What does building a crowd really mean? It isn't about getting as many followers as possible. It is more about finding people who support what you do and will back you in a campaign. This is your target market. This is people who care about what you care about and want to support you. You cultivate a group of people that will get excited about what you are doing. You have to find ways to cultivate groups of people that fit into this description. You have to start online groups of people and interact with them. Promote your group and get more people to join. It takes time to build it up, but it is worth it. You have to build the community first.
To build up this community, here are some of the things you can do: - Find blogs that are relevant, influencers on the web, and even traditional media outlets that align with what you are doing. Begin engaging with them and ask them to get involved.
- Get outside of the social media circles and contact people in your personal network, do demos, create events.
- Post in social media with a purpose. When you post, make sure you are adding some kind of value to the conversation. Don't just ask for support and don't just post links.
- Promote your effort to local media.
- It also pays to get help. You can accelerate the process by putting up a webpage to communicate to like minded people and attract them to what you are doing. Optimize that webpage for searches and then promote the website with press releases and on social media. Use video because people will watch a video much more often than they will read. (Maybe I should be making this post with a video!)
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