Growing slow on social media then moving off-platform

Hey folks, hope you had a great weekend and are ready for another solopreneur blog update.

As you know from my previous few emails, we’re in a bit of a LinkedIn phase right now, and I had one more tip to share from my learnings last week.

I think LinkedIn is a very high-potential platform because they have huge numbers (getting close to 1 billion active users) and yet, the content creation still seems to be in its infancy.

Meaning, there’s not that many people that have really, truly “figured it out” and are crushing it.

Why is this important?

If you’re trying to build your personal brand, following, influence, business, etc., we all know how many platforms and marketing opportunities are out there.

The hardest part is deciding where to spend your time as a solopreneur, because if you try on all the platforms at once, you won’t have time for much else (unless you have a huge team/budget). So I like to stay focused on a few, and LinkedIn is – I think – a great one to focus on.

The other benefit of a following in general, is that it’s with you forever. If you build up a great following on a platform like LinkedIn, you have it forever. You can use it to market your current business, or for your current job, or side hustle. In 5 years, you can use it for whatever job or business or project you’re working on then.

You get my point – it’s the gift that keeps on giving. If you put in the time to grow it, of course.

Another thing I’ve learned over the years, from growing to over 11k followers on LinkedIn and over 54k on Tiktok (and without any dance videos!), is that consistency is everything.

Very few people gain thousands of followers overnight, with one post. And even if you do, you still need to continue engaging and creating new content to keep them around.

It’s the slow, consistent grind of putting out good content as a solopreneur that builds good, quality followings. People who genuinely like your content, instead of those who liked one video and may never engage with you again…

The last quick tip I got was to actually “like” your own posts on LinkedIn.

This confused me at first, but apparently the algorithm forwards posts that you “like” to your followers – even if what you’re “liking” is your own post!

I’m going to start doing it and report back…

One more thing I wanted to cover when it comes to building a following on social media is to never forget to move your followers off the platform.

What do I mean by this?

Well, last week I went to send a friend a message on Facebook and realized that I couldn’t message him, or even find his account. So I sent him an email:

“Hey did you delete your FB account?”

Turns out, the account got hacked and he may not get it back. At the very least, it’s going to be a process…

We’ve all seen it happen, either to yourself, a friend, family member, etc.

Luckily for him it wasn’t an important account for his business (he prefers IG for that), but of course, having to deal with a hacker and potentially losing an account sucks.

But also luckily for him, he’s building an email list!

In fact, we’re sort of email list accountability buddies, but that’s a topic for another email.

Here’s why it’s so important.

I talk a lot about building your personal brand, social media, growing on LinkedIn, etc. But you also need to have at least one place where you can “house” all of your followers that are off-platform.

By platform, I mean social media-type accounts or profiles that you ultimately don’t control or own. Facebook, LinkedIn, IG, Youtube, Medium, you name it.

Any day, you could get hacked, blocked, banned, froze, accused, kicked off,or who knows what else.

And if those happen, even if for a few days or weeks, think about the potential losses your solopreneur business could suffer. Or the amount of followers you could lose that you worked so hard to get.

That’s why for all of my businesses – Visto, our law firm, and even this passion project of mine, Solopreneur Grind, everyone gets funneled back to an email list.

First, because I love email as a medium, and think it rocks.

Second, because you own your email list. Sure, Convertkit or Aweber or Mailchimp or whoever can ban you, but you still own your list/subscribers.

You can take your list to another service provider overnight and be back up the next day!

So think about that, especially if you’re trying to build a social following, business, etc.

I wrote a blog post about how to start one, quick and cheap, a few years ago if you need help with it.

That’s it for. Have a great day, make sure to sign up for my daily updates and tips here, and keep grinding.

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