Someone just subscribed to my YouTube channel. Yay! Now I feel more pressure to get more videos prepared and posted. YouTube helped out by sending a notice telling me someone has subscribed. It went on to suggest that I “return the favor and subscribe to person?”
The favor? Excuse me? Subscribing is something you do because you find my content valuable. Subscriptions to the Get-it-Done Guy productivity tips newsletter and the Stever Robbins YouTube Channel are staples of every good, productive, worthwhile, competent, achievement-oriented, life-fulfillment-seeking, smart, insightful person on the internet. It’s only a favor to me in the sense that I’m trying to build an audience. If someone is subscribing to “do me a favor,” that suggests they aren’t subscribing because they find my content useful. Thanks for the insult, YouTube.
And now that YouTube has insulted me, it wants me to subscribe back as a favor. Now YouTube is insulting my viewers. Bad, YouTube! Show more respect! My viewers, as noted above, are good, productive, smart people.
When a web site suggests you subscribe to something without knowing if you like it, you’re being asked to promote the web site’s agenda, not yours. Every subscription you have means more stuff piling into your inbox. Sometimes, that makes sense; you can never get enough Get-it-Done Guy content. But that doesn’t mean you should subscribe to every person who subscribes to you.
If you think a person’s content is relevant and useful, subscribe. If you don’t, then don’t. Subscribing isn’t a favor to be returned; it’s something a person does because they find it valuable. Keep your information manageable!
(Subscribing to the Get-it-Done Guy newsletter will help you do that… 🙂