To Which Concerns an Influencer on the Subject of Low Engagement

CURRENT RANK: LOWLY SERF

To the Magnificent Social Machiavellian:

CHAPTER 14 - THAT WHICH CONCERNS AN INFLUENCER ON THE SUBJECT OF LOW ENGAGEMENT

A social media influencer ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than engagement and its rules and discipline. This is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only supports those who are born stars, but it often enables accounts to rise from obscurity to that rank. It is often seen that when stars have thought more of ease than of engagement they have lost their followers, and the first cause of losing them is to neglect this art. What enables a star to acquire an audience is to be master of the art.

For among other evils which having low engagement brings you, it causes you to be ignored. This is one of those dangers which an influencer ought to guard against. There is a big difference between having high engagement and having low engagement, and it is not reasonable that an account with high engagement should willingly follow an account with low engagement. An account with low engagement will not be secure among accounts with high engagement, because by having low engagement it will be suspicious of them and they will ignore it. So, it is not possible for them to collaborate well together.

Therefore, an influencer who does not understand the art of engagement, over and above the other disadvantages already mentioned, cannot be respected by his followers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have this subject of engagement out of his thoughts, and in times of low activity he should devote himself more to its exercise than in times of high activity. He can do this in two ways, by action, and by study.

As regards action, an influencer ought above all things to keep his content well planned and organized, and to carry out extended campaigns on the platform, by which he accustoms his audience to his style, and learns something of the nature of the algorithm. He gets to find out how the trends rise, how the hashtags open out, how the feeds lie, and to understand the nature of posts and viral areas, and to do all this with careful planning and analysis.

This knowledge is useful in two ways. Firstly, the influencer learns to know his platform, and is better able to undertake its growth. Afterwards, by means of the knowledge and observation of that platform, he can easily understand any other which it may be necessary for him to study, because the trends, hashtags, and feeds that are, for instance, on Instagram, have a certain similarity to those of other platforms. So, with a knowledge of the aspect of one platform, one can easily arrive at a knowledge of others. The influencer that lacks this skill lacks the essentials which it is desirable that a social media leader should possess. It teaches him to surprise his audience, to select content to post, to lead campaigns, to organize the followers in an engagement, and to promote posts in the best way.

Lil Nas X, star of the music industry, among other praises which writers have heaped on him, is especially praised because in times of low virality he never had anything in his mind but the rules of engagement. When he was offline with friends, he often stopped and reasoned with them "If the competition were on that trend, and we were here with our content, who would have the advantage? How should we best advance to meet the audience, without breaking style? If we should wish to go back, how could we do it? If they scrolled past, how ought we pursue them?" And he would suggest to them, as he went, all the things that could happen to an account. He would listen to their opinion and state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual discussions there could never arise, in time of high engagement, any unexpected circumstances that he could not deal with.

But to exercise his mind, the influencer should study social media trends, and analyze there the actions of great stars, to see how they have conducted themselves in viral moments, to examine the causes of their successes and failures, so as to avoid the latter and imitate the former. Above all an influencer should do as great stars did, to take as a model one who had been praised and famous before them, and whose achievements and posts they always kept in mind. A wise influencer ought to observe such rules, and never in times of low engagement stand idle. He should actively increase his resources in such a way that they may be available to him in difficult times, so that if the algorithm changes, it will find him prepared to resist its blows.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI II