MaineBusiness.com

Everyone wants a following on the web, everyone wants fans, people who are checking in to see what you are up to. Producing content helps to promote you, it helps to promote your business. But think about what you are providing, what amount of original content do you produce on a weekly basis?

Let’s take Twitter for example. What do you send out to share when you are on Twitter? A new article on Mashable? A link to a post on 12 favorite designer tips by someone else? Are you spending a lot of time promoting other people’s work and websites? Or are you sending out your own content, a new blog post, new video, audio clip, photo work, an interview that was done with you, a new project you are working on? Your thoughts, your art, your work? What original content was created this week that could not have happened without you?

As your following grows, you begin to peak people’s interest in you more and more, they will start to search on content that involves you. They will go to your website, check out your social networks, start investigating. They start to like you, they want more, so what can you provide them? 

Take a look at anyone who has been successful in branding themselves on the web. They almost always have a large selection of archived and weekly new content that they are dishing out. It keeps people coming back. It ensures that people are sending around their links.

Conversations happen all the time on the web and when you become vocal people will become intrigued with you and look for more about you. Ideally it is good to have a body of work that is constantly being added to so people can get to know you better.

When you build your following people will start to like you. As you grow bigger, people will start to like you and a lot will start to dislike you. Once you start getting anti-fans, you know you are making it. If everyone pretty much universally likes you online, work to become bigger and/or more vocal.

Now I know, creating content is time consuming. But it should be done if you want to grow your presence online. And it does not have to be perfect, it just needs to be developed and released on an ongoing basis. You only need to look at the people you admire and respect online to see how they are building a following. They will often have a lot of clients, business and connections online, because their volume of content has drawn people in. Instead of working at trying to make contacts and potential clients on social networks, searching for connections, they build their own network of content and info, then people come to them.

Conversations are nice to have online. But conversations about you and your work are even better.

What have you sent out to the web this week that brings people into your brand?