Follow me baby.

(@ChrisBrogan's Avatar pic from Twitter)

Last night on Twitter, @ChristBrogan asked an interesting question,

"Why do you try to acquire followers? Meaning, versus just building relationships."

He got a lot of interesting answers, you can view them by clicking his name above and scrolling back through the older tweets. My two cents back to him was that I think a lot of folks do it for ego. Let's face it, we all want to be popular and even though we say we didn't care, secretly we wanted to be the homecoming king or queen. But for me, honestly, I see followers as an ends to a means.

I want to be famous. Not Brad and Angelina famous - I'd have to smack those annoying paparazzi, but famous in my industry - Advertising. Ego you say... maybe. But I actually have a more pragmatic reason. Advertising is a reputation industry. Got a rep, got a paycheck because someone will always hire you. More importantly, how big that check is depends on your reputation. And this holds true whether you're talking about me personally being hired or the company I work for, Zehnder being hired by a client. Rep matters in our business.

Take my man Chris Brogan. We both counsel clients on social media issues. If your company was thinking about dipping your toe into the social media waters and you were looking for a consultant, you'd find him a good bit faster than me. And even if you did find me, I'm guessing by comparison, he's going to look a hell of a lot better/smarter than me given his enormous tribe.

And for me at least, that is why followers matter. The bigger my tribe, the better I "look" but more importantly, if I'm feeding that tribe good info, the more likely I'll be thought of when they or a friend or a colleague needs advertising, social media or general "go to market" advice. Or maybe they need a great professional speaker for an upcoming event and want "someone new" that they've not seen a hundred times at other events. If they are in my idea stream (blog/twitter/Facebook/Ad Age Articles or LinkedIn) they can find me. If not, well then I'm just the best damn speaker they've never heard of, and with that and $3.25 I can get a Super Grande cafe au lait  at Community's Coffee House downstairs in my building.

So there is my early morning, pre-caffine confession. Now it is your turn. Tell me and my tribe, why do you care about followers?