Ever click on someone's profile and see they have 100K+ or even 1M+ followers and find yourself hitting the follow button without much thought?
But if you go to someone's profile and see they have 300 followers, you probably never hit follow.
This is normal. We're herd animals.
The ice cream place with the line around the block must be the best, right?
We model our behavior based on the behavior of others.
If we see someone with many followers, we assume we should, too. If we see someone with only a few followers, there must be a reason more don't follow them.
Social proof is a powerful motivator. This is particularly true on social media, as social proof is baked right into it.
The person with a small following has to WOW you to get a follow.
The person with a huge following can post a platitude, and you’ll be impressed.
The same applies to a post.
A post with 10,000 likes is exponentially more likely to get a like and a comment from someone than a post with 10 likes.
Particularly from someone other than a die-hard fan.
So a lot of audience building is about growing the number of die-hard fans that like basically everything you post, increasing the odds that strangers will follow the herd, and also liking your post.
And building up a follower number that makes people take you seriously.
If you're early in your audience-building journey, you must be super scrappy. Every new follower matters a ton.
(And writing really good hooks is a great start:)
Psychological Thresholds
There are a few “psychological thresholds:”
1,000: This is where people go: “Okay, they're not completely new.”
5,000: “Not a complete nobody.”
10,000. “Hmm, maybe they do have something to say.”
50,000. “Oh, okay, this is a creator on the rise.”
100,000. “This is a legit creator.”
500,000 or even 1M+. “How do I not already know this person?”
If you're early on, you must fight to 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000.
Here are some scrappy ways to get there:
Manually DM people who engage with your posts to thank them or start a conversation. They'll often follow.
Meaningfully comment on other people's posts who are at a similar stage. Start a convo. Then, eventually, follow them/send a connection request and DM them.
Comment on other people's comments on big creator's posts. Again, start a convo and follow/connection request + DM.
I’m skeptical of the whole “comment on my post to get visibility” concept. Instead, use it to connect with other readers of that person.
Get every friend you know to follow you. I did this to take my YouTube channel from 0 subscribers to something initially.
Send a connection request or follow anyone you've ever met or interacted with.
Add a link to your profile as an email signature.
Whatever you can do to have a few trickle in over time.
If you have 100 followers, a new follower is 1% growth. It’s meaningful.
The best hack on LinkedIn
On LinkedIn, if someone accepts your connection request, they automatically become a “follower.” So, if you can get people to accept your requests, you can grow without posting.
And you can automate this process using tools like WeConnect.
You give it a list of people to connect with, and it'll send 20~30 connection requests daily to those people. If 50% of those accept, that's 300+ new monthly followers. AND new connection requests are more likely to see your content for a week or two.
At 50,000 followers, that's not especially meaningful as it's less than 1% monthly growth. But if you only have 300 followers, that's 100% growth in a month handled automatically.
And if you can get higher than a 50% acceptance rate, you grow even faster. You can do this by identifying people who are MORE likely to accept, such as:
People in your same city.
People who graduated from your university.
People with the same job title or experience.
People who work at or have worked at the same company.
People who have already engaged with one of your posts—they’re roughly aware of you already.
People of the same community (for example, YC founders).
Warning: This is technically against LinkedIn’s terms of service, which is why WeConnect does things like slowly use your account to send requests throughout the work day, and not in one big boost. They try to mimic human behavior. So it’s up to you. It’s generally considered safe but fair warning.
An added benefit
During the first few thousand followers, I’ll take a follower even if it’s low quality or not the right audience fit—to get the follower count up.
But ultimately, you want to build an audience that will buy from you one day. To do that, you want people in your target market.
An added benefit of sending connection requests is choosing people in your target audience. For example, if you sell leadership coach services, you can connect with founders, CEOs, and senior leaders in North America—all people significantly more likely to become your customers.
And the way LinkedIn’s algorithm works is that if a group of people with similar demographics all engage with a post, it shows the post to more people who match that demographic.
So if you can seed it with a bunch of people in your target market, you’re far more likely to go viral with that audience—people who are more likely to buy from you.
So be scrappy
Sad reality: A lot of audience building has nothing to do with content creation.
It’s about networking.
A nice sweet spot is building up the network 50% of the time and 50% creating great content for that network.
Early on, I’d say focus even more on network building.
Get those first few thousand followers however you can.
Here are some free resources to get better at writing:
Cheers folks!
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– Neal