avatarDavid McIlroy

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How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need to Become a Solopreneur?

The interwebs would have you believe it’s millions.

Canva image.

Question: Do you need to have a big following on social media to become a solopreneur?

Answer: No, but…

Does it help to have a healthy number of followers? Yes. But you don’t have to wait until you have those followers to start your self-propelled journey.

Who needs social media?

I’m a huge fan of Graham Cochrane. He’s a solopreneur businessman living in sunny Florida who’s made millions of dollars over the last fifteen years selling online courses, coaching and community memberships.

He posts videos on YouTube every week breaking down exactly how to go about following in his footsteps. He’s amassed over 57k subscribers there, and I’m pretty sure his email list is more than double that size.

Graham makes six figures every year through multiple revenue streams, which is pretty cool. And guess how much of that income is driven by his social media following?

Almost none of it.

The vast majority of Graham’s traffic comes from YouTube (a search engine) and his website. He has a VA share posts on a handful of socials for him each week, but his following isn’t anywhere near what you’d expect given his millionaire status.

He even took a full year off from social media and his income actually increased.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t work on your socials, of course. I think having a presence on a selection of social media sites should be part of your strategy.

You know my mantra: build your platform, nurture your business.

I even built an online course to help make that management process easier.

But don’t let the pressure to grow your following stop you from getting the ball rolling in the first place. Having a community around you on social media is helpful, but it’s not a prerequisite to starting a solopreneurship.

Your primary goal on social media shouldn’t be to get more followers — it should be to attract more subscribers to your newsletter mailing list (your real audience).

Getting more followers is just a byproduct of putting great content on the internet.

Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash

Building your mailing list this way:

  1. Experiment with a handful of social media platforms and search engines. Post high-value, eye-catching content on a consistent basis.
  2. Chop your selection down to 3–4 platforms at most. Base your choices on which platforms you enjoy using the most (for me, it’s Medium, X/Twitter and LinkedIn).
  3. Under your best-performing posts on your chosen platforms, add a link to your newsletter and encourage your followers to subscribe. You can also offer a free product as a lead magnet. Do this at least once every day.
  4. Use a different link URL for each platform and track them. Identify which platforms produce the most newsletter sign-ups. Focus most heavily on them. Reduce time spent on the others.
  5. Regularly send your subscribers valuable content you think will benefit them most. Develop brilliant products or services based on what your audience wants and needs. And when the time’s right, make them available for purchase.

Having a big social following isn’t a factor here.

A small, engaged audience is enough to support your first steps into solopreneurship. You only need 1,000 true fans to make an honest living, after all.

Start with whatever you’ve got. Build from there.

If you liked this, subscribe to my growing Substack communities, How to Write for a Living and The Solopreneur Stack. I’ll send value-packed content straight to your inbox every week to help you learn and grow. Join now.

Solopreneur
Social Media Strategy
Social Media Management
Followers
Solopreneurship
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