The internet is a crowded place—and it’s only becoming more crowded. There are currently around 3.03 billion social media users. The good news is, this means there are far more opportunities to connect with people and gain followers for your brand. But on the flip side, it also means there’s much more competition. If you want to stand out you’re going to have to try harder to get followers, connect with people, and make an authentic positive, lasting impression. Fortunately, there are many ways to do this.
Four Ways to Get Followers and Create Connections:
Create Engaging Videos
YouTube is one of the internet’s biggest, most popular platforms. It currently has just over a billion users—that’s almost one-third of total Internet users—who watch more than 500 million hours of content every single day.
Creating videos for your audience to watch is far more personal than just uploading blog posts. It allows them to see many aspects of your personality that you just can’t express through words and helps to build trust.
Some users have built their entire business by creating unique and engaging YouTube videos. Bri Hall is one beauty, fashion, and lifestyle vlogger who has amassed over 600,000 followers and over 32 million unique views on her videos since she started producing content in 2013.
On the other side of the scale, there are YouTubers like Roberto Blake who gained popularity discussing entrepreneurship with his audience on how to market themselves. His channel has amassed over 23 million views of his videos.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that no matter what kind of content you create, you’re likely to find an audience if your branding is on point.
Uploading Instagram Posts and Videos Regularly
If you’re not already leveraging Instagram to connect with your followers, you probably should be. The platform now has 200 million monthly active users. Engagement rates are 15 times higher than Facebook, and 20 times higher than Twitter.
Using hashtags is also a great way to build your audience and introduce more people to your content.
Uploading an Instagram post or taking a quick 15-second video is much less effort than creating an entire YouTube video or organizing a local meetup. If you’re running low on time, it’s something you can do every single day along with to keep your audience engaged.
Also, if your followers like your Instagram content, it’s likely they’ll like your other content too. This means you can leverage Instagram to promote your YouTube videos, local meetups, or webinars to your followers
Launch a Webinar
A webinar is a middle ground between creating videos and hosting a meetup. It’s effectively the best of both worlds—you can connect with your followers in real-time without being limited by geographical location.
Platforms like ClickMeeting enable you to run custom-branded webinars and engage with followers from all over the world. You can use it for virtually anything—from sharing your day, introducing new products, to hosting questions and answering videos.
The best part about webinars is you’ll get immediate feedback from your audience-direct data that will help you understand how to improve your service or what they would like to see from you.
Host Meetups in Your Local Area
This can be quite a difficult strategy to carry out, and it first requires building a substantial audience. If your followers are based in different areas around the world, it could be a while before you raise enough interest to make a local meetup worthwhile.
However, if you’re willing to travel, or if the majority of your followers are based locally it can be a great way to connect people and will take your relationship with your followers to the next level.
There is no better way to build a lasting connection than actually meeting and talking in person.
For Best Results, Try Everything
There are virtually unlimited ways to make connections with your followers. While this means you have lots of options available, it can also feel quite overwhelming at times.
Picking one or two of these methods and sticking to them will work over time, but to really stand out and reach the widest audience possible, try out multiple methods to find out which will yield the best results.
For the best results, try to combine all of these methods and after a while go with whichever one works best for your business model.