- Wierdly, I'm just a fan of doing things the hard way.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake, of robertoblake.com,
helping you create something awesome today.
So, we've got a interesting question to answer today.
How do you grow your personal brand in social media?
Ultimately, this comes down to how do you get more views?
How do you get more subscribers?
How do you get more followers in Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat, Facebook, etc?
And, I'm gonna talk a little bit about that,
and I have some suggestions for those of you starting from
zero, so you'll definitely want to take some notes here.
When you're just getting started, one of the most important
things to do, is to ignore the numbers.
A lot of you don't like to hear that, but it's the truth,
because the motivation shouldn't come from acknowledgement,
it should come from accomplishment.
It should come from doing.
Instead of setting a goal of a subscriber count,
or a view count, or a follower count,
you should set a goal of doing the work.
The goal that I tell most people that they should be
striking for is 100 executions of whatever.
Let me put this in context for you.
Marques Brownlee, mbkhd, I think he has about 4,000,000
subscribers in YouTube right now, has more influence
over technology purchases than the New York Times.
He did 100 videos to get to 78 subscribers.
You heard me.
Marques Brownlee, mkbhd, 100 videos to get 78 subscribers.
So, that's why you don't need to worry about acknowledgement
and those follower counts initially
when you're getting started.
You need to be doing the work.
He did the work.
100 videos, and it only got him 78 subscribers.
And this is back in the days of YouTube, when all of you
claimed it was easier to grow a YouTube channel,
because there was no competition.
I would make the argument it's harder, because no one knew
about YouTube, no one cared about YouTube.
No one respected it, and nobody was making money yet.
But that's just YouTube.
But I'm gonna put this in the context of everything you
want to do in social media.
Go ahead and accept that you're going
to have to do the work.
And that is going to take years.
It's not going to be overnight success.
And just accept that it may not go where you think
it's going to go immediately.
You might fail.
You might have to pivot.
But the important thing is to keep going,
and to keep trying, especially when you're talking about
building your brand and building your reputation.
Because the thing is, it doesn't matter if you have 10,
or 20, or 100 followers, if they're the right followers.
What are you really trying to accomplish?
Do you want to be popular?
Do you want to be famous?
Do you want to make money?
Do you want to build a legacy?
Do you want to be an expert?
Do you want to be an influencer or a motivational figure?
What do you really want to get out of this?
That's number one I think.
And then two, are you really willing to put in the work
that it takes?
And so, how do you grow?
It's like, okay, that's great Roberto, how do you grow?
When you're starting from nothing,
the way you do it is by being personable.
You're not to reach the broadest amount of people.
You're trying to find like-minded individuals who will like
and respect what you do, and who you are, and so literally
you do the social media equivalent of
beating on doors one by one.
If I was starting from zero in Twitter right now,
and something I actually do often.
Some of you guys actually know this if you follow me
on Twitter @robertoblake, is even right now,
when I have over 10,000 or 11,000.
I don't remember.
I actually send people personalized Twitter videos
to start a conversation or to continue a conversation.
It literally takes me less than 30 seconds,
and that matters to them.
But also, people publicly see these videos and sometimes
they get in on it, or sometimes they respond.
And we have a little back and forth.
Or, if it's someone who's never followed me,
they'll end up following me.
Or sometimes, I'll tweet at somebody that I really respect,
and tell them thank you for something,
and compliment them on some work that they just did,
that honestly, I would have just tweeted this as a text,
but I'm like you know what?
They might want some acknowledgement.
They might want a thank you,
or they might, you know, find that interesting
or that nobody has ever done that for them.
I remember I actually tweeted a
thank you video to Chase Jarvis.
I don't think anyone had, I think he said no one had ever
tweeted a video at him before,
and that he thought that it was really cool.
And he sent me a thank you video back.
And that was just amazing.
That was great.
I didn't expect it.
I didn't think that that would happen.
I just wanted to say thanks because, you know,
he's an entrepreneur I respect.
I loved the interview that he did with Gary Vaynerchuk,
and I'm somebody who uses CreativeLive all the time.
So, I mean, those kind of things matter
when you're trying to build a following,
is building one on one relationships.
A lot of you take for granted these follower counts,
and they're just numbers to you.
For me, these are relationships.
I've built some of my best relationships,
and some of my best friendships, in social media.
There are people in social media that I literally
talk to multiple times a week.
More often than people who live 10 miles up the road from me
that I've known for five years.
And it's because that's the friendship that we have and
that we've built, and that's how we relate to each other.
When you have social media, it's about building a tribe and
a community of your choosing around like-minded interests
and topics, and that's what you have to focus on.
That's where your hashtag strategy comes from.
Your hashtag strategy doesn't come
from trying to growth hack.
It comes from trying to connect with people who care about
the things that you care about.
And so, this is where you need to take advantage of it.
You need to have real conversations with people.
You know what I hate the most?
I hate automatic DMs.
You know what I'm okay with?
I'm okay with people pushing automated content that says
"This article is about blah blah blah.",
because a human being doesn't have to do that.
The robots can do that.
And if it's something that's valuable to me,
or if it's a free download or resource?
Click. I'm grabbing it.
Because, that's something that's intriguing to me.
Spark curiosity.
Curiosity matters so much.
If you can't spark curiosity,
you can't get people engaged in the game.
You have to get them curious, you have to get them excited.
So think about
what's something that would trigger that curiosity?
This is how you're gonna grow your follower count.
Use interesting visuals and images.
Don't be boring.
People don't always like to read a wall of text.
Use video and images to your advantage.
And even if you aren't a great graphic designer
or photographer, use GIPHY and Twitter.
It's amazing.
Use other things.
Use Bitmoji.
I mean, use emoji culture in general.
There are so many things you can do
to build a grassroots following, one by one by one.
And these relationships will translate,
because they will share your stuff.
They will be loyal, passionate superfans,
who will retweet you, reshare you, regram you,
and just spread the love.
But they will only do it
if you're creating worthwhile content
that they can get engaged with,
that they can feel passionate about,
and if they feel you really care about them.
That matters.
I mean, I think a far majority of you share my stuff because
I actually comment back the far majority of the time in my
comments section, even though it costs me so much time.
And it's so much money to do that,
that I could be spending on other things.
I comment one, because I enjoy the conversation.
You guys ask great questions.
I crowdsource your questions for these videos.
And so, that really matters to me, that we have a
community, that we are the Create Awesome Community,
not just fans of Roberto Blake.
I love that so many of you, and this is the other thing,
you can be a super connector, I love that so many of you,
are connecting with each other.
That you're working together.
That some of you have done business together.
That some of you have pitched clients together.
I love hearing those stories.
I love that you guys are being successful.
I love hearing about your successes,
and that's something that really matters to me.
And I keep thinking of other ways
that I can just bring us all closer.
And so by building community, you can grow your following
exponentially, because you have these people
that are not just behind you.
They're behind the message.
They're behind the cause.
And so if you want to know how you grow a following in
social media from zero,
it has to not be about you.
It has to be about a bigger, higher thing that you're doing.
It has to be about a message that can unify a community
of people together, with you being the rallying point,
with you being the center.
But again, it's not about you.
It's about everyone else,
but that facilitates what you're trying to do,
and what you're trying to do
facilitates what they're trying to do,
or what they want to get out of it.
And this doesn't just matter if you're a
business person or an educator.
It matters if you're an entertainer too.
One of the things I love about Lilly Singh,
Superwoman, a lot of you know about her,
is how much she focuses on the fact that she wants
to bring joy into people's lives,
her own struggle with depression,
and the fact that what she does with her YouTube channel
is what got her out, and delivered her from her depression.
That's something that I relate to, and why I watch her
as an entertainer is because that message matters to me
as someone who suffered with severe depression and
anxiety and suicidal thoughts for years.
I can relate to her story.
And I can relate to the joy that she brings
into other people's lives,
and how she helps them with that struggle.
So, you have to have that.
You have to have something that is an underlying message
that your community and your fans can latch on to
that's not just about you, and about what you want,
and I think too many people are in it for the wrong reasons,
and that they just want to be famous,
or they want to make fast money.
And people can smell that a mile away.
You want to build a following.
You want to build a loyal fan base.
Be up front about caring about them first.
Create value for them,
whether or not you get acknowledgement for that up front.
Get over it, and just put in the work,
and build the relationships one by one by one,
until they scale.
That's all it comes down to.
Anyway, I'd love to know your thoughts and your questions,
so leave those in the Comments section.
You know I love to interact and engage there.
If you have ideas for other videos that I should do,
leave those there as well.
I'd love to hear from you.
If you want more tips and advice on your personal brand,
and how you build community, I give a lot of that away for
free in the Create Awesome Community Newsletter.
I also tell some personal stories about what I'm up to,
so make sure you're
subscribed at robertoblake.com/newsletter.
Links are in the description, and in the annotation thing,
wherever that is up here.
Anyway, Like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so much for watching,
and don't forget: create something awesome today.