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Today, we’re going to look at one of the biggest questions we get sent here at The Social Wrap. How do you get your first followers on social media? Now, I sympathise with this question. And I firmly believe that those first 1,000 are the hardest to find. Once you hit 1,000, the process snowballs a little. We’ll focus mostly on Facebook and Twitter, but the tricks are applicable to all the social sites. Ready to get your socials off the ground? Let’s take a look.

Put links everywhere!

We’ll start with a simple and easy option. Start putting links to your social media sites everywhere. The first 100 or so followers should come from your existing connections. In other words, friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Put links in your email signature, and in all your correspondence. Stick a Facebook ‘like box’ on your website, so visitors can quickly follow your feed. Do the same with the ‘follow’ button for Twitter.

Set up a social strategy

If you’re going to hit 1,000 followers, you need to be strict about your social strategy. Social media, like any other marketing strategy, requires goals, plans, and commitment. So, let’s get started by creating a content calendar. What are you going to post, and how often? Start by committing to perhaps two blogs a week to share with your followers. Fill in the gaps by posing questions, posting images and videos, or curating content. The important thing is that you stay active and engaging.

Connect with others

This is a strategy that works particularly well on Twitter. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that building 1,000 followers on Twitter is much easier than Facebook. The reason being that most people follow others on Twitter with less resistance than Facebook. Start by following others in your niche. Follow the tastemakers, and identify the most active Twitter users in your sector. Follow them, reply to their tweets, and introduce yourself. It won’t take long to build up those first few exchanges, and your numbers will grow.

Get some help from the pros

If you’ve tried some of the above tactics, and progress is slow, you can always bring in help. There are plenty of social media agencies out there with the skills and resources to grow your presence. Take a look at some social media services pricing options, and see what works for you.

The shortcut

There’s always a shortcut when it comes to marketing online! However, as always, it costs money. You can skip the slow, laborious process of gathering followers one-by-one with advertising. By using social media adverts, you can quickly drive lots of relevant people to your page. Facebook is well set up for this, and you can target a very particular audience with your ads. Use your best piece of content, and fine tune your ad copy for the best results.

Using these tricks and techniques, you’ll land your first 1,000 followers in no time! That’s the hard part over, now for 10,000!