Alot of people have realized that social media marketing is the most cost effective way to grow a personal brand, market a product or service, or spread a message. I have grown my Twitter account from nothing to right around 1,200 follows and my engagement has recently spiked as well. You may be wondering what to do with few or no followers and how you can ever get your voice heard. I am going to show you a process to do just that. This process works across all platforms but I will mainly be focused on Twitter and Facebook as I am most familiar with them.
The key to getting engagement with few followers is to focus on engaging. Engaging with other profiles and groups will get you followers and more importantly, people who will engage with your content. The biggest mistake people make when they are new is posting into the abyss. Making 10 posts per day on an account that has 20 followers is not worth the time invested. Of course you should post a bit because you don’t want your profile page to be completely empty or showing no new posts in months but keep this to a minimal for now. Once or twice a day is plenty on Facebook and two to four times on Twitter. If you want to do more, great! But engaging with other accounts is what is most important at this stage.
What is the best way to engage with other accounts?
The most important thing is to make sure you are showing genuine interest when commenting on other people’s posts. Commenting basic cookie cutter things like “I agree” or “This is really neat” won’t get near the engagement as being descriptive about what you agree with, why you like the post, and adding your own thoughts on top of it.
The next thing you will want to keep in mind is to make your comments shareable. Look around on Twitter and I’m sure you will find a comment from someone that has a bunch of retweets and likes. When you check out their account, you may find out that they only have a few followers. How is this possible? What they probably did either on purpose or by accident is make a comment that people wanted to retweet. The best way to do this is by making a comment that also looks good as a standalone post. For example, instead of saying “Yes, I agree that Chocolate Ice-cream is the best because of its rich flavor”, you should say “Chocolate Ice-cream is the best because of its rich flavor”. By leaving out the “Yes, I agree” part, your comment is now more likely to be shared because it can also work as a standalone tweet on someone’s profile. This also works on Facebook but not as well as it does on Twitter.
For Facebook, groups are key to early growth. Join Facebook groups that are related to your interests. Now you can share valuable content with everyone in the group and start gaining followers and engagement on posts. Remember to follow the groups rules. Each group will have a set of rules that will be visible before you join.
Remember to follow people who engage with your comments and also start engaging with their profile more to form relationships and connections. Once you have grown a sizeable and active following, you may start posting more and commenting less. This is because posting has a higher return on investment now that you have some engaged followers and friends.
Lets recap. Comment more and post less until you have grown an audience. Remember to write engaging comments and show genuine interest in the post you are commenting on, make sure your comments are sharable so that they look good as a standalone post. Now get out there and let’s grow together!
