Content Marketing for independent entrepreneurs done differently. Here's your first tip: You don't need to grow your following.
This One is About Inflation - Fyreside Newsletter - 2/17/25
Hey Reader,You read the subject line correctly, this newsletter is about inflation. But this ain't your granddaddy's inflation! No this is modern, digital inflation. Other newsletters talk about the price of eggs, the price of gas and/or the purchasing power of the American dollar, but not this newsletter. Here at Fyreside, there's only one kind of inflation we dissect with a fine-tooth comb: Social Media Inflation. Side note: How many d's are in "granddaddy?" Is it 4? It feels like it could be 3... What is "Social Media Inflation?" I'm glad you asked. First and foremost, it's a phrase I made up. Or, at least, I made it up for this discussion. Someone actually wrote a research paper about a "Social Media Inflation Index," but that's not what I'm doing here. What I'm doing here is talking about modern follower numbers. See the common definition of inflation is: Prices go up, purchasing power stays the same, ergo, the same amount of money buys less product. Applying that to the number of followers a social media account has, we can define Social Media Inflation as: Highly-followed accounts get bigger, the value of a follower stays the same, ergo, the same amount of followers generates less influence. Run me through that again... Yeah, happy to. Social media has been around for a long time, right? MySpace launched in 2003, but let's make the math easy and say social media has been common place for about 20 years. In those 20 years, the number that constitutes "a lot" of followers has skyrocketed. Back in 2005, there were only around 300,000 social media users world wide. But in 2025, that number is closer to 5.24 billion. That's right, that number has increased so much I stopped using zeros and started using words. Let's look at some specific profiles to prove the point. I found this fun article that noted the subscriber count of popular YouTube channels in 2015. Below, I've mapped out the change a few of these accounts have gone through in the last 10 years.
So what? My point is that, in 2025, you need a MUCH higher follower count to reach the same percentage of the internet. If you asked the average YouTube viewer, they'd likely tell you that Markiplier, Good Mythical Morning, and Dude Perfect haven't really grown in popularity since 2015. They're legacy channels. They have their place and their following, but they haven't conquered the zeitgeist in the last decade. But that's not how the numbers look. In 2005, there were 300,000 social media users. That means, if you had 10k followers, you were connected with about 3% of all users. In 2025, a following of 10k accounts for only .00001% of all users. That's a massive difference. 3% of a pizza is a single pepperoni, .00001% of a pizza is barely the idea of ordering a pizza. It's all about perspective This is going to be my new soapbox, so gather round: You don't actually want more followers. You want more engagement. You want more conversions. Trying to get more followers is a Sisyphean task. It's like trying to change the color of the ocean with your own, personal bottle of food coloring. This whole newsletter has been a long walk to the short pier of promoting my latest blog post. If you're ready for the next step in understanding social media inflation, give that a read. If you need a few days to digest this newsletter, that's ok too. Coming soon... I've got the itch to write another blog series and this is going to be it. In the next few weeks, I'll add another 5 or so posts to the one linked above. Maybe from there I'll turn it into another eBook. More to come. -MCp.s.
I'm putting the final touches on a "Social Media Seminar for Non-Profits" that I'm really excited about! If you're involved with a non-profit or know someone who is, shoot me a message! I'd love to send you the info first and give you (or anyone you send this to) a pretty phat discount for reading the newsletter.
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Bahnfyre
Content Marketing for independent entrepreneurs done differently. Here's your first tip: You don't need to grow your following.
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