KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- Buying followers doesn’t benefit anyone, as they’re not going to be the type of people you want to follow you. They won’t engage and they definitely won’t be your target audience.
- Having 500 followers that love your content is much more valuable than having 5,000 followers that do not engage. A slow, organic growth is what you should be aiming for.
- Follow-unfollow tactics are not the best approach when it comes to gaining followers.
- Tell people you are on each platform, directing them to come and follow you. Put it in your newsletter, put it in your email signature, put it in your blog posts. The more you tell people, the more chances you have of people following you.
- Facebook is a difficult platform to grow as there is not a lot of one-to-one interaction. One of the easiest things you can do to grow your followers is pay for PPC advertising. If you’re just starting out, you can create a ‘like campaign’ to gain page likes.
- Knowing where you customers are will help you go and like the pages that your target audiences are already interacting with. If you go on Facebook on your desktop, you should be able to find a button on the righthand side that says ‘See Page’s Feed’. If you click on this, any page that your page likes will show up here. Once you’re on this page, you can like and comment as your page.
- When it comes to Instagram and Twitter, again you need to think about where your target audience are going to be. Create a list of where they’ll likely be spending their and then follow all of them immediately. Once you have started following these pages you can start to interact with pages your target audience will be using.
- Think about the hashtags your customers are using. Using the hashtags you know your customers will be using, you can go and follow and interact with people you may want to follow you. Don’t use it as an opportunity to sell.
- When you’re interacting with posts, make sure you’re using more than 3 words and writing something that is relevant to the photo. If not, you may come across as though you’re using a social media comment bot.
- Rather than following the people that are following your competitors, follow the people that are interacting with them.
- Remember, it’s quality of quantity.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
Growing a social media following is no longer an easy task and it takes a lot of work to gain followers that are engaged. Whilst it may have been easy in the past, social media has changed and people use it in a completely different way to when it first started out. Those people that have a high number of followers, may have been doing it for YEARS before they saw success.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- A Couple of Caveats – 08:32
- General Tips for Growing Followers on Social Media – 15:30
- Gaining Followers on Facebook – 20:00
- Growing Your Following On Instagram And Twitter – 27:32
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
- Live Masterclass Sign Up
Transcript below
Speaker 1: (00:32)
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. And as always I'm your host Teresa Heath-Wareing. This week I am coming to you live from Nashville in the United States. I am really pleased to be over here doing a bit of work but also visiting a very dear friend of mine who's going to be featuring on the podcast soon. And it's so nice to have a bit of time out and relax and be in a different space. So we're trying to desperately juggle work and also enjoying ourselves a little bit. So, funnily enough, I've just been down Broadway. I think I said that right, which is where all the bars and all the music is. And we had one gin and tonic and I was like, okay, if I'm gonna record a podcast today, we need to stop drinking right now and I need to head back and let's do this podcast and then maybe we can go back out again.
Speaker 1: (01:22)
So we're trying to juggle both, which is always a bit tricky, but it's definitely, definitely worth doing and being able to have a trip somewhere. Now I wanted to mention something. If you're not on my email list, I want you to get yourself over to teresaheathwareing.com and make sure you sign up to my newsletter because something happened on this trip, which I wrote about in last week's email. So every Wednesday I write you an email and it's always different content and it's always things that you can't normally find anywhere else. But last week we had such an interesting story because something happened. So I'm really quickly going to relive it here with you. So basically we had got this trip planned for quite some time and I had planned to write my Wednesday email while I was at the airport. While I was sat in the first class lounge and I was going to be talking about manifestation and how I felt that using manifestation, I had managed to organise this trip where I could fly first class, which was always on my list. It's on my goals, it's on my vision board. And I was so excited to tell you the least. Like honestly, I was really excited that we're going to fly first class, never done it before, managed to do it on point. So obviously didn't have to spend the amount of money that you'd normally have to spend, but literally I'd visualised every single step of going first class. So arriving at Heathrow airport, going through the first class check-in, going and sitting in the first class lines, what it'd be like to be welcomed onto the plane and turn left and you get the picture. So anyway, we get to the airport and bearing in mind I've been to the states a lot. We've probably come here four-ish times a year and I got to the airport and we go to the check in.
Speaker 1: (03:05)
I'm all very excited because it's first class and the lady says to me out, are you travelling on ESTAs or Visas? And I very confidently, because I've travelled to the states loads, we fly on ESTAs. So ESTA is a type of visa and you have to have one if you're from the UK to get into the states. And she looked again and she was like, oh, we just don't have one on file for you. And I was thinking, what do you mean? Like I literally flew back in March and it's valid and it's all fine. And then I remembered I had actually changed my passport because my married name is different to the name I use for business and I wanted to get my passport and obviously my official name and I changed my passport and then hadn't updated my ESTA. And it hadn't even occurred to me that I had to update it or change it.
Speaker 1: (03:53)
And honestly this sudden realisation and horrendousness came over me where I had the biggest knot in my stomach. I thought I was going to cry. I thought it was gonna be sick because basically when you apply for an ESTA it can take 72 hours. So even if I applied there and then there was a fair chance I wasn't getting on that flight, this first class flight that I dreamed of and felt like I had worked my way to manifesting wasn't going to happen. And I literally had a couple of options: full time break down, cry, be like a complete, you know, slightly babyish and lose my mind over it or breathe deep, realise that I can't control that situation and all I can do is what I can do. So basically my husband and I went and sat down in the first class checking in bed cause we weren't even allowed through.
Speaker 1: (04:50)
Like you're not even allowed into the lounge. We filled in the application. Honestly it felt like the longest half an hour of my life trying to fill this in. Everything just felt hard and difficult and, but I was trying really hard to be calm and breathe and then we filled in and the lady came back over and was like, have you gone? And we were like, we filled it in and it's just a case of waiting. And that's where I took on all the learnings I've used over the past 12-18 months about being calm and breathing and realising that the only thing I can have any effect on in that situation is me and how I manage myself. So anyway, we sat there for a bit and my husband went off to the bathroom and a bit of a wandering cause basically, there was nothing we could do. And I'm sat there every two minutes checking my application and I looked down and it said approved.
Speaker 1: (05:41)
And honestly, I don't even think it was half an hour until they approved it, which was amazing. And I went over the woman at the desk so excited, like, oh my God, look, it's through. And she looked and checked her around and it hadn't, she checked us in and she was like, you were so lucky. So I can't honestly say she goes, that is crazy quick, doesn't normally happen. And before we knew it, we were back through and heading to the first class lounge and the flight was amazing by the way. So if you do ever get the opportunity to go first class, it really is an experience worth trying. But yeah, it was just the fact of I was so proud of myself for not losing it and not getting angry and not getting upset, which I totally would have done maybe six months ago. I, I just thought, you know, okay, if this this has happened, there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 1: (06:27)
What on earth can I now do other than maintain my own mood and be calm in myself? So that's what I did. So anyway, I talked about that on my email so if you're not on the list, definitely get on that. Also before we get onto with today's content I announced last week, so I want to remind you again that I am doing a masterclass. A live masterclass. Three of them in fact at different times. So no matter what time zone you're in, I am hoping there was a time that is going to suite you well and if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/masterclass you will then find the page where you can secure your spot and join me live. And I've done this a couple of times before and I love them and I always get such great feedback. One of the things I love to do most is once I taught the content, I liked to answer any questions that you've got and I will stay on there as long as needed in order to get all your questions answered.
Speaker 1: (07:19)
And I love the teaching thing. It has great atmosphere, so nice to see so many of you there. So please do come along. It's going to be a great masterclass. I'm talking about how to convert people from prospects to customers and obviously we're talking social media and digital marketing and the process that I use in my business and the process that I teach. So I would love to see you there.
(07:43)
Okay, today's episode is an episode that I am surprised I've not done until now because I know it's going to be a really popular episode because this is the one thing I get asked all the time. So today I'm going to be talking about how to get followers on social media. I know honestly such a big subject and one that everybody wants to know, but before I give you my tips on how you can do that, I want to cover off a few caveats and a few of my thoughts around this subject and perhaps why I haven't done this before because of these reasons.
A Couple of Caveats
Speaker 1: (08:22)
So let me start by saying firstly, it's hard. Okay. I am not going to lie. I'm a very honest person. I like to be straight forward, honest and give you proper advice that is going to make sense. And I'm not into sort of saying to you, you know, yeah, do this and you're going to get 20,000 followers tomorrow if only because you know what? If you could, if I did know, I'd be doing it for myself. So first off of the most important thing you need to realise is this is not an easy task. It might have been in the past, it might be on some platforms than others, but I promise you this is not a easy thing to do, so do not be sat there thinking, why have I not got 10,000 followers already because this is hard. The other thing I want you to think about is when you're looking at other people's accounts and you're like, but they've got that many followers.
Speaker 1: (09:15)
I want you to just have a quick look at how long they've been doing that platform, how long they've been posting, how often they're posting. Because I promise you some of the reasons they've got those followers is because they've been doing this for a long time. But not only have they been on the platform for a long time, but they have been consistently posting. So take someone like Jenna Kutcher or Jasmine Star, just do me a quick favour and go and have a look at their Instagram accounts and have a look at how many actual posts they've done on Instagram. It's in the thousands. And then divide that by the number of days in a year and just realise how many years they've been going at this. So when I look at them and think, oh, why haven't I got their followers? I remind myself that those things, and I want you to do the same.
Speaker 1: (10:02)
So during this, I don't want you to be thinking about other people and thinking, I want to get to where they've got because they are on a different path. They have different followers, they are doing different things. And another thing that you don't know is that they're not buying stuff. I'm adamant that Jasmine and Jenna, please don't think I'm saying that they are, but also some people they do buy followers and you can buy followers very easily. Now I have had clients that have done it in the past much to my recommendation that they don't, and it almost has made me think, do you know what? I'm not sure if I can work with them. Because for me there is a big thing about buying followers. But I have had clients do it and I have seen the effect it's had on their accounts and I can promise you it's a false economy.
Speaker 1: (10:47)
So you might get that sudden influx of followers. But the first thing is they're not going to be the right people no matter how hard these companies telling you that they profile things and they'd go to your competitors and they, they choose people with the right audience and that sort of thing. I promise you 99% of the time that you will get the followers, but they're not going to be your customers. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that I have seen massive drops, so when a client has bought some followers and likes that, I don't advocate it at all. In fact, I'm very fierce with my opinion of it, but I can't control what someone wants to do and if they want to do that, that's up to them. But when they have, they've immediately over the next coming days and weeks seen a drop every single day.
Speaker 1: (11:36)
So like we'll be doing activity, natural organic activity that I'm going to be talking about today in order to help continue grow their followers. But we are literally losing out on a daily basis because we might get an extra few followers, but they're losing like 2030 followers a so often those followers that come on board, they disappear and they might disappear for a few reasons. I can't be sure why, but it might be that Instagram or Facebook or Twitter realise their faker accounts or they're not as legit accounts as they should be. So therefore they might sort of close those accounts. They might block them or it might be that people follow and then unfollow. So like I said, I'm not entirely sure of the reason, but for me, buying followers is an absolute no, no. The other thing I wanted to say about your followers before we go onto the actual content is I would much rather have 500 people follow me that loved me and wanted to see my content and wants to engage with me than have 5,000 that were a bit like, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1: (12:39)
So honestly I, I, the reason I think I've held off doing this episode is because of the fact that I would rather talk to you about creating great content and building relationships and having conversations with people rather than let's just try and get as many followers as we can because I don't think that is necessarily the, the best way to go about growing your business online. Like I said, I would much rather have a smaller but more engaged community than I would have a massive list. They don't get me wrong, I'm not sat here saying that suddenly if 10,000 real people followed me tomorrow and they loved what I did, I wouldn't appreciate it cause boy would I, I'm just saying that for me, I would rather grow slower and more organically and know that those people want to be there than necessarily use some really kind of a high don't know, kind of strict ways in which to grow, which aren't necessarily going to get me the best followers.
Speaker 1: (13:37)
So I wanted to get those two things across. The other thing I wanted to mention before I go into some of the tools we use is there is no work around for good content. So for instance, you could do all these activities in terms of getting followers and, and do terrible content and it's not gonna work. So this comes hand in hand with being consistent. I know that word is so irritating and I say it all the time, but honestly it's so important being consistent and also, um, creating content that people want to see and that have adds value to your audience. So knowing your audience really well, creating that content that's going to interest them and being consistent. Honestly, those three things are so important. You can do them. The other activity on the side, which is the growing activity, but honestly, if you don't have those three things nailed down, you might get some followers, but one they're not going to engage.
Speaker 1: (14:35)
And two, they then might unfollow you again. It happens a lot. It really irritates me. Don't get me wrong. One of the activities we do is we do clean up our accounts. So for instance, if someone has become dormant on one of the accounts or they're not tweeting or their account looks like it's spam, then we will unfollow accounts. However, I don't just follow, unfollow, follow, unfollow in order to try and get followers. So I'm really not keen on that. And I know that lots of people do that, but they are definitely going to do it if actually they followed you and realised this person doesn't post and when they do post it's not very relevant to me. So those thing, those things are kind of your basis. They are like your foundations if you don't have them then doing this activity on top might help a little bit but it's not going to help as well as it could in the long run if you have those foundations in place.
General Tips for Growing Followers on Social Media
Speaker 1: (15:27)
So those are my kind of slight warnings or caveats about this because I am so fierce about, like I said, it's not about the numbers, it's not about the number of followers and I really don't want you to think I'm sat here saying you need more followers because I'm not. But I do know that lots of you are going to be interested in how you can get more followers. So I'm going to cover of the main three platforms. I'm going to cover of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Now there's a few things that apply to all three, which I'm going to go through first. So the first thing that you can do is above those three things I've already told you is tell people you're on these platforms. It may sound the most stupid thing ever and the most basic. But when was the last time or when did you last put something to say I'm here. Go and follow me.
(16:15)
So for instance, um, we probably all have links on our website, but they're probably all small links like at some point of our site at the top or the bottom or the corner or whatever. But honestly, on blog posts, on podcasts, I want you to go follow me on Instagram. I love Instagram. I am posting amazing things on Nashville and I constantly post good things on stories. I love it. I love speaking to people, I love seeing other people share their stuff. So I am telling you now on my podcast, I would like you to go and follow me. So again, how often are you doing that? How often are you saying to people, look, I am here, here, here, but I tend to tell you which is my favourite. So my two favourites actually are Instagram and Twitter. That's where I am most, but probably most often on Instagram.
Speaker 1: (17:00)
So tell people, put it on your blog posts, put it on your email signature, put it on your email that you send that. If you do a weekly newsletter email, and don't just put it as a link at the bottom, put it right at the beginning. Say I've just posted something amazing on one of, you know, whatever social platform you're trying to promote and tell them to go see it. When you go to, let's say you do networking or you go where you do like a 60 seconds say, do you know what? I put great content out on social media. Come and follow me. This is my name on social media, so I want you to talk about it everywhere. Like I said, try and give it more prominent position in your email signature on your website, on your content that you're putting out or even things like, and I don't have business cards anymore, but even if you have business cards, put all your social links on there as well.
Speaker 1: (17:48)
So literally talk about it everywhere that you're on social media and tell people what platforms they can find you on and what is the most active and where they'll get the most content or most value. Another place that I often talk about, my social media is on the thank you pages. So if you go and sign up to one of my freebies that I have and I have three freebies out at the moment so you can find them on my website. One is all about your webinar blueprint. One is about a perfect sales page and one is about getting more people on your email list. On the thank you pages of those three things and normally social share buttons, but also click here to go and find me on those platforms. So again, literally every way you can think of anywhere where you market yourself, tell them, be a bit more inventive, don't just put the icons, give them a reason to go and find you on these platforms.
Speaker 1: (18:39)
Okay, two more quick points before I go onto the individual platforms themselves. Firstly, I'm sorry to tell you all this I'm going to tell you is based around work and activity. So this is not a get followers quick and easy. This is definitely going to be some work you're definitely going to have to put some time in, but it will pay off. If you do, it just takes time. So unfortunately I'm not going to sit here and go press this magic button that they've hidden in Facebook and suddenly you get an extra 20,000 likes. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Again, if it was, I'd have done it already. So it's definitely gonna take some work. So I'm sorry about that. And the second thing I want to mention, which actually is important on all the platforms is because a lot of what I'm going to talk about is interaction and having conversations with your prospective audience.
Gaining Followers on Facebook
Speaker 1: (19:30)
One thing I want you to think about is where did they hang out? Who do they follow on social media? Cause this is going to be really important. I want you to think about businesses that compliment your business, where your customers are going to be hanging out. So for instance, if you are a wedding planner or let's say you're a wedding florist, you might want to think about wedding venues or wedding photographers because your customers are going to be there because they're going to be following them because of the same reason. So I want you to think about, and maybe write a list of all the people who compliment your business or people or pages where your customers might be and they might not be anything related to what you do. It might be that actually your perfect audience just happens to really like that thing or follow those types of pages.
Speaker 1: (20:23)
So just try and think about who is your most perfect customer and where would they be, what pages would they like, what things are they going to be looking at on social media? Cause this is really gonna help with all three of the platforms we're talking about today.
(20:37)
So let's start with the hardest Facebook. Now I have said all of them are hard and they are, but Facebook really is one of the hardest platforms because doing proactive interaction on Facebook is difficult. It's not that sort of platform. And also if you're a business page, which you should be, if you're running a business through Facebook, then pages can only really talk to other pages. They can't reach out to other people. So if you are trying to speak to individuals that can get really tricky unless that is that they've spoken to your page first.
Speaker 1: (21:11)
So pages can interact with pages, not necessarily profiles. So that's the first problem. But also, like I said, there isn't that much proactive to a conversation. The most two way conversation I should imagine you're getting at the moment as if someone comments on money or posts that you can then reply to them. Or if someone dms you, you can then reply to them but you can't do much unless they come to you first. Which is why it makes it particularly difficult to get followers on this platform. Now one of the easiest things you can do is advertise. Now I'm not a big fan of advertising just for likes because the organic reach is so low anyway. Quite honestly, if I'm going to spend money on Facebook, I would rather spend it on something that's going to get me a better result. So for instance, the masterclass I talked about at the beginning of this week's podcast, I will be doing advertising to get people onto that masterclass cause obviously I want as many of you to see it and be on as possible.
Speaker 1: (22:09)
So that's the first thing I would necessarily think about doing a like campaign to get likes if I'd started a new page. And every so often it doesn't hurt. But for me the money per like is not worth me doing it. So I would rather not do that. But that is one option. Another option is when someone interacts with any of your posts, you might have noticed that when you look at the people who've liked to post, it will say invite them to this page. Or sometimes in your notifications it'll say so and so just like your pay or like your picture. Um, invite them to the page to get them to see more of your stuff and you can then literally click a button that says invite and it will invite them. Of course. The other thing you can do is you can ask your own friends to like your page as well.
Speaker 1: (22:57)
Now I'm in two minds about this because I've made this mistake. I have lots of friends and they very kindly like my page for me. However, the problem is if I try and create a lookalike audience based on the people who liked my page, there's a lot of people in there that aren't my customers because my sister's in there and my aunt is in there and I don't think my mom's in there. I don't think she knows how to like a page, but anyway you've got people in there that aren't your customers because they're being kind and liking your page so you might, depending on your objective, if your objective is to just get more page likes, you might want to then ask them to like the page, which again you can do normally on a desktop. It's on the right hand side and it'll say invite friends to like page.
Speaker 1: (23:40)
The other thing that you can do, which is a little bit different, but it can be very effective, goes back to the fact that I talked about knowing where your customers hang out is you can go and light other pages from your page. Now this has been hidden as in it was not as, obviously it has been in the past last few years, but basically on a desktop on the right hand side there should be a box. As you scroll down it says see pages feed. I'll say that again. See pages feed. If you click on that, any pages that your page likes, so not you personally but your paid their feed will show up there. But if you haven't liked any pages from your page cause you didn't know that existed, then what you might want to do is go up to the top of that. When you click see pages feed at the top, it will say like pages or something like that.
Speaker 1: (24:35)
And if you click that you'll be able to type in the name of the page you want to like and click like and it'll basically then your page will like that page and they might be notified. So that's quite a good thing. The other thing you can do is obviously in that feed you can then like and comment as your page. So as you're going through, if you see something, and this is something I recommend that let's say for instance you are a wedding florist and you're following your page of a wedding photographer and they've taken an amazing picture. I would comment as the florist saying, what an amazing picture. That's a beautiful lighting, or that's a great dress, or that's a perfect location or whatever it might be. You're not selling yourself. You're not using their page to sell you. You are merely putting yourself out there and commenting and discussing and having a nice conversation.
Speaker 1: (25:27)
But what it is doing is anybody else looking at their account and looking at that post might see your logo, your name, and your comments, which means, and it is subtle and I get it, so it's something that maybe you know, for half an hour a week you might want to go and do this, but basically you're just trying to reach out to these other people and trying to get yourself on other people's pages so that you can be seen. Now, no one is going to ever mind you commenting and liking and talking about things about their posts. As long as you're not selling yourself, as long as you're not obviously using their accounts in their posts in order to promote the sale. So if I was going to do this, I would be very just like I'm having a chat and I would properly respond to that post in a nice way.
Speaker 1: (26:16)
I'd be saying, like I said, great photo, love the light. That's brilliant, whatever is so be really careful not to be using it and trying to sell yourself. That's not the idea. It's much more subtle than that. Like I said, I'll probably put this activity in your diary to do maybe once a week or something like that. Also, if you're in your main feed as you're going through as yourself personally, and you happen to see something from another page that you think, oh, that's cool. Actually my page had comments on it. You'll see that on the right hand side where you've got all the share and like and comment buttons. You'll have a little tiny logo of your profile. If you click that, you'll be able to change it to your page and then suddenly you're like, and your comments will be from your page, not from you personally.
Speaker 1: (27:04)
So again, that's another thing I'd think about doing, but like I said, Facebook is tricky. It's not an easy one to do, but there are a couple of things that you can do and definitely do a bit more proactive stuff than maybe you have been doing.
Growing Your Following On Instagram And Twitter
(27:16)
Okay, let's talk about Instagram and Twitter and I kind of feel that they're very similar in terms of the kind of activity I would do is very similar on both because the thing that both Twitter and Instagram are amazing for is the ability to reach out and have a conversation with someone. It's a much more proactive platform. It's much more of a two way conversation type platform. So I'm almost going to lump these in together, but obviously you'll see there's a few tiny differences. So again, let's go back to the fact of where are your customers hanging out?
Speaker 1: (27:49)
What pages are they following, what accounts did they go and check? So, for instance, from a social media point of view, if I'm trying to get hold of social media managers, then I might go and check out Social Media Examiner and I might want to comment on some Social Media Examiner's posts. So it's the same principle as what we've just talked about with Facebook, but it's way, way easier. So what you would do is, the first thing I would do is have this list and I would go and follow all those pages. I would then put them in a list of maybe a private list if it was on Twitter, just so that you can keep them in one space and you know who you're talking to or you know, places to go and check. So I would definitely think about doing that and then do the same thing as I talked about on Facebook.
Speaker 1: (28:34)
Go and comment and the like and retweet their stuff. So the more that you do that, the more that you're going to appear in their feed potentially. But also you're going to be seen by them. The other big difference on both Twitter and Instagram is you can go to individuals directly, which you can't do on Facebook. So not only do I want you to do it on businesses that are complimenting you or businesses where you are showing up and comment on some of their pictures and comment on their tweets and retweet them. But also I want you to think about what are the hashtags that your customers are using and think about the followers that these pages have. Because one thing you're also going to be able to see is who is following that page. So let me just go back a bit here cause I feel like I chucked a load of things in there.
Speaker 1: (29:24)
So let's talk about the hashtags first. So think about the hashtags that your customers are using. So for instance, one of the Hashtags I might use in my posts on Instagram is mompreneur. Now this isn't a word I would naturally use or I would naturally hash tag for myself. However, I know that some of my customers and some of my audience would use the #mompreneur. So what I might want to do if I'm trying to grow my account on Instagram is I might search mompreneur and then I might go and like and comment on some of those pictures. I also might follow some of those accounts. So I might do that a couple of times a week and I might choose different hashtags. So don't think about the hashtags of you and your product. So for instance, if you're a social media manager and you work with small businesses, don't search on #socialmediamanager cause I promise you the only people you're going to find is social media managers.
Speaker 1: (30:21)
So what I would hashtag is small beers or handmade beers or home work from home or something like that. So think about the stuff that they're using and then go and search those hashtags and like and comment and retweets and interact with them. Again, no selling, no promoting yourself. Just start paying and interest. The other thing, if I am going to comment on people's posts, I make sure it's obvious I'm not a robot. One thing. Instagram has a huge amount of is comments that come in that are basically robot comments, best posts ever, or I can't even think now, but they'll just chuck some emojis in. So if I'm going to write a comment, I will, right a number of words. You should at least write over three words so they know it's not a robot. And also I will comment on something very specific about the picture and I'll chuck an Emoji in and I might pick that Emoji that is relevant to the picture.
Speaker 1: (31:18)
So in fact it did it the other week and I can't remember, I'm sure it talks about on the podcast where someone had talked to by, I don't know, let's say they'd talked by a vege or a fruit or something like that. And the picture was something to do with that. So I then put that Emoji in with my common because it's so obvious that's not a robot and that's a human being. Now again, this takes time. It takes a bit of work. This isn't a two minute job. So I tend to again, schedule a bit of time or the team do for sure. I don't do these things so much on my account. This purely comes down to time. I wish I could put more into it, but anyway, if I was going to do this, I would put half an hour every other day and I would choose a different hashtag every time I do it.
Speaker 1: (32:01)
So that's one way. And you can do that both on Twitter and Instagram. The other thing that, like I said, you can do is you can see who's following what pages and that's definitely a good place to start. Now I once heard someone give a really good tip actually about this, that rather than just going in and following the people that are following your competitor or your complimentary business. So again, let's go back to that, that photographer, wedding photographer and a wedding florists. So let's say I'm the wedding florist. I go and find a wedding photographer and I think, great, I'll follow his followers because obviously they're interested in what he does. They might be interested in what I, so I might go follow a few people. Don't do loads, especially on Instagram because they will block you because they don't like you following too many people in too much of a quick succession.
Speaker 1: (32:50)
So be really careful. So like I said, I would do like 10 a day or something. So yeah, I would go there and I would start following some of their followers. But as we all know, there are so many spam accounts. There are so many people on there that don't tend to, they're not real accounts or they're not kind of really interacting on Instagram or Twitter. So I would look at the people who are commenting on their pictures and I would look at the people who are liking tweets or re tweeting tweets and I would follow those followers. So I wouldn't just literally randomly pick their followers. I would look at the followers who, who are interacting, the ones who are having a conversation, who are saying things about their posts because they're definitely more real and more engaged followers and hopefully they'll do the same for you.
Speaker 1: (33:34)
And of course the other thing that helps is if you follow people, people will follow you. So in the early days, yeah, I followed people on Twitter all the time, but again, I was really strategic about, okay, are you in the right industry? Are you following other people like me? Do I think my content is going to add value to you? And I would go and follow them and I would interact with them. And it took time. Like I said, this wasn't an easy task, but I was able to build my Twitter because of it. So think about that interaction. Think about the different ways in which you can find your audience members through existing businesses where they compliment you or your customers or show up on their accounts or directly to those people by looking at who, uh, sorry, what hashtags they're using and whether these hashtags are relevant.
Speaker 1: (34:19)
Your audience, of course. Another thing as I've said is make sure that you're being consistent. Make sure you're putting good stuff on there. Also things like your bio's have really well filled in your profile. Pictures are good because we all know who get a follow from someone who hasn't got a good profile picture or no profile better at all. The chances of me following them back as slim if they don't have a cover photo if they haven't filled in their bio. So really simple stuff, but make sure you're putting all those things in in order to maximise the opportunity you've got for people to come and follow you back. One thing I am absolutely not a fan of is people saying, Hey, follow me. It's awful. So I've had loads of people DM me saying, I've just followed you, follow me back. And I'm like, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: (35:04)
If you ask me, I'm not going to the same. If you comment on a picture saying you might want to follow my account because again that doesn't sound great. Hopefully if I interact and you like me and we have a conversation and you look at my account and you want to follow me, brilliant, but if you don't want to follow me, then that's cool. I want people who are interested. So please try and keep that always in front of your mind that even though we can do these things to try and get followers and to try and increase our accounts, I do really want you to go for quality over quantity. So one last tip before I go. If you have a particularly good account, i.e. One of your platforms have got lots of followers, why not say on other platforms that you're on other platforms?
Speaker 1: (35:50)
Does that make sense? Say for instance, why not put a post on Twitter saying, hey, did you know I'm on Instagram all the time, come and find me over on Instagram. So why not try and uh, sort of cross pollinate? Is that, does that even make sense? Your audience members? So if they're following you one place, they might come and follow you in another. But again, I would think about what content are you putting out there. So for instance, my Instagram is very different from any other platform that I have. So I know if you're following me on Twitter, you're going to get a very different feed. If you follow me on Instagram and therefore I would happily recommend you follow me on both. If I was checking out exactly the same content on every platform at the same time every day, then kind of what would be the point.
Speaker 1: (36:32)
So just think about that. If you are going to ask other people, I. E. Your Twitter followers to come a follow on another platform. Okay. That is it from me today. The Gin and tonics and Broadway are calling, although I have a lot more work to do. Before we go, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you've got any tips and I really would love to hear them in terms of how you've got followers, please do let me know. I share stuff with my audience, like I said, through podcasts, through my email, through stuff on my site and my social media. So I am all about the sharing and all about getting us all into a bad position and growing our businesses. So if you've gotten a great tips and you want to share them with me, for me to share with my audience, I would love you to do that.
