3 Ways to Grow Your Following and Make Clients Want You

The goal is always grow your following. This time of year is tough. Attention spans are short. Yours. Distractions are many. Theirs. This can be a harder time of year than the holidays. At least, for Northern climates, when it gets cold people are driven indoors, and in any climate surrounding the holidays there are numerous parties and social events to encourage clients to be at their best.

What happens when the sun, fresh air, family outings, vacations and travel are all calling? Crickets. Fewer leads. Fewer phone calls. Fewer appointments.

There are a few things you can be doing to help you grow your following. These little tips can boost your connection with customers and prospects whether they come on more now or they come in more later because of it. The stronger your call-to-action, sense of urgency, and scarcity within these, the more quickly you’ll see more customers. Those details I’ll leave up to you and share more in another blog. 

1. Get live and get naked. Don’t stop to do your hair or pull on your Lululemons, unless you live that way 24/7. Post a live video of you rolling with the punches of a crazy day. Grow your following by looking real instead of perfect. I posted a quick spur-of-the moment video last Friday. Too little time too much to do and I realized I had to show the fact that it happens to us too. We don’t have hours to exercise! Or an hour! Last time I did that I had a baby in the nursery at the gym and literally had a break! Going on 20 years since that happened. So showing me, unmade up, bed head, just poured out coffee and poured myself into shorts jumping on the treadmill doing a better-than-nothing workout. It got 2.7K views and several shares in a short amount of time. If you only come on perfect every time you will not make the connection of being real, being full of life and purpose. You’ve got to connect to the vulnerable and easily intimidated side of them by being vulnerable yourself.
2. Get canned and comfortable. If you must, record your video and then share it once you’ve edited. Or post a routine or workout instead of simply talking about a literal moment in your day. Grow your following by choosing to answer a frequent question or solve a problem. I did a yoga session for tight hips on live video last Sunday. It got 6K views and 14 shares to date. You’ll feel more comfortable doing this type of video first. Have a plan, teach it according to your purpose. That purpose is twofold: how it serves them and how it serves the action you want them to take next. It must be congruent. People aren’t going to watch a video and then go and buy something but they would easily go deeper by opting in for an ebook. Send them to a page specifically set up around that one relevant thing. Too often we’re sending them to home page of a website with 10 places to look and click and you know what they’ll do? NO? I don’t either. But chances are they won’t do anything that leaves you with their contact information. That’s poor use of social media, your time to make the video to go on social media, and on your marketing funnel. (you don’t have one) It’s so easily fixed. Make one step clearly walking down the path to the next. Make it relevant to the reason they got there in the first place and according to the depth of the relationship you have with them.
3. Get questions give answers. Jump on a live Facebook video and respond to questions you get. You can do this live if you’re willing or you can do this with a prepared list of your most frequently asked questions. Both are easy ways to answer questions you answer every day and add value to your prospects and customers. The key to making this work is to announce in advance you’re going to be live at a certain date and time. Send it to your email list and post it on your social media platforms. Then give a call to action. Ask for comments, questions, a thumbs up for a great question. Ask a question yourself, a poll if you will, and have the viewers there respond in the comments with a number or appropriate answer to your question. This matters. Facebook likes it when you have an engaged audience.

Remember that you’ve got a simple affordable tool in your pocket. Use that phone frequently with purpose. You can grow dramatically in a few short weeks.

The biggest path to success with social surrounds what you plan to do with that base of fans and followers. You don’t want to sell directly on your timeline. Social suicide. You do want to begin to bring them to your content-rich blogs and articles on your website. You do want to pixel those pages and advertise to your growing fan base, a targeted audience and people who’ve visited your website. THAT is the value of using social.

You’ve got this!

*the numbers I shared are relative to your list size or fan base and mine. Just start. You’ll find out what your benchmark is and then grow from there.