Summary

Follower counts do not fix funnels, ship products, or turn MQLs into revenue. But a meaningful audience can become something more useful: A huddle of serious marketers comparing notes, sharing scars, and making noisy work feel a little less lonely. For CMOs, community beats vanity when people actually lean in.

Why The Milestone Was Absurd And Useful

Now that is a big huddle.

Last Friday night, my wife and I were with my son and his girlfriend in Brooklyn at a way-too-cool-for-us-boomers Lebanese restaurant. As the mezzes pounced on our table, a text from an associate called my attention to a mildly absurd milestone:

• 25,000 followers on LinkedIn.

For context, the largest documented huddle of emperor penguins is around 4,000. So either I assembled six Antarctic mega-colonies, or I have spent far too many Saturdays typing into the LinkedIn void about B2B marketing.

Probably the latter.

Why Followers Are Not The Point

On one hand, this is a big so what.

Followers do not ship product. They do not fix attribution models. They do not magically turn MQLs into revenue. If they did, we would all be out of jobs.

A follower count can become a vanity metric with better lighting. It can look impressive while saying very little about whether anyone is listening, thinking, challenging, or changing.

So no, 25,000 is not a strategy.

But it is not nothing either.

What Makes A Huddle Different From An Audience

The cool part is that I know who many of you are.

You are CMOs and marketing leaders who actually enjoy debating positioning. You appreciate the powerful coupling of brand and demand. You recognize that not everything you can measure matters. You read a post about frustrations with PE firms and think, “Finally, someone said it.” You geek out on B2B marketing not because it is glamorous, but because it is hard.

This huddle did not form because of hot takes or growth hacks. It formed because a lot of us are trying to do serious work in increasingly noisy conditions.

We compare notes. Share scars. Call out nonsense. And occasionally laugh at ourselves when things do not go as planned.

Which, let’s be honest, is often.

Why Serious Marketers Need Each Other

For CMOs, the job can be weirdly isolating. Everyone has an opinion about Marketing. Everyone wants growth. Everyone wants attribution to be simpler than it is. Everyone wants the brand to be stronger and the pipeline to be cleaner and the budget to be more efficient.

That is a lot to carry alone.

A real community does not make the work easy. It makes the work less lonely. It gives leaders a place to say, “I thought I was the only one,” and hear, “Nope. Pull up a chair.”

So thank you.

For reading. For sharing. For commenting. For disagreeing thoughtfully. For sending DMs that start with, “I thought I was the only one.”

I will keep showing up, almost every Saturday, with a rant, a story from the huddle, and the occasional penguin metaphor because, yes, it is on brand.

After all, 25,000 is a big number.

But it is still just a huddle.

And huddles work best when everyone leans in.

Q&A

Should CMOs care about follower counts?

Only as a weak signal. The better measure is whether the audience creates useful conversation, trust, referrals, learning, and real community.

What makes a professional community valuable?

Candor, relevance, shared context, thoughtful disagreement, and practical help. A big audience without trust is just reach.

How can CMOs build community without chasing vanity metrics?

Show up consistently, say something specific, invite real conversation, and resist turning every post into a campaign.

Why does this matter for B2B marketing?

Because trust compounds. In noisy markets, a credible community can create reach, insight, and resilience that paid attention rarely buys on its own.