The Numbers Game Behind Growing A Social Media Following

I'm starting this series with the most common question I get asked. "How do I grow a large following on social media?" It's a numbers game, but not the numbers most people tell you to focus on.

Followers and subscribers are the headline numbers that get everyone's attention. Influencers are crowned based on those numbers. Many marketing campaigns base the amount they'll pay on follower counts. Followers also bring business opportunities.

A high follower count is validating. The logic of social media is, "If that many people follow {person}, they must be smart."

My following started on Twitter, but my largest following today is on LinkedIn. I transferred what had worked on Twitter to LinkedIn and did much better growing my second community. I have 148K followers on LinkedIn, and it took about 18 months to develop from 4K to 100K. My next community will grow much faster because I understand the dynamics of community growth better now.

Breaking Bad Numbers

Here's the conventional wisdom about growing followers. The focus is on how many followers you can get per post. For every post on social media, people outside of your current follower or subscriber base get shown the post. A portion of them start following you, and that's how most people think about growth.

This is where the obsession with gaming the social media platform's content recommendation system comes from. The more people who see a piece of content, the more followers will come our way. I'll explain the recommender systems in a later post.

Let's say each post on LinkedIn is gaining us 50 new followers. That's great so let's post every day. At 1500 new monthly followers, it will take 5 years and 6 months to reach 100K followers. That's probably longer than you want to spend getting there.

We need to bump those numbers up, so let's write even better content! We are getting 200 new followers per post and posting daily; it takes about 17 months to break 100K. Again, for most creators, breaking the 100K mark in over a year is more work than it's worth. New followers per post is a flawed metric to track because it supports a slow road to growth.

In reality, attracting 6K new followers per month is not attainable for most creators who are just starting. It's more realistic to get 150-500 new followers per week. Early growth is very slow, no matter how many posts per week or how amazing they are. The strategy you use to grow your following must acknowledge reality and start with achievable numbers.

Focusing On Realistic Numbers

How do we get from 150 new followers per week to 100K total followers? It's not about the content or the recommender engine. The focus must be on those new followers. Linear growth is slow, but exponential growth isn't.

The most efficient way to build a following is to get every new follower to bring you 2 more followers. At that rate, we break 100K followers in about 3 months. Even more important, we break through to 1M faster. That's the real game. It's not about creating loops with content. It's more important to create loops with people.

Some content will not do well. The recommender system won't promote other content. Relying on content to create a follower base is a prolonged path to victory.

A faster approach is to target people. Every new follower has a following of their own. Most people on LinkedIn have around 500 followers. The way recommenders work is people in your followers' networks see your content if they hit the like or comment. As your network grows, it becomes tighter because all those networks overlap significantly.

Most people's growth rate slows once they reach 10K-20K followers because their network has become homogenous. I share over 1000 common connections with some of my network. Many of those are also interlinked with other connections, so they cannot be a source of new follower growth.

Think about a network of 10K people where many people share connections with each other. As many as 9500 connections can be tightly coupled. That means all 9500 people are connected only to each other. 500 connections out of the entire network aren't commonly shared; those are the only room left for growth.

Most networks are much smaller than that, with 500-800 people tightly coupled based on working at that same small or midsized business. On Twitter and Facebook, tight networks build around circles of friends. The 10K person networks build around people who follow the same creators.

I have a few different creator circles that my following overlaps with. The old networks I started with in 2014 and 2017 are very tightly connected. 5 other influencers and I are connected to 97% of people in a 20K person network segment.

That's the kind of homogenous network composition that leads to stagnant growth. It's like tapping a well. Eventually, networks run dry, so network diversity is critical.

Heterogenous Networks

Part 1 of targeting people is finding new connectors. Those are people in your network with a large following that isn't in your network. Follower A has 500 connections, and 400 of them already follow you. Follower B has 500 connections, and only 100 follow you. Follower B can show your content to 400 new people vs. Follower A's 100. Follower B's network is also similarly composed. Each person from Follower B's network also has 400 followers to who you aren't connected.

In every social network, from YouTube to LinkedIn, those are the numbers that matter. The more homogenous your network, the slower your follower count will grow. The more diverse your network, the faster your follower count will grow.

Network diversity can be measured using regions, age groups, job titles, industries, companies, and interests. Each social media company's metrics can be used to understand how similar or homogenous your network is.

On LinkedIn, most of my followers started in the US. India was my next source of growth. The UK came later and so on. My followers in India began to make my network very homogenous. To break into new networks, I posted at times that are popular in other regions. Those started to grow and balance my network out.

Recently, Brazil has been a source of network diversity for me. I have gotten a lot of new followers from Central and South America. Around 20 new followers and connections started that wave. So far, they have brought over 1000 new followers.

Before that, Canada was a massive growth region for my network. 1 person and 1 podcast appearance kicked off a growth cycle that added 5K new followers over about 3 months. This month I have a talk scheduled in a country where I don't have a large following. So far, I have gotten 300 new followers from that region since the talk was announced last week.

I kicked off a content-driven network diversification cycle three months ago. I changed my post timing, content focus, and format. In the last 3 weeks, I have used memes to expand into the new networks rapidly I built in the 6 weeks before. Why memes? I'll get to that in a minute.

The result? I gained 8K new followers in September. Every follower I gained in August brought me 4 new followers. This month, my goal is to gain 2 new followers from my 8K new ones. I'll have 164K followers on LinkedIn by early November if I'm successful.

Why am I making a push now? LinkedIn is deciding on their Top Voices for 2022 list right now, and I haven't been on their list since 2019. I've got to make the case to get back on their radar again.

Candy Content

Memes, inspirational posts, personal stories, pictures of people, and other types of content are what I call candy. That's not to say they are empty or worthless. I call them candy because everyone likes candy.

Candy content is an excellent introduction to a new audience. I attract super-connectors with high-quality, information-dense posts. Super-connectors are people outside my network with followings of over 25K. My goal is to get people to reference my content or mention me. When those waves start, I have made inroads into new networks.

I want to enter and expand into those networks quickly. Candy content is the most effective way to do it. 3 memes have gotten 1M, 1.7M, and 2.4M views. I got over 6.5M views in the last 28 days. Views are cascading up, and posts work that way across the board. I'm training people to look for my Friday memes and plan to keep the wave going for the next 4 weeks.

The rest of the time, I stick to my more informative content mix with ads sprinkled between them. I want to grow and preserve what I have, so staying close to my brand is critical.

This also shows why follower counts don't matter at all. Steve Nouri has over 1M followers, and I can match his reach and engagement rates with 1/7 of the followers. Understanding the network and network effects is far more important than your number of followers.

What Comes Next

If this post is popular, I will continue with the series. Next, I need to explain more about network effects. I must also explain the characteristics of addictive content. If you've seen two nearly identical posts get vastly different engagement and wondered why I'm going to explain it. Addictive elements are the only way to get people to pay attention to more complex messages and content.

Candy has a shelf life, and people get bored quickly. Another meme artist will take over for me in 2-4 weeks. They'll fall off 6 weeks later and be replaced by someone new. Sometimes a candy content artist pivots to deliver more substantial content and grows a long-term following. That's how a lot of influencers get their start.

Community building is a higher-level process I will detail. Network effects and addictive content are limited by the scope of the community built around them. Developing and holding a community together is an entirely different process from growing a following. Moving from follower to community dynamics is critical for people who want to break past the 50K follower plateau.

If you found this valuable, please let me know with likes or feedback. These first 2 or 3 posts will determine whether I continue the series. You're in control of the content.