How I Grew My Facebook Page to Over 100k Followers
I cringe at the title of this article to the point where a big part of me doesn’t even want to write it. It screams ‘Clickbait’. I hate that crap. At the same time, I think it could be helpful to a lot of people, though, and I actually think it’s a pretty good way of looking at starting any company.
The 6 ways that I’ve been able to build such a large audience:
(Will you do me a favor? If you like the article, will you tap the green heart and ‘recommend’ it?)
1. When I started building this personal brand for myself some 6 years ago I didn’t have anything to sell, in fact, that was the last thing on my mind — perhaps to the point of it being a flaw. I just knew that I loved writing, specifically about food culture. Starting out with this childlike innocence proved to be the best thing that could have ever happened, because even though the numbers could provide certain egoic rewards for me, I wasn’t doing the work for external rewards. I didn’t start creating a platform in order to start implementing some sales funnel — I started creating a platform for myself, because I really enjoyed doing the work. The first thing to find, and as cliche as it sounds, is to find and do as much of the the work you would do even if you can’t figure out how to get paid for it right away. I think this is the North Star you need to take with you as you journey down this road that is often, especially in the early days, thankless, without pay and maybe most discouraging of all, without traction or numbers to validate the hard work you’re putting in.
2. For the first couple or years, I did like most of us do — I went straight for the biggest segment of the market I thought I could directly impact through my work and content. It turned out sharing recipes (and video content around them), while valuable, was more or less a commodity of sorts — Hell, all of my favorite chefs have their recipes all over the internet and some even have their own apps that catalog their library of personal recipes. So, for the first couple of years I kept banging my head against the wall when my site and social media platform didn’t seem to be growing. I knew I was putting out good recipes and had some great videos to go alongside many of them, but something was missing...
Was I Barking up the Wrong Tree?
One night, after a long day at the restaurant, my girlfriend was frustrated with me, hell, I was frustrated with me, and I decided to just sit down and write. I wrote what became my first viral article, Dear Chefs. The numbers sky rocketed here on Medium and instantly, I was receiving feedback from people that were grateful that I had written it — I had articulated what it meant to be a chef - the long hours, the low wages and the list goes on. I was able to connect with hundreds of thousands of people in a way that my best recipe never would have been able to.
People would read this article and forward it to their friends,
'I don't know who this Chef Chris guy is, but he gets me!'
I didn’t write it with the intentions of going viral, though I was damn proud of the work the day I hit publish here on Medium. I wrote it because I was frustrated. I soon realized that I wasn’t alone.
Suddenly, I had found an entire mass of people that were missing something in their lives and or in their careers — they needed my help more than anyone needed another chicken salad recipe. Scratch your own itch - a lot of people out there don’t even realize there is an itch to scratch.
3. Once I found this group of people, my target market (I hate that term in this context), I then just started giving them the things that I felt I could benefit from as well, especially in years prior — I’ve never been the guru — just another guy passing through the world trying to make things easier for the next guy. What are the things that I would like to have known when I was starting out. What have my failures taught me?
Through asking all of these questions and knowing that the answers would be helpful to others venturing down a similar path, I couldn’t not start doing this work. I am as generous as possible with myself - I try to be relentlessly valuable to people, in part because it’s the right thing to do, in part because it feels really good to help people, and finally the least important of the three — perhaps down the road I would be able generate enough trust from this community that I was slowly building to the point where I could sell them something that would help me pay the bills and allow me to keep doing this work that I love so much.
Generosity is pure gold — however you slice it.
4. I'm an intense guy. I'm so focused on my mission that I often get caught up in the serious parts of what I do - it's that important to me. I think I could also use a reminder every so often that a good laugh is sometimes all you really need.
So, I’ve started reminding myself of this very idea. In much the same way that I despise the idea of clickbait (i.e. the title of this article, though I was trying to prove a point), I’m not a fan of the cheap laugh, but it works, however, only if it attracts the right people to my community, based on the content - it doesn’t do any good for me or for the followers that come across something of mine, if it’s not representative of who I am, my message and articulated in a way that will draw the right people to my tribe.
I look at it this way — some of the biggest fans of my most poignant, serious articles about life and restaurants first came across my work from some childish meme about the restaurant industry.
5. Sure, it’s my voice, a lot of my opinions and thoughts from my own personal experiences, but much of what I write and speak about comes from listening to my community — to the people who support me, reach out to me, ask questions, share my thoughts with their friends. It’s a lot more fun when you make it about other people.
Perhaps my favorite post to this day has been this,
‘If you get a chance, share a picture of your kitchen in the comments.'
Pretty straight forward. Soon, before the night was over, I had over a thousand pictures of various restaurants all over the world — some were similar, others very different. The coolest part about this experiment was seeing the comments amongst the various followers who were engaged— it was an instantaneous connection between thousands of people. This exercise taught me how important it is to create this platform where community members can connect with each other.
I also love doing livestream Q + A’s where I’ll take a week’s worth of questions and answer them for a live audience on Facebook. Often upwards of a hundred questions will be asked in these hour long chats and I’ll get to each the best I know how, but let’s be honest, I don’t have the perfect answer to everything (rarely is that the case). After the chat, I’ll be able to go back through and read through the comments where other members of the community answer the same questions in a bit of a different way, in a way that makes sense to them — I know this can be just as helpful, if not more, than simply hearing my lone point of view. To create this community takes a lot of hard work and probably more than anything, trust.
6. The title to this post is intentionally misleading — if you got to this point in the article and you’re still looking for some silver bullet, I’ve got some unfortunate news for you — there is no silver bullet. In addition to the various strategies and tactics I’ve previously outlined, it is hard work. EVERY DAY. When I started building my brand six years ago, I didn’t know how it would work out. I didn’t know if people would care about what I have to say or if it would work at all, but I kept going. I kept writing when my blog posts were only being read by my parents and immediate circle of friends. I kept writing and cooking and trying to serve this community after hours when I’ve been exhausted after 18 hour days. I’ve kept showing up to answer questions to care for this community — all of the things that have led up to this point (the previous 5 bullet points) are all rooted in hardwork and dedication. When I didn’t have the answers, felt discouraged or wasn’t sure in which direction I wanted things to go, my fall back has always been — work, work, work. And Patience. A healthy dose of patience. So many people in my life questioned how and why I was spending my energy, because it didn’t translate to dollars, new cars or any of the other types of rewards our society uses as a measuring stick to gauge success. In fact, if you start defining your success based on some external validation, chances are you’ll start falling out of love with the work all together. Just work hard and make it happen.
Its not about about creating a hundred, a thousand or a million followers. It's setting out to make a difference, to affect people's lives in a positive way - at that point, the numbers don't matter.
As my friend Jeff Goins said so eloquently, which I absolutely love and quoted in my book,
'I used to think that your calling was about doing something good in this world. Now I understand it’s about becoming someone good—and letting that goodness impact the world around you.' — Jeff Goins
So, I think for me, it’s about being a good person, being the person someone needs and being generous to them by sharing one’s unique perspective of the world with them in a way that shows they’re not alone, and that we’re all in this together. Soon, that one person turns into two.... three...four...
It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the impact — with that being said —
I’m serious, it would mean a lot, and you can get it over on Amazon for $10.
Thanks ,
CHRIS HILL
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