Conversation

The paid vs earned media distinction in traditional PR is useful for social media as well. Instead of “paid” use “people who only follow me on this medium because they were already here”. Clumsy term but the mapping is clean.
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An opt-in to an email list or a self-hosted blog is 100% an opt-in to the writer. But a follow on Twitter (or back in the day, on Quora) is only marginally a follow of the tweeter. You pay with content you post for exposure to people who don’t care to 100% opt-in elsewhere