaronkoenig	574	311
carlobelgado	2076	19499
bitcoinandcoffee	767	3818
joanaltres	3274	24878
zeroshiki	677	7000
followseveryone	1488	14701
rafaela	561	5596
applecrisp	556	1001
luke490	563	2358
angelamei	728	4794
omrusman	590	2963
manycoolthings	564	8193
steemitmarket	801	1
joelbow	636	2352
seljalex77	725	6807
anarcharos	578	2191
ivanba12	1095	6236
gowldie	723	12632
tinoe	758	25989
q327k091	796	0
rook	911	5427
mnviking	665	2744
freedomnow	908	0

Ghost Accounts

Several of these accounts are from August in 2016, and seem like ghost accounts.

• Hive account@ivanba12 has 1,095 followers, this guy doesn't seem to be a celebrity or anything, none of his posts have many votes or earn much dollars so how did he get 1,095 followers? He hasn't been active in 7 months.

• Hive account@mnviking has 665 followers.

• Hive account@freedomnow only has 4 posts but 908 followers. Again this account joined in August 2016.

• Hive account@steemitmarket has 801 followers, this account seems to be some sort of spamming account but again hasn't been active in months.

How did these accounts get so many followers?

Real Accounts

Hive account@joanaltres describes herself as "Joan Altres, a Christian Anarchist, internet marketer, and software creator", she has 3,274 followers. She doesn't seem to write much, most of her feed is resteems.

Hive account@carlobelgado has 2,076 followers and hails from the Philippines. Carlo posted a great introduction post but Carlo hasn't posted many other posts, and his posts haven't earned a lot of votes or money so how has he so many followers?

What I have noticed about some of these accounts is that they are following a lot of people.

• Hive account@carlobelgado follows 19,499 people.
• Hive account@joanaltres follows 24,878 people
• Hive account@mnviking follows 2,744 people
• Hive account@tinoe follows 25,989 people

Is following so many people a successful strategy to gain followers? It seems to be but these accounts are not making much so maybe its a lot of effort for little gain.

Does anyone know about the accounts Hive account@ivanba12 Hive account@q327k091 and Hive account@freedomnow? What is the story with these? Where did they come from and where have they gone?

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Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.

The main image for this post is from pixabay.com

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