When you are trying to grow a business you have two main paths for customer acquisition - invest your money or invest your time.

If you have the money to spend, then paid advertising could be your best path for customer acquisition. Paid advertising encompasses search-engine marketing, display ads, video ads, ads in app stores like Apple’s or Google’s app store, or influencer marketing. what

If you don’t have the money to spend, then you are going to need to spend your time on more organic growth channels, such as leveraging social media, email marketing, and writing blogs/newsletters.

In the beginning, and even today, I focus most of my time on organic growth channels, like social media.

I’m not going to pretend to be a social media guru. But, I have been fortunate to work with a few people who are fantastic at growing their social media following and the things they taught me have helped me build up an audience of over 20k+ people across all my platforms.

Today I’m going to share with you a summary of what I learned from them.

Note - some of this content comes from coaching I received from Fernando Cao (@thefernandocz on Twitter) and Justin Welsh (@thejustinwelsh). Some came from other contacts, such as Mark Schaefer (@markwschaefer) who is a friend (he lives in my hometown) and has one of the most read books on Twitter in the world.

Profile optimization

1. Use a high quality photo. Preferably of your face, so that it humanizes you to the audience.
2. Your bio should:
   1. Start with the benefit to the viewer.
   2. Include social proof/experience.
3. Preferably stick with one link in your bio, but if not use a service such as linktr.ee or bio.link.
4. Pin one of your best posts, or the most relevant, to the top of your feed.

Posting content

• What to post
  • Focus on one platform. Build it up and then start cross posting. A good bench mark for when to start cross posting is between 2k-3k followers on a platform.
    • De-platforming (getting people to follow you on a separate channel than the one they found you on) is hard, but you should start doing it once you have a solid following.
  • Pick a niche. Preferably a niche within a niche.
    • ex. Startups → Fintech startups → Fintech startups founded by women
  • Regularly save content as source material.
    • Software such as Buffer (which I’m currently using) can help you do this. They have a Chrome extension where you can save content as an idea.
  • Use power words
  • Not sure what to say? Pick people to emulate. Software like Hypefury (which I used to use) has a feature that can help you do this. Or, you can use tweetdeck.twitter.com and build a list of people you want to emulate. Watch for how they structure their posts and leverage what you are seeing.
• Fernando’s checklist for what makes a good post
  • Is it actionable?
  • Is it relevant?
  • Is it simple to read? Hemingway to check if 5th-grade writing
  • Is there ONE BIG idea?
  • Is it low-effort to action?
  • “So what?” How does this massively benefit the reader?
  • Does it use polarizing stances and/or power words that invoke strong emotions (curiosity, new perspective, exaggerated benefit)
  • Does it use specific numbers?
  • Does it show credibility?
• Structuring a post (Fernando’s way)
  • Header (tell stories)
  • One sentence explaining what it is.
  • One sentence or 3 bullet points explaining why it’s important
  • One sentence or 3 bullet points explaining how the reader can apply it

Engagement

One of the best ways I been noticed online is by “hijacking” other peoples posts. I set time aside, every work day, to comment on other people’s posts. My most viral hijacked post was on Instagram where someone was talking about Product Management as a profession. I got 21k views for my response.

Rules of commenting/hijacking posts:

• Use a mix of text responses or emotes/likes/hearts/etc.
• Focus on your Dream 100 (a saved list of people that you really want to engage back with you; this can also be built in Tweetdeck).
• Don’t just say you agree/disagree or “good post.” Add substantial value.
• Take a stance. But, be careful of being too polarizing. This has worked for some, like Nick Huber, but I don’t recommend it.
• Do NOT go into pitch mode. Build up the relationship over time until you have some social equity.

For people that engage with your content, do the following:

• Send them a message thanking them for engaging and then ask a relevant question. I will usually look at their profile and pick something interesting from that, like their business.
  • Ex. “Hey, [Name}, thanks for engaging with my content. I looked at your Fractional CFO business. What made you choose that path?”
• Do NOT go into pitch mode. Build up the relationship over time until you have some social equity.
• Consider using research as a way to connect with people. After you have built up some degree of relationship.
  • Ex. “ Hey, [Name]. It’s been really great connecting with you on this platform. I’m researching [topic] and I wondered if you have any experience there (they will if you have sourced your Dream 100 correctly)? Could I ask a few questions?
  • This should feed into your Pains and Goals doc. Which is a document Fernando taught me to keep. Every time I connect offline with someone, like on a video call, I ask questions to uncover their unmet pain points. This method is one that lead me to my most recent business opportunity.

There is a lot more to seeing growth and acquiring customers online. Such as showing up consistently. But, if you follow the tips above, and stay consistent, you should see your social media presence growing. My last piece of advice is to be your authentic self. That is something that no one can copy - you.

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