Most people read a large LinkedIn following as a sign of authority. I do not. A few weeks ago I was reminded exactly how cheap that number is to inflate, and it changed how I read everyone else’s profile.
Here is the trick I noticed. Post a job on Upwork saying you are looking for a virtual assistant. Within a day, a steady stream of freelancers will send you connection invites and follow your profile, hoping it improves their chances of being picked. You do not have to hire anyone. The follows arrive anyway. It costs nothing, and it can add hundreds of followers to an account that has never published anything worth following.
I am not sharing that to recommend it. I am sharing it because it exposes the metric. If a number can be moved that easily, by someone who has done no real work, then the number is not measuring the thing most people assume it measures.
Why a Follower Count Is Cheap to Buy
The Upwork trick is only one of many. There are engagement pods, follow-for-follow loops, paid promotion, and outright bot services. Each one inflates the same vanity figure without adding a single person who would ever buy from you, hire you, or recommend you. The follower count sits at the top of the profile, looks impressive, and quietly tells you nothing about whether the person behind it can do the job.
This matters in ecommerce because founders make real decisions off these signals. They pick an agency, a freelancer, or a consultant partly on how authoritative the profile looks. A founder under pressure sees forty thousand followers and reads it as proof. Nine times out of ten, it is proof of nothing except that someone learned how to grow a number.
What the Number Actually Measures
A follower count measures distribution tactics, not competence and not trust. It tells you the person has either published things people genuinely wanted, or learned to game the feed, and from the outside you cannot tell which. The two look identical on the profile.
A quiet operator with eight hundred real followers may run a far better business than someone with thirty thousand. The smaller account often belongs to a person who is busy doing the work rather than performing it. That is not a rule, and plenty of people have large followings and real substance behind them. But the size of the following is not the thing that tells you which is which.
How I Judge an Operator Instead
When I am deciding whether to trust someone with a client or a project, I ignore the follower count and look at evidence that is harder to fake. I look for named clients and real results, the kind that can be checked. I look at whether people who worked with them came back, or referred someone else. I read what they actually publish and ask whether it could only have been written by someone who has done the work.
This is the same instinct I apply to agencies a client is already paying. The surface looks confident. The substance is in the detail, which is why I tell founders to verify the work their SEO agency reports rather than trust the summary. It is also why I read the cold, spam-looking audit emails everyone else deletes. The signal is rarely in the headline number. It is in what sits underneath.
The Number I Would Rather Grow
I would rather have one hundred followers who are real founders, real buyers, and real peers than ten thousand who arrived from an Upwork job post. The small number is the one that turns into conversations, work, and referrals. The large number is the one that looks good in a screenshot.
LinkedIn Credibility Note
What a Follower Count Does and Does Not Prove
FOLLOWER COUNT
Easy to inflate
A single Upwork job post can add hundreds with no work behind it.
TRACK RECORD
Hard to fake
Named clients, repeat business, and results that can be checked.
Paul Ryazanov · MageCloud · judging operators by work, not vanity metrics
If you want to talk through how to read the real signals on an agency or a partner before you sign, rather than the surface ones, come find me at the next Ecommerce Camp UK. I will be the one more interested in what they have shipped than how many people follow them.