He Was Just Scrolling Through His Phone – Then Came Thousands of Followers

The phone at night unexpectedly pointed out a change

That night, he couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed scrolling through his phone, not really looking for anything. A video popped up — a girl in Cape Town starting her own coffee shop. Someone in the comments said, “Running a business in SA isn’t that hard — look at tools like Sage One Bank Payments for Businesses.” They included a link. He almost skipped it, but something made him click.

Content and life are beginning to connect

The page explained how small businesses manage their finances, mentioning auto-reconciliation with Sage One Banking. He didn’t fully understand it, but one line hit him: “In the future, personal creators will have to manage their presence like brands.” That made him pause. He wasn’t running a business — but he had been posting videos of his cat, his bike rides, and street views. Was that... a brand?

Clicking on the link after the keyword has become a new habit

Later, whenever he saw videos with linked keywords, he started clicking them almost subconsciously. “Sage One Bank Payments SA,” “Video Marketing,” “Customer Loyalty Digital Marketing” — words he’d never cared about before. Now, he thought: why are others talking about these? Can I learn something? He followed a few content strategy channels and joined a couple of discussion groups.

It's not a sudden outbreak, it's a gradual accumulation.

He didn’t have any viral hits. But his videos started having direction. One day, he posted a video of a rainbow he saw during a ride, with a caption he remembered from an article: “Every stable system hides a story of chaos.” That video got shared many times. He realized that what pulls people in isn’t the tricks — it’s the feeling. And many of those feelings came from words he had once clicked on.

Increasing followers is not the goal, but the result of having your life seen

Someone commented on his post, asking for tips on gaining followers. He smiled and replied, “I just happened to click on a few words — and slowly realized content isn’t what I thought it was.” To him, those keywords weren’t a plan — just clues that happened to land in his life. He followed them, step by step. And only looking back did he realize: people can be seen, slowly, without forcing it.