Viral Growth on Social Media as an Author
“They actually follow you because you gave value first.” —Stepan Hlinka
Do you feel like you’re wasting your time creating content for social media? Stepan Hlinka felt like that a few years ago, but then he went from 700 Twitter followers to 50,000. He heard all the advice about increasing social media followers, but he came from an advertising background and decided to try something different—and it worked.
In this episode of “Authors Who Lead,” I talk with Stepan Hlinka about how he grew his Twitter followers and how the same ideas can work on other social media platforms.
Going Viral
Stepan has had many social media posts go viral, which helped increase his followers. He tells us that there are three main principles to writing these viral threads. First, the viral thread needs to be broad enough so that there are many subjects you can talk about in your niche.
Second, don’t “reinvent the wheel when it comes to the hook.” This doesn’t mean stealing others’ content, but modeling your own unique content on hooks that are already popular.
The last principle is to make your posts easy to read. Stepan talks about the length of sentences and how to make the content flow and be valuable, all things that writers are already good at doing.
Email Lists
Getting increased numbers of social media followers is important, but it’s even better if you can keep a relationship with them off Twitter or Facebook. This is where an email list is valuable. If for some reason the social media you are using goes out of style or goes away, at least you’ll have your email list to keep in contact with your followers.
Stepan talks about different ways you can increase your email list simultaneously with your social media followers. His ideas include making sure you have a call to action in your social bio, inviting them to sign up for your newsletter, and offering lead magnets. And again, he urges everyone to find what works for them. He had to ask himself what he could do differently before he found his own success.
In this podcast, Stepan also shares with us:
- What two-step posts are and how they can be valuable
- The importance of a lead magnet
- How to tweak your Twitter bio to add a link to your newsletter
- How to navigate paid social media boosts
- The importance of leveraging others’ audiences
- What a listicle is and why it’s a successful framework for a social post
- Why carousel posts are so popular
What was your biggest takeaway from this episode? Are you having trouble growing your social media followers? Which social media platform are you using as an author? Share in the comments below!
That’s all for this week. If you have a message inside of you that needs to be written, today is the day to start. Don’t delay—take action.
Episode Resource:
Connect with Stepan here:
Twitter
Instagram
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