Create a close Gang of 20 friends to get the max out of your social graph.
This is an interlude in my Lens growth series. Before we talk about going from 500 to 5,000 followers, we need to talk about something more fundamental — the people who actually matter.
Successful social presence requires a few very close friends that are the backbone of your relationships — not passive followers. This is about creating mutual support networks where members genuinely care about each other's progress. I call this group your Gang.
Why 20?
The number isn't arbitrary. It comes from observing how social dynamics actually work on decentralized platforms. You can maintain meaningful relationships with about 20 people before the quality of those relationships starts to dilute. More than 20 and you can't keep up with everyone's content, respond to their posts thoughtfully, and have genuine conversations.
These 20 people become your amplification layer. When you publish something, they see it, engage with it, and share it — not because you asked them to, but because they genuinely care about what you're doing. This organic engagement signals quality to the algorithm and exposes your content to their audiences.
Think of it as a multiplier effect. If each of your 20 gang members has 500 followers, your potential reach is 10,000 — but only if those 20 people actually engage. And they will, because the relationship is real.
12 Steps to Build Your Gang
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Identify Content Creators You Admire — Explore the platform and find accounts that resonate with you. Look for people who create content you'd want to read even if you weren't trying to grow your own account. Don't be overly aggressive in pursuing attention — nobody likes the person who shows up with an obvious agenda.
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Prioritize Friendships Over Followers — Followers are usually passive. They look at what you publish and don't interact much. True friends actively engage with your work, challenge your ideas, and celebrate your wins. One genuine friend is worth a hundred passive followers in terms of actual impact on your growth.
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Engage Through Comments — Comments are the most underutilized growth tool on any social platform. Most people scroll past content they enjoy without saying anything. Be the person who leaves a thoughtful comment every time. Not "great post!" — actual substantive responses that add to the conversation. Over time, the creator notices, and a relationship forms naturally.
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Leverage Direct Messaging — DMs work best after you've already established some rapport through public interactions. Don't cold-DM someone you've never engaged with — that's spam. But after a few meaningful comment exchanges, a DM saying "Hey, I really enjoyed your series on X, I'm working on something similar" opens the door to real collaboration. Ask "How can I help you?" — it's disarming and genuine.
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Exchange Feedback — Provide constructive suggestions freely. When someone you admire publishes something, give them honest feedback. Not criticism for the sake of it, but genuine thoughts on how something could be even better. Most creators are starving for real feedback — they get either silence or empty praise.
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Request Feedback in Return — Let people know you value their perspective. Asking for feedback is a sign of respect and it creates reciprocity. It also gives you access to perspectives you might not have considered.
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Give Without Expecting — Generosity compounds over time. Share someone's content because it's good, not because you want them to share yours. Recommend someone's project because it genuinely impresses you. The returns come, but they come on their own schedule.
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Support Emerging Creators — Seek out small accounts producing valuable content and help amplify them. This is where the most genuine relationships form. When you support someone early, before they have an audience, you become part of their story. These relationships tend to be the strongest and most enduring.
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Champion Diversity — Foster varied perspectives rather than surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals. Your Gang should include people from different backgrounds, working on different things, with different viewpoints. This creates a richer information environment and exposes you to ideas you wouldn't encounter in an echo chamber.
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Recognize the Timing — Early participation in any platform is an advantage. The social graph is less crowded, relationships are easier to form, and the culture is still being established. Build your authority and relationships before mainstream adoption floods the platform with noise.
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Invest in the Community — Lens doesn't work if you only want to extract value from it. The platform is a commons. If everyone takes and nobody gives, it dies. Be someone who makes the platform better for everyone — create valuable content, help newcomers, participate in governance discussions, give constructive feedback to app developers.
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Build Genuine Relationships — Success requires mutual support, not transactional engagement. The moment your interactions feel calculated, they lose their power. People can sense when they're being used as a growth tactic. The paradox is that the most effective growth strategy is to stop thinking about growth and start thinking about genuinely connecting with interesting people.
Maintaining the Gang
Building the Gang is only half the work. Maintaining it requires consistent effort. Check in with your people regularly. Celebrate their wins publicly. Help them when they're stuck. Share opportunities that might benefit them even if there's nothing in it for you.
The best Gangs develop their own culture — inside jokes, shared references, collaborative projects. They become more than a growth strategy. They become a genuine community.
And here's the thing that most growth guides won't tell you: the Gang is the point. Not the follower count. Not the engagement metrics. The relationships you build with 20 people who genuinely have your back are more valuable than 100,000 passive followers who don't know your name.
Build your Gang. Everything else follows.
Originally published on Substack.