So, you want more social media followers? Who doesn’t? Whether you use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or any other platform, it seems everyone is focused on building their social media follower list. I have had discussions with many successful people who have earned tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of followers. Let me share a few ideas I learned that may help you.
I also invite you to add your thoughts, ideas and comments to the bottom of this column as well. Let’s see if we can all help each other and turn this into a real powerhouse of ideas for building our social media list and create our own success story.
You must keep feeding your Twitter and LinkedIn follower list
Social media users constantly add tweets or messages to their accounts. That means whether they are sitting at their computer or when they are out and about on their wireless smartphones, they are active, all day, every day. That’s right. If you want to be successful, you have to put in the work to get there.
Wireless access to social media sites has created rapid growth for many users in recent years. The most successful users are those who post often. Continually adding content. This is one important way to attract more followers.
Not just posting content but putting hashtags with certain words or terms will cause your post show up on those pages as well, so countless others can see you for the first time and hopefully become your followers.
This takes time, but this works.
Punch your way onto the Twitter and LinkedIn map
If you are very well known and have countless followers on your social media accounts, you don’t have to pay any attention to this. However, if you are like everyone else, you must punch your way onto the social media map.
You must keep feeding the fire or it will go out. You must think of ways to attract attention. What you have to do is find the right method that works for you.
Unfortunately, the method what works for someone else, won’t necessarily work for you. It all depends on who you are. What you do. What you are known for. What expertise you bring to the table.
If you are a very interesting person with a high profile, or are in an interesting or topical field, your comments or postings can find a way to grow. Think of this like being a guest on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC or CNBC. If you are a regular guest, your name becomes well-known to the viewer.
Partner with other social media users to extend your reach
Another way is to find partners, who are fellow social media users to share your posts. Having really powerful Twitter and LinkedIn players helps quite a bit.
Currently I have roughly 46,000 Twitter and 112,000 LinkedIn followers. This is not bad, but my reach is much further than this. I have social media friends and we re-tweet and post each other’s activity.
That means I really reach millions of users with every post. Not bad! And that’s something you can do as well.
This is another important piece of the puzzle. How you can position yourself along with others to attract followers. This is not as complicated as it sounds, but it does take learning how to do it.
There are many ordinary people, who have built extraordinary follower lists by commenting on things that interest them. The followers they get are other people who find them. People who, like them are also interested in the same things and who want to stay up to speed.
How ordinary people can build an extraordinary follower lists
Many of these social media success stories have follower lists of tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of followers. They follow certain areas of business where the companies in that space pay them to attend their conferences and spread the word about their announcements and so on.
Quite a few earn a good living doing just that. That’s what you can do as well.
However, to get there, you need to build your list. Once your list is large enough, and if you focus on one area or another, companies will find you.
Companies find you if you are a social media influencer
Today, companies have social media programs. They want to spread the word about themselves, what they do, their products or services and so on. They follow successful social media users. And they do business with quite a few of them.
This is called being an influencer. If you can build your follower list, and if you are an expert in a particular area, and that area is important to companies of one type or another, you are an influencer they can use.
Once you become a powerful influencer, you can expect you will get contacted by companies. They want you to know them and to help them spread the word about them. This is a business model many individuals use.
That’s be beautiful part of this story. Once you become a successful player with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, you become part of a small but targeted group that companies want. They will find you. Opportunities will come to you.
How to build your Twitter follower list
I opened my Twitter account years ago but just started trying to build my followers list less than two years ago. I started with about 1,500 followers and today have roughly 46,000 followers. LinkedIn was even better. I started with a handful of followers and now have 112,000. My Twitter and LinkedIn follower lists are still growing.
That’s great, but I have many friends who have been at it for many years and have hundreds of thousands of followers.
How did they do that? Hundreds of thousands of followers sounds great. Actually, millions of follower’s sounds even better. That’s what I want. So, how do I reach that goal?
Sound familiar? This is the same question everyone asks. So, let’s have that conversation. Let’s explore some ways that successful users build their lists to these astronomical levels.
Most successful social media players have no idea how they did it
One important thing to understand is, most users with loads of followers don’t have any idea how they got them. It’s like asking a lottery winner how they pick the winning numbers.
So, is growing your Twitter and LinkedIn follower list a game of chance? Not really. There is a science behind it. However, it depends who you are and what you are known for. Each person has a different method for growing their follower list.
I say this because even if you knew someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers, and if you asked them for their secret, they wouldn’t be able to help you. Even if they knew their reason for success, which nearly no one knows, that same method would not likely apply to you.
They may be well known in one area for doing one thing and that is enough to win followers. You are not known in that same area for doing that same thing, so their formula won’t help you. Sorry.
So how do we get the stars to align so we can grow our social media follower list?
Why one person’s social media success story cannot always be duplicated
There are plenty of sites on the Internet that you can pay to add followers. Most of these simply don’t work. The few that do are expensive. And the followers you get are not really your followers. They are not signing up to your list because they know you. That means many of them won’t stick around.
Sites like Devumi, which was hot and used by many Hollywood stars and other bigwigs from every corner got their users loads of followers. Users loved them. However, when the whistle was blown on them, it was embarrassing to many users to be exposed.
So, it’s important to know that everyone with countless followers, may not really have their own real followers. They may have been purchased. The problem is we don’t really know who got their followers on their own and who purchased them.
Social media influencer
Bottom line, the larger your follower list, the more important you are to the business world. If you have a large list of followers, you are important. Influential. If so, you are considered an influencer. Many companies, large and small court influencers to help them spread the word about their products and services.
There is so much more I can and will discuss with you in this column from time to time. Until then, let’s all share our thoughts below on how to grow our follower lists. What works, what doesn’t and why.
