Grow Your Following By Following

In the social media world of Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and the rest of them, followers (or likes) are King.

You can broadcast your messages all you like, but if you don’t have loyal followers you won’t actually be heard. There’s no lack of strategies to get followers (and I mean the right followers, not just anyone for the sake of a ‘like’ or a ‘follow’) but one of the easiest free ways to get on the radars of your target audience is by being a

‘follower’ yourself.

When you like or follow a page it immediately informs the moderator of that page, providing a wonderful opportunity for them to engage with you and (hopefully) like or follow you back. When they do it’s then broadcast to their network, increasing the likelihood of their audience to also check out your page and like or follow you.

It doesn’t matter what social media platform you’re using, it’s time to start following and liking pages. This is who should be on your radar….

1. Current customers/ clients (this may be people or companies)

2. Prospect customers/ clients (again, could be people, groups or companies)

3. Competitors (yes, follow them, engage with them and even support them)

4. Complimentary products/ services/ companies (think your favourite paint brand if you’re an artist)

5. Industry-relevant groups or regulatory bodies (as a marketer this might be the ‘advertising standards bureau’)

6. Your suppliers (from the company that supplies you the paper you use for printing, to the coffee shop you and your team go to every day)

7. Aspirational or personality brands (basically any brand, product, service, person or company that you actually just like. It could be as big as Virgin or as personal as the author of your favourite book).

Want to take it one step further?

Don’t just follow or like them, actively engage with them. ‘Like’ their posts, comment on their posts and ‘share’ their posts on your page. As long as it fits with your brands personality then go for it!

Now, before I leave you to your liking and following, it’s important that whatever your platform, you must be distributing high quality content and communicating in a way that is right for your audience. If it

isn’t, you’ll be wasting your time. People will not engage with you – no matter how many of them you follow.

Enjoy!