How I Increased My Social Media Reach 95x in Just Two Weeks

When it comes to increasing my social media reach, I prefer the “slow-and-steady” method.

Whether it’s more Twitter followers, more Facebook Fans or more LinkedIn connections, I’d rather grow my social media network by one person a month who is honestly interested in what I have to say and share than hundreds of people who are just there to get me to follow, like or connect back to them.

This approach has served me well up to now and I have formed many great relationships online, many of which have lead to business and guest post opportunities (as well as the chance to meet some really awesome folks).

Recently however, I came up against a situation where I needed to increase my social media reach as quickly as possible.

Here’s what happened and how I was able to successfully, and ethically, increase my social media reach by 95x in just two weeks.

The Situation

As many of you might already know, I am writing a book, “1000+ Online Content Ideas for Your Business“ which is due to be published in September, 2013.

In the past, when I’ve released ebooks and courses, I never took the time to build a good “marketing buzz” before I launched each of them to the world. They sold OK, but I knew that they could have sold even better if I had built some marketing momentum before their launch dates.

This time around, I want to build as much buzz as possible leading up to the release of the book. I want as many people to know about the book as possible and I want them to be excited about what they will learn when they read it.

Knowing that social media networks  are a great spot to build marketing buzz, I wanted to increase the impact of my efforts there as much as possible. However, while I have a respectable and solid network, one that is always growing “slowly-and-steadily”, it’s reach was nowhere near what it needed to be.

I had to figure out how to boost my social media reach so I could generate the level of buzz and excitement that I wanted around my book.

The Solution

As an avid user of online software, I know of many solutions that allow you to increase your social media reach quickly. Unfortunately, I’ve always felt that using those tools was a bit dishonest as the network you build is not one full of folks who are honestly interested in what I have to say and share.

That’s when Nicole Fende,my “Book Shepherd”, recommended that I partner with others to increase my social media reach.

Nicole explained that the key to using this approach was to create opportunities that brought value to my partners and their online communities while also building buzz for my book.

I loved this idea! I’m a firm believer in solutions that allow everyone to benefit and was excited to build buzz around my book while bringing value to my partners and their communities (who happen to be the group of folks who are most likely to buy the book when it’s released).

Here are the steps that Nicole and I followed:

1. We brainstormed up a bunch of potential opportunities, making sure to remember that each one needed to bring benefits to both my partners and their communities.
   1. One of the ideas we came up with is a cool crowdsourcing contest kicking-off on 3/4. Check it out for a chance to win online content ideas for your type of business as well a a free copy of my forthcoming book.
   2. Other ideas include sweepstakes to win either products or services from my partners (which enables me to promote the heck out of what they do and offer) and a chance to have me create 25 customized online content ideas for your own business.
2. I identified a list of potential partners made up of folks who speak to the same audience as my book.
   1. I used a number of tools to identify the best potential targets. The best two turned out to be Google search and a new solution called Little Bird that allowed me to search for folks on social media networks based on their influence in a particular topic area (in this case, content marketing).
3. I crafted and sent an e-mail introducing the opportunity and asking if they wanted to be involved.
   1. Nicole drilled the acronym “WIFM” into my head here – when writing the e-mail, I needed to answer my potential partner’s biggest question, “What’s in it for me?”

Once the e-mails went out, I waited for the replies and boy did they pour in quickly!

In the first week after sending the e-mails, I had increased my social media reach to 285,900 social media contacts (I calculated this number by adding up each partner’s Twitters, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn communities).

By the end of the second week, my social media reach had grown to 402,042 social media contacts! That’s 95x the reach that I had in social media on my own.

The best part of this is that these numbers don’t even include my partner’s blog readers and e-mail subscribers. If you add those two in, my online reach had grown beyond my wildest dreams!

The effort goes on and as I continue to follow-up on my e-mails, I expect my social media reach to grow even further.

I am so grateful to each and every partner who has decided to join me in my efforts and I will work hard to assure that they receive as much benefit as possible for having done so!

Final Note: Use This Approach Sparingly!

Increasing your social media reach by partnering up with folks is not something that you can do every day or even every other month. You can only use this approach when you truly have something of value to offer both your partners and their communities.

Weekly Link Roundup

Each time I write a post, I collect the 10 best reads from around the web and share them with you here.

These posts focus on web-based solutions, online resources and up-to-date news for small businesses.

Enjoy!

How to Build Powerful In-Person Networks From Your Social Contacts: A great primer for taking social contacts offline.

3 Ways to Make Your Brand Memorable on Social Media: Out-of-the-box ideas for using social media to market your brand.

Five Tools To Protect Your Privacy Online: Easy-to-implement ways to protect your privacy on the web.

5 Steps to Recovery After Your Business Has Been Hacked: Excellent list of steps to take when your security has been compromised.

5 South Florida businesses that are doing social media right: Love the real-life lessons that you can take away from this article!

The Marketer’s Ultimate Guide to Measuring the ROI of Twitter & Vine: Deep and insightful, you will learn tons in this post including methods that can be applied beyond Twitter and Vine.

Brands Brace for Deluge of New Domains in April: Big changes coming online – is your brand ready?

Why Coke Went Dark On Twitter For Nearly Two Hours During the Super Bowl: This is definitely a big issue for brands and even smaller brand running an intensive social media marketing event.

8 Ways to Get More Leads for Your Business on LinkedIn: Solid and actionable tips.

How to Retain Group Coupon Customers: This post looks at how to avoid one of the biggest frustrations with group coupon sites: getting those customers to come back.