Saturday 23 January 2016

3 Insider Tips to Grow Your Social Influence (That You Haven’t Thought of Yet)



If you are working on building your social influence, you may think you have tried 

everything under the sun to build your personal brand and following. You have probably 

tried a lot of things, but maybe there are a few small ideas that are really so simple you 

simply skipped right over them. Let’s review some insider tips on growing your social 

media presence, which in turn bolsters your social influence.


Insider Tips to Growing Social Influence



  1. Get really personal


We all know that the more personal we can be with our audience, the more effectively our 

personal branding is received. But just how true is this, and what exactly does “get really 

personal” mean?


This is going to be different for everyone.

We all have a threshold for what is personal and and for our boundaries of public sharing. 

That said, when you can push just a little past your personal comfort zone you might find 

the influencer sweet spot. Take Tara Milhem, for example, a now popular lifestyle/ travel/ 

food blogger I had the opportunity to interview this past week. During the interview she

revealed that although she had been blogging for 4 yrs., only this past May did her 

following really pick up and skyrocket to over 61k on Instagram. Tara said that her strong 

following grew as a result of posting images of herself after nearly 3 yrs. of only food and 

other posts.

Prior to that, no one knew what she looked like. Plus her content turned more personal 

which was a huge draw for people.Then there’s the example of an 18 year old fitness 

model influencer from New Zealand, Abbey Jessop, whose audience blew up over spring 

of last year (she explained during my interview with her, to be released next week). She 

attributes the growth of her following and her influence to the fact that she started training 

for a fitness competition and posting her progress, and noted that very few young people 

like her are openly doing that. What is your edge, and what will your personal story be? Is 

it compelling enough to draw huge amounts of influence?


  1. Go for gold

A great tip Jessop suggested was to consider people in your similar industry or 

vertical that you admire tremendously. Follow them, see what they do, how they 

do it, and aim to build your personal brand better than them. Don’t just find one 

person you look up to, pick a few and figure out your unique angle. Social media 

and influencing is no different than competing in the Olympics in a sense – the 

training takes many years, an unprecedented amount of discipline, endurance, 

and dedication, and your aim to go for gold.


  1. Network like a boss

As an influencer you happen to know how influencers’ minds work. You love it 

when people reach out to you to collaborate on content, to do an interview with 

you, to invite you to a live event, to thank you for inspiring them (aka they feed 

your ego, in a sense). Use the mind of an influencer to your advantage to 

network with other, more popular influencers, who are in a position to give 

you exposure to their audiences.That might mean you join or even create your 

own Facebook group for “Fashion Influencers”, or a Twitter party with 

influencers from your vertical. Be creative and think of some way to get other 

influencers excited about sharing one another’s content with their own 

audiences so you can help each other grow.