How to build a following...

When I started my Finance Coach group on Facebook a year ago, I set myself a goal of having 1,000 members within a year. I remember a number of people saying to me that that was a very high bar to set, and I shouldn’t be surprised if I fall well short of that. Well, last Friday was one year exactly, and I had 902 members. So, I didn’t quite make it to 1,000 in time, but I ‘scored’ 90.2% on my own ‘test’, and I’m pretty damn happy with that! So, I don’t confess to being the world’s best blogger (far from it), but here’s some of what I learnt in the process. While the lessons were learnt from blogging, they can easily be translated into a business context…

Give people something they want/need. Find a niche that’s not being served, or that’s not being served well enough, and fill it. If people want and need what you’re offering, half the battle is won. What spurred me to start my Finance Coach group was coming across more and more people that were in a real financial pickle, or whose businesses were struggling. I knew then and there that people would take to a group where they were given free, practical financial and business advice…

Keep your promises. Following on from the first point, do what you said you were going to do. If you suddenly start going off on a tangent, people will quickly become disillusioned, and drop you like a rock. There’s nothing wrong with diversifying, but don’t stop doing what it was that attracted people to you in the first place…

Get the word out. When you’re first starting out, take ANY opportunity you have to tell others about what it is you’re doing. Put up flyers, email everyone on your contact list, mention it in the conversation at dinner parties, hand your business cards out to everyone you meet, etc. The hardest part is getting out there, so be prepared for the hard yards, and to do whatever it takes…

Engage your audience. Invite feedback, and respond to it. Join the conversation about your product. Don’t be afraid of criticism, or try and cover it up – people will pick up on this straight away, and you’ll lose the trust that you’ve built up with them…

Give regular updates. I was told that, for blogging in particular, the single-most important thing you can do is to do it to write regularly. This principle can extend out to the business world as well – keep in touch with your customers, send them news, forward them articles that might interest them. This jogs their memory about you, and keeps you close to top-of-mind…

Measure, measure, measure. There’s no point in trying to grow a group of readers or customers, if you’re not tracking how you’re doing. This could be any metric that applies (reader numbers, rate of growth, increases in sales, etc), but monitor it closely to help you keep track of what’s working and what’s not…

Be sincere. Come across in all of your communications as professional, but still human. Remember that your audience/customers are, ultimately, still people – so talk to them in their language every so often, if not all the time. Being sincere will also pay off big time when you make a mistake (and you probably will sometime) – your followers haven’t forgotten that you too are human, and will be much quicker to forgive you your trangressions…

Ask for referrals. Once you’ve built up a relationship with your followers or customers, leverage off of their networks. Ask them who else they know who would like your product; and ask them to invite their friends to give you a try…

Set goals, and then break them down into manageable parts. Don’t just have a vague idea of where you want to be – be specific about targets, what they look like, when they must be achieved by, who’s responsible for what. Then, once you have a goal in sight, break it down into smaller goals (or milestones) that need to be reached along the way. This way, you won’t be overwhelmed by the sheer size of your big goal, as you’ll be focused on the smaller, more realistic mini-goal…

Speak to people who’ve been there. Seek out those who have been successful in the area you want to get into, and ask what they did, and what lessons they learnt. You’d be surprised how happy most successful people are to give you advice. I was very fortunate to have the support of very experienced bloggers like Chris at Imod and the guys at Cherryflava – their encouragement and advice was priceless…

Remember your motivation. There will be times when you hit a stumbling block, come across a massive obstacle, or start to lose heart. When this happens, go back in your mind to what your motivation was for doing what you do, and bring that forward. There have been times when I just haven’t felt like writing anything, but I always remember that the point of the group was to help and inspire others to manage their finances and businesses better. That idea – that I was helping others in some small way – is what kept me going, even when I wasn’t feeling so hot about doing the work…