Everyone has to start somewhere. You do not decide to start an instagram page one day, and instantly receive 10,000 followers. You do not become a youtuber, and out of no where get 25,000 subscribers. Building an audience on a social platform takes time, hard work, and a little bit of luck at times. Though building an audience can be stressful or difficult at times, it can help go a long way for your business, projects, and overall the ability to have a network back you up.

Where to Start

You might be an artist who wants to start sharing your art with the world, an everyday programmer who enjoys taking picture of your setup, or just a very passionate photgrapher. Well, whatever you are or aspire to be, getting started with building an audience is not too difficult. I have built multiple social accounts since 2012 that have varied from 15,000 to 22,000 followers and counting. I have restarted many accounts, and have went back up to what I had left. So to me, I look at building an audience or community as a very possible thing even if it takes you 2-3 years.

When you decide that you want to take that next step of building an audience or community, you go and start your page. Starting out initially, you should focus on three main items: a catchy name, strong bio / description (not too long), and a unique profile picture. These three items will begin to define what you want your page to be showcased as to your growing audience.

Sharing Content

Once your page is created, you need to begin sharing content, this is the part that is customizable to you. Sharing content means that you begin posting to your audience the photos or videos you want them to see (i.e. art, setup, scenery, etc). I would recommend posting only once per day where you share a little bit of your process, journey, goals, or whatever you think your audience would want to hear. When sharing content especially through instagram, it is alright if the quality is not where you want it to be. You are just starting out, this means nothing will be perfect, but instead, you are creating that foundation for yourself. One side note I will add, if you are posting to instagram or youtube, make use of hashtags on every post. Find an app or website that generates hashtags that are coorelated to your specified content, and use them! This will help your content become more recognizable from the start. Along with this, make sure to find any accounts that may be reposting content similar to yours, and tag them in your posts. Whenever someone reposts your content, your audience will begin to grow a little more.

Stay Active

So your account has began growing, you are sharing content daily, and are interacting with your audience, this is where more of the fun begins! You now more than ever, need to make sure that you do not stop sharing content and interacting with your growing audience. The more you continue to be active and providing for your audience, the bigger it will grow, and eventually the better your content will become. This is the idea that with practice, comes a lot of success and growth. If your content started out as crap, but you continued bettering it everyday and sharing more of it daily. Then after some time, you will see a significant change in how your content or posts look!

No matter where you are in your stage of building an audience, consistency and effort will always help you down the road. It may get difficult of always being there to share content or you may have days where you feel like no one cares, but those are the days that matter the most. Those are the days that show who you really are when it seems no one is watching.

When I first began LzCtrl, I grew to about 100 followers in a few weeks, and then stayed there for a few months. To me, I felt like no one really cared, but I told myself I needed to push more and continue being consistent. Then about half a year later, that progress of when times were low began to show. Some people may grow very large over night, but with that, you do not see the endless and sleepless nights prior to that that almost made them give up...