HOW I BUILD MY 300,000 K FOLLOWING

in #steemit7 years ago

HOW I BUILD MY 300,000 K FOLLOWING

I wanted to give this ADVICE to you for free, everything i learned over the last 4 years. Take it or leave it. This is your opportunity to change your thinking and do well. I have posted something similar before, but I decided to redo it and add to it. I have been working on my social media for last 4 years. I have build my following from scratch, I have never paid for any followers, I have never boosted anything, its all organic. However as fancy as those figures sound, it took A LOT of hard work, dedication, resilience and never giving up mentality. I want to share few tips with you and hope it will help some of you!

My stats to date :

Steemit : 1,200 k followers

Facebook : 218,00 k followers

Youtube : 67,5000 k followers

Instagram : 16,000 k followers

( P.S feel free to follow me on any platform - its the same name @allasyummyfood)

If you’re starting from scratch, then trying to build a social following can be a daunting and very frustrating experience. 

Do you feel like people aren't liking your content and the only people following you is your mum and friends? That is how I felt 4 years ago… First of all, the question to ask yourself is what are you trying to achieve?  You have to know and understand what is that you are building and why? You need to be unique and add value. As hard as it sounds, there is always a niche for something. But there is also loads of repetitive rubbish out there. REMEMBER YOU WILL ONLY STAND OUT when you have something original. Those people that steal ideas, steal everything you did - will never succeed, because they are not original. 

Getting started...finding a niche..

Three years ago I realized that no-one was doing Russian and Eastern European food recipes in English. I saw the gap and decided to become the first one. I believe that anything you write/blog about will be valuable to someone. That is why platforms like YouTube has seen such success, because you can learn/find anything you like. However in recent years Youtube has been going down. I have over 4,5 million views across all my videos and guess ho much money I make? 100 $ .... yes thats right! Here is a screen shot to prove. Hours and hours of work, 400 videos, each video takes 4-8 hours to produce... you do the maths. Ive been paid nothing, pennies.  

How does this apply to Steemit?

Steemit is a very new platform, which gives you a massive opportunity to start writing about something that doesn’t exist here YET. I love Steemit, it has given me an opportunity to feel worth it again, to feel that my hugh quality work, my high quality videos and pictures are appreciate here! Anyone who is just starting, why even bother going on youtube anymore? Just start right away here, THIS IS THE NEW SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM that WILL CRUSH IT! 

The competition will come, eventually....

but you will be the first in that field and have a bigger following and more Steem Power. You have to be positive, inspiring and authentic. Your content needs to be unique and useful to others.  Most importantly you need to add value to the community. If you haven't watched the interview with @dan and @ned posted by @dollarvigilante in his second article, you really should. Like Dan said, the most important thing is to add value to the platform and the community. 

Let's go deeper...

I have outlined several key points that I think could help my fellow Steemers build their following from scratch. 

1. Time and Patience.  

It takes a long time for things to develop. Nobody is an overnight success. Every successful business or person worked their ass off in order to get to where they are now. I worked for 4 years every day, every weekend building my brand and my following. I invested so much time and effort into building my reputation and it is finally paying off… 4 years later. But not even money wise... its paying off with the following and strong brand I created. I used to work 7 days a week 16 hour days!!

It is the same with Steemit. You have to work hard, you have to invest time and build your reputation. The rewards will come and it will pay off eventually. I am very impatient person, but after creating Allasyummyfood I had to learn how to be patient and that everything takes time, It's all about the process and continual improvements. There were a lot of times I nearly gave up, but I didn’t and kept going and I am happy I did. 

2. Have a plan. 

A lot of people don’t have a plan or a vision of where they want to be. They start using social media and realize it takes a lot of time, engagement and dedication and then they stop altogether at the first hurdle because its a lot of work and effort. Everyone is so LAZY these days. You just think by putting content out there people will just jump right on and love you and subscribe - think again! Its HARD WORK! 

 I have seen it on Steemit as well, how people are “giving up” after posting several articles that didn’t get noticed. That’s life, just because you want it, doesn’t mean it will happen right now. You have to work hard, add value and something unique for it to work. Stop posting links on other peoples blogs! I have seen it a lot on my post - I am telling you I will start flagging the spam.. because thats all it is! Instead of spamming me, go and comment on others who have same or similar interests and they are more likely to go and check you out! 

Assuming you’re starting from scratch, remember that you don’t need to overwhelm yourself with the task of putting a complex plan together in the beginning. Start with a basic plan that provides you with some direction. Make a simple word document and write some ideas you have for the future  posts. 

3. Make Goals and have dedication. 

First, set mini goals and KPIs (key performance indicators) so you know where you’re going. I learned this from my job as a recruiter where I had to meet KPIs every day and have goals for every month. “A goal is a desired outcome. KPIs: Key metrics showing whether your performance is good enough to reach your outcome.” I have goals for the next year. 

Seeing those goals keeps me going every day and work harder. This is exactly what you need to do with Steemit. Set your mini goals. Where do you want to be? Do you just want to earn money here, do you want to add value or do you want to have more power or meet amazing people and connect with them? My next goal is to become a baby dolphin, after that I want to be an orca and so on. I am fully investing into Steem and will be powering up as well, and I know it will pay off. I am not saying if you set your goals and don’t do anything, it will happen. You have to be dedicated and work hard. 

4. Stick to a schedule and have consistency. 

Organize your time correctly and stick to your schedule. Whether you are doing 1 post a week or 2 posts a day, have a schedule you can look at and track. I have written an article about it - check it out!  Create a schedule. How many times you want to post a week? What are you going to post? Is it going to add value to the community? Will it send a larger message that brings in more people?  Plan in advance. Read the news, articles, and look out, things might change and you will have to adapt and shift your focus. 

5. Build a community

You have to share stories that trigger emotions and make people feel part of your story. The stronger the emotion, the more likely people will react to your content. I shared my childhood recipes that my grandmother cooked for me and this triggered emotion in a lot of people that had similar story and left their country at a young age. 

Sharing beautiful and powerful images is a great way to communicate your message to your audience and make them feel certain ways: happy, hopeful, curious, excited, nostalgic, proud... etc.  You want to build a community that engages each other to create a positive change. You want people to be inspired by your stories.

6. Know your audience. 

Statistics are not available at Steemit yet, but I am sure they will be at some point. For other social platforms, you have the power to do analytics and study everything.  On other platforms, I know exactly who my audience is, what age they are and where they are from. This will help me plan my future recipes, engage with them and predict what they might like. 

7. Be Responsive, Genuine and Supportive

To truly attract and keep people interested and engaged in your social media channels and content you have to be responsive to their comments, genuine with your replies, supportive and helpful with your answers. To this day I reply to every single comment on  Steemit, Facebook and youtube accounts. I have a score of 99 % response rate!  If someone comments on your article here, take some time and respond to the comment. Go and check out what they are posting about and support each other. 

Someone was just a nobody yesterday, but can become somebody tomorrow. Don't judge people by the amount of fans/subscribers/followers they have. If you truly believe in them, and you love their content, support them now. Be genuine and be yourself, people will see that and appreciate it. 

I hope you found this article helpful and it added value to the community. Please re steem it , comment and like it :) 

If you follow me on Steemit I'll be posting an article about managing your time and organizing yourself on Steemit. 

Alla xox

Sort:  

What a great breakdown.

I've never really been transparent about my fan base with my fans. Do you find that it helps?

Ive never done it with fans, just here, as i feel i can be open about these things!!

Ok cool. I need to check my data again, but I'm about to hit 350-400K fans, but my biggest are Google+, Pinterest, & YouTube.

Thats amazing!! you have to def add this into your intro post!!

Well said and thanks for sharing, @allasyummyfood. It's important to set goals and not get discouraged when the results aren't immediate. That's where the support and interaction can be so helpful.

Compared to when i was building my website, i was writing for the crickets... absolutely no one showed up at the start. With Steemit at least there's some audience and interaction even if it's just a little bit.

yeah and I'm sure there will be more people interested as the platform grows, so dont give up! )

Thanks this makes a lot of sense! I was quite shocked when you said the price you get for YouTube vids, it's pretty obscene what big companies get away with. That's why I absolutely love being here now, I'm open minded to most stuff but being here really shifts your perspective even more. You start thinking...well why the hell should my content be basically used for CEO's wage increases.

Anyway time to start making a plan I definetly have niches I want to share with the world and like you say it's a generally open playing field at the moment.

yeah exactly!! i mean its crazy right!! i know i wanted to screen shot it, because most people dont believe it!!! soo yeah its insane!! thanks for your comment!

Very well said Alla. You have put it very nicely. I do agree with you that we have to be 100% dedicated into whatever we are trying to achieve. In this age where people are looking for fast returns, It is very easy to lose interest and enthusiasm when you are not getting any desired results. I myself have been struggling for some months now and working tirelessly with the faith that someday it will all be fruitful!

Yes imagine i was working 2 years like that with not many results, so it pays off eventually, but dont give up and be patient!

It's the abilliy and the possibility. Surely you cannot post and make a following crew behind you somewhere where there is no internet. Sa as all basic human needs are fulfilled you are ready to share you view of your own interests with the world. That's why 99% percent of youtubera, bloggers come from 1st world countries. It's a simple economy. Thanks for sharing, upvoted.

Yeah its a good point, but we are not talking about people who dont have internet or dont use it. Of course they cant give their voice, but thats just life and how it works.

there is also loads of repetitive rubbish out there. REMEMBER YOU WILL ONLY STAND OUT when you have something original. Those people that steal ideas, steal everything you did - will never succeed, because they are not original.

Golly gee.. I've only been trying to pound this into people's heads for the last couple of weeks, and people just keep fighting me on it.

I'm glad you said it. There is no easy road to success. Hard work pays off...

If you cheat your followers, you are cheating yourself too in the long run.

Thanks for re-affirming what I already knew was true... and you're proof of it!

You are very welcome, I'm glad I'm not going insane alone. So many people just assume its easy and wanna steal other peoples hard work! and are so not original :))

It takes time to fine tune what you're working on as well.

Excellent post and I'm glad you showed you Adsense Revenue. I was really shocked to see that it was so low for so many views. My revenue also went down on one of my channels but I don't have near the following that you have.

yeah its shocking, but i know in USA you get more revenue for adsnese, but yeah its shocking! i dont know what else i can do/ any advice?

Was your ad revenue higher previously? I know a lot of creators got hit hard by the Ad Pocolypse. I haven't dove fully into all your accounts but are you posting affiliate links for cooking related stuff? Any product placement revenue coming in for your Instagram account?
Have you thought about self branding kitchenware?

not i dont do anything like that! thing is i cant find time, i do everything myself and its so much work! so yeah its been hard, but yes i think maybe two years ago my highest revenue was 700 $ a month, then went down to 500$ then, 400$ and then it was stable at 200 $ and now for few months at 100$ SHOCKING

I'm really sorry to hear that your AdSense revenue has dropped off like that. All your stuff is Soooooo well put together from your Video editing, to your logo, to your website e-mail opt in. All your stuff is super professional. Here are a couple of ideas I wanted to throw out there. Check out https://famebit.com/creators You might be able to get some sponsorships from some brands that want to promote their kitchen / household products. You have a really big following across all those platforms and it is worth a lot. Someone will be willing to pay to tap into it. Also I have had a lot of success with affiliate programs throught www.ShareASale.com. For instance I have one YouTube channel that only has 1700 subscribers and I only make $120 / month in Adsense but I make $200 - $800 / month in affiliate comissions depending on what time of year it is. You can make an account on there and search for Affiliate offers for kitchen equipment you use. I ended up negotiating a higher comission on some of the stuff I provide links for. Also a 3rd option is to go sell branded on some stuff. This takes a lot more work but the way you could play it is to have self labeled stuff manufactured in China and have it shipped directly to Amazon Fullfillment centers. Then you sell this stuff out of the Amazon fullfillment centers and also say something like "Get your Alla's fruit peeler at my Amazon store!" Then have links below and all that. You have to buy in bulk though but you could keep line extending until you have an entire line of self branded kitchen products. Here is an example. http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/AD325-Swivel-peeler-of-gadgets-and_60363057419.html?spm=a2700.7724838.0.0.bXOBBZ

These are just a few ideas to check into. You have put a ton of amazing work into your brand and commanding the kind of following you have is not easy to do by any means. There should be one way or another where you could make very good money doing what you love. I hope some of these ideas can help spark some ideas. :-)

That is some really good advice! I really appreciate it! thanks so much i will look into all of those!! :) You are the best !!

Yeah no problem! I know it sounds weird but I have been sort of chasing what you have achieved as far as a following for a long time. I have had success gaining smaller followings in more Niche things and decided to pull back from putting in time on YouTube channels that had the potential for a much larger audience. That ultimately ended up being the smart thing for me to do financially the way some stuff has turned out with the Adpocolypse.
I have wanted to be a full time content creator but have never really been able to take the chance to go after that because it takes years to really build the following up to where it can support you a person.
I'm trying to set myself up right now to be able to take that chance to finally go after that goal.

yeah I'm the same, i really wanted to be a full time blogger and youtuber, but sadly reality is not the same. u still managed to make money which makes sense. i just feel i build the following long hours, days but I'm not been rewarded!

Love the idea of KPI's and small goals! I just started here about a month ago when I was seriously considering getting a blog set up. Steemit seems to do a lot of that work for you.

I can concentrate on the brainstorming part, and commenting on the posts of others to peak their interest in me (...if you show someone you care...) I had set it in mind to have a planning session Sunday, so this article was great timing!

Thanks

yeah for sure! glad you are here and you will enjoy!! :)

Alla, I have no idea how you did that - everything you wrote seems so obvious and easy, but the way you wrote it is just so honest and encouraging! I guess your personality just reflects in your posts :) Followed!

aww thank you so much!! I'm glad you can read and get my emotions and personality through this!! happy to hear :))

Tasks to be brilliant? You're doing it. Thank you for your insight on growing your followers. And good job being so smart. Not every snowflake is quite a cookie. You're a smart cookie.

heheh thank you ;P i appreciate that !