#220: The Three Types of Followers & Which One is Right For You

June 28, 2020 — Not all followers are created equal. You can choose clients, fans, or students, but which is best?

In the endless search for more followers, creative people (such as myself) tend to get metric tunnel vision.

That is, we get so obsessed with the number of followers we have that we forget to ask what types of followers we’re attracting, i.e. Who ARE all these people??

Personality traits and demographics are a conversation for another day, but when I say “types,” I’m referring to the three main categories of followers…

• Clients: want to use you
• Fans: want to support you
• Students: want to be you

The reason this matters is that each type of follower wants something from you.

And what a person wants from you determines EVERYTHING about how you relate to them.

1. Clients (Use You)

Over the course of my four-year freelance career, I had maybe 30–40 clients (sorry, lost track).