We’ve all seen pages on Twitter and Facebook with thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions of followers. It may seem overwhelming if you’re starting starting from scratch or with a small following. You may feel like you’re already behind the eight ball and you'll never get to those numbers. The truth is that's okay because a targeted following is what you want to strive for anyway.

Cultivate Your Following

While you can get results from a well-cultivated following you should always work toward growing and building your following. So keeping pushing forward. It’s so worth it. Get started expanding yours with these tips:

Send An Invitation To Your List

Inviting your mailing list to follow you in social media gives you yet another way to keep in touch with your audience. Mention some of your interesting posts inside the emails you send and always be sure to include follow buttons at the end of your emails. For example, build some flexible time into your schedule to chat with your audience via Google Hangouts or if you posted a video you know your followers would like to see, send them to Facebook to view it.

Be sure to have your updates post as public. It might make sense to make them private, so people have to follow you to see them, but it can be frustrating for your subscribers. After all, your subscribers have ALREADY told you that they’re interested in your stuff and have ALREADY given you their email address. Don’t make them jump through hoops to see your additional content or they may not stick around.

Encourage Your Website Visitors To Follow

One of your main priorities should be to get new visitors onto your mailing list. That way, you can contact them directly over and over again through your list. But another thing you want is old and new visitors alike to follow you on your chosen social media networks. Having several ways to communicate with your audience will help keep you in the minds of your prospects.

Add social media buttons to your site that allow your visitors to follow you directly on your main social media networks. While, it may be tempting to offer up a ton of options and include buttons for every social network you’ve joined, do consider these pitfalls:

  • When you include buttons for networks you’re not that active on, you don’t provide a very good experience for your following.
  • If you have too many choices, your visitors may not click on any due to too overwhelm. The old saying that “the confused mind always says no,” is absolutely true.

Be sure to keep it focused and limit your follow buttons only to the networks where you regularly participate. In addition, include invitations to follow you on social media in your blog posts and other content. Don’t just rely on buttons in the side bar – ASK them to follow you directly.

Get Involved, Interact And Build Relationships

Even though just liking someone’s post or video on Facebook isn’t going to make you best friends but interacting regularly with people will help you get noticed. Provide useful commentary on content that is complementary to your niche, get involved and be visible. If people can use you, they are more likely to follow you.

Always be purposeful about your participation and balance this with the important of keeping your schedule and avoiding distraction. Remember this and you will reap the benefits.

Seek Out Friends in Your Niche

One of the easiest ways to grow your online following through social networking is by making friends with others in your niche. This effect is even more dramatic when you make connections with influential people in your niche. Spend time on developing meaningful relationship with like-minded people because it has a lot of benefits:

  • You can share ideas and give each other advice
  • You can share one another’s content
  • You can cross-promote products

Work on these relationships. Don't just follow someone on and hope they’ll notice your replies. You need to cultivate the relationship. If at all possible, meet them in person or offer to help them in some way. Real relationships don’t develop through liking someone’s Facebook status, so do the work necessary to grow your network of friends.

Growing A Following Is A Two Way Street

Remember, that growing a following through social media goes both ways. You want people to share your content on social media, so you can drive that traffic back to you. Getting that traffic back from social media helps you grow your list and sell your products.

Make it easy for people to share your content. Include sharing buttons everywhere – on free reports, download pages, email broadcasts, on your blog posts and just about anywhere you publish content. The easier it is for people to spread the word, the more likely they are to do it.

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