For the last several years, with the advent of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and countless other social platforms, there has been an ongoing obsession in the marketing world with “followers.” The topic of followers often yields questions like:
How many followers do we have?
How many followers do others have?
How do we get more followers?
How do we get the followers of our followers to follow us?
Most brands and business owners rightly understand that a strong base of loyal followers can be powerful and can help a business grow. Marketers chase the elusive and almighty followers with contests, games, giveaways and gimmicks in hopes of building a following. Sometimes these approaches actually work to increase the number of people who click like or follow once, but that is not really what it means to have a following. If the plan stops there, it accomplishes nothing. It’s ok to focus time, attention, and resources on getting followers, but you need to make sure that you have a vision for where you intend to lead these people in the event that they do show up.
Think beyond the promotion, and make it clear why your followers should care about you. Gimmicks don’t build sustainable brands – trust, relationships, honesty, integrity, and loyal, happy customers do. Instead of putting all of your energy into chasing unknown followers, consider investing more of it in understanding and helping your customers and prospective customers solve problems.
Become a marketing leader by intensely focusing on serving your followers.
