It’s Not the Size of Your Following That Matters, It’s How You Use It: by Chris Horner

There’s a common misconception in social media that the more followers or likes you have, the more influential you are or the higher your chances of making a bazillion dollars online with little to no work. There seems to be a race to get the most followers and likes with little or no thought to the endgame. Oftentimes people think that if they have a million followers that a million people are looking at their work and that will automatically lead to sales.

Well, no. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work that way.

In this article, I’m going to look at Twitter and Facebook pages as they might be used for a business, and share some insights into growing an online community that has value.

First, as with any new endeavor, decide what your goals are. Why do you want to use social media? To keep in touch with customers and prospects? To network with peers? Answering these questions will help you determine the crowd that you want to attract.

The next challenge is to attract the right kind of people to you. In order to do that, you need to share information that your target audience will find relevant and interesting. Fill out your profile as specifically as possible so there’s no question who you are and what you’re about. Jump in the conversation and share your insight. For example, if you’re looking to network with other photographers, share links to some sweet work that you found. Or share tips to help everyone improve their photography. Or even better, share information specific to your niche and bounce ideas off of others interested in the same.

If you’re going after prospects, share information with them that can help them enjoy your work. Keep them up to date on a special project that you’re working on. If you sell art, share information on framing and lighting so they can get the best results when displaying your work. If you’re a wedding photographer, share information specific for soon to be newlyweds. The idea is to keep yourself relevant and valuable in their minds. If you can demonstrate expertise in your field AND their interests, your value goes up in their eyes considerably and they begin to think of you as a trusted advisor.

Either way what you want to avoid is getting people to follow you who aren’t relevant or that are not part of your target audience. It will just clutter your stream with noise and make it harder to keep up with the people that you want to keep up with. Yes, it will take longer to build a following, but the idea here is engagement and interaction. It’s not huge numbers for the sake of making you feel good. You’ll get a lot more out of your social media experience, as will those who you are interacting with.

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Company: Lens Artwork
Phone: 734.926.9595
Email: chris@lensartwork.com
Website: http://www.LensArtwork.com
Twitter: @LensArtwork
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lensartwork

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