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...