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Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That is the exact same question you need to think about when you think, which came first: the content or the social media followers? Today we're going to talk about this question, so buckle up and let's chat.
I'm Samantha Russell from Twenty Over Ten, and one of the things that we have conversations about over and over again with many of our clients is they are hesitant to spend time, effort and energy posting content on social media because they don't have any followers to begin with. So they always want to know, how do I get more followers, how do I get more people to connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram or follow me on Twitter?
But here's the thing: you're thinking about it in the wrong order. Followers will come eventually, and there are things you can do to create more followers and engage with more people, but first you need to have content worth following. People will be much more likely to want to follow along if you're sharing pertinent, valuable information that will help them or be enjoyable to look at or make them laugh or teach them something, that is the reason that we want to follow other people.
Now yes, there are things you can do to build your follower base right away. So tip number one for adding more followers quickly is to connect with every person that you already have a relationship with. This can be time consuming if you do it manually, but you can also upload your email contact list into platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook and help that process go a lot faster. You can also reach out to second-degree connections of your first-degree connections and say, "Hey, I see we know so-and-so in common, let's connect." But what you don't want to do is start reaching out to people with a sales pitch who you've never even met before. If you're going to connect with a stranger, connect with them, but don't be pitching them something in the process.
Think about how you connect with new people yourself- if somebody sends you a connection request, you're likely to click on their profile and look and see who they are, what their background is, what they do and look at what they have shared, right? And if they've shared a lot of pertinent information that is going to be valuable to you and your business, or valuable to you as a human being, you're going to be much more likely to want to say yes, I will accept this friend request or this invitation, and I will follow along. Or if it's Facebook Business, sure, I'll follow your company page because you're sharing information that's pertinent to me. If you haven't been sharing anything, they're much more likely to say, "Oh I don't know, they just want to sell me something" or, "I don't want to just add this to the never-ending scroll of content that I'm seeing on my feed."
So again, when you're thinking about social media, make sure you're thinking first, set up profiles. Second, start sharing content. And then third, you want to think about how to grow your followers. We have another video on how to get more followers, and it's all about eight different ways that you can grow your network, so we'll link to that below. But again, this is more just a helpful video to get you in the right mindset of how to think about social media. It really is a long-term value proposition, not a quick fix.
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