Gain Your First Followers Using the Power of Celebration!

You're motivated about your channel, hopefully you have a few streams under your belt already, and you're wondering how to actually gain followers. Of course as the saying goes, "If you build it, they will come," but is there some way to guarantee that more followers will come quickly? A way to optimize your follower count? You may have told your friends, family and neighbors about your channel and artificially boosted your numbers (though if you listened to my previous post about Building Your Channel Like You're A Secret Agent, you will NOT have done this) but now your channel needs to grow on its own merits and it's not clear where to go from here.

"Ugh, my less than ten, less than fifty, less than a hundred, less than five hundred followers are so measly," you sigh to yourself. "Surely anyone coming to my channel will scoff and turn away immediately."

Here's how to get more followers: STOP being self-conscious about how many followers you have!

Once you're proud of your follower count, you can really start growing your channel. After all, every person who decides to follow your channel has done so because they enjoyed your stream and want to see more of it. They're all rooting for you! You need to be willing to celebrate every new follower you gain, but more importantly, celebrate the followers you already have.

You should be approximately THIS happy when someone follows your channel.
Though consuming mushrooms on stream is not advised. 

➣ RESPECT YOUR FOLLOWERS

Let's say hypothetically you have three followers and you're looking to get to 100. There's a pitfall I see small streamers falling into in their quest to complete this task and it looks like this: 

You brush off any mention of your follower count, too embarrassed to ever bring up your channel numbers for fear of ridicule. Having so few followers seems so unprofessional after all, how could someone take you seriously? The corner of your screen shows a follower goal of 100, your three followers filling a tiny sliver on the left side of that bar. If you do end up having to talk about your follower number, you make excuses for the low amount and act defensive. "Yeah, I only have three followers right now, but I just started my channel and I had a cough the other day so I missed a stream, and my internet cut out all day yesterday, and I used to have more followers but two people UN-followed. Ugh!" 

What's the problem here? If you don't respect your current followers, you don't deserve to have new ones.

Think about it: if you're embarrassed about the three people who currently follow your channel, new people certainly aren't going to feel welcome. They know you'd be embarrassed of them as well, were they to join your ranks. If you treat your followers coldly, you don't deserve to be treated with anything but coldness in return. New people will be less likely to want to join your community. Existing followers, noticing they're not appreciated, will wither and drop off, only worsening your problem. It's not a good way to grow your brand.

➣ SETTING ACHIEVABLE GOALS

Instead of lamenting your low follow count, own it! Celebrate those three followers like they're the second coming. Make it clear to everyone who watches your shows that you appreciate them and that you hope to see them again for more streams. And if you want to really attract new people, set a visible goal that's appropriate to your channel size.

Make the people in your community feel appreciated.

If you have three followers: "THE ROAD TO 5 FOLLOWERS!" is a sufficient, if uninteresting, goal. It's attainable, and since you already have three, the bar is already half full from the start! It makes people feel like there is forward progress. Set a deadline but don't make it ridiculously short, like a single day. Put it one week in the future, or however many days it takes you to make 3-5 more streams. When you're coming up on the deadline, hammer harder about your follower goal, and how someone could be the deciding factor in hitting that goal! It's more fun when viewers are a part of something, when they can tangibly help you, rather than just passively watching. If they do follow, celebrate! Do a little dance, tell them about your channel, make them feel welcome. If there's anyone active in the chat, encourage them to say hello to the newest member of your community.

How about when you've reached that goal for your first five followers? What's the next logical step? You might say 10 makes the most sense, but why wait? Have fun with it. Your follower goal could look like these:

FIRST 7 FOLLOWERS GET A CELEBRITY IMPRESSION

FOLLOWER #8 PICKS WHERE I LAND IN FORTNITE

NEXT FOLLOW MAKES ME PLAY BLINDFOLDED
And then, before you know it...

THE ROAD TO 10 FOLLOWERS

Now with 10 followers you have a solid base. You can move forward from there using the same techniques, making the goal slightly higher each time, but always making it extremely attainable. Maybe your next goal is 12 instead of 11, for example. But if new people see you getting excited and doing fun stuff on your stream all the time due to your fun follower goal celebrations, they're more likely to come out of the shadows and follow as well.You don't have to do the exact activities I outlined above, and you don't actually have to set a goal for every single follower you gain at the beginning, but why not? Treating follower goals as a celebration rather than a soulless number means you're not only attracting new people, but adding entertainment value to the show people are already watching. It's a win-win scenario for everybody to enjoy, not just an accomplishment for you.

➣ CELEBRATING ON A LARGER SCALE

This should be you with your followers. Except, y'know, metaphorically.

On my personal streams I celebrate everything. I've grown enough now that I can set larger goals, but I will never stop appreciating my followers, both old and new. I stop everything I'm doing to personally welcome each new follower, make them feel loved and encourage everyone in the chat to welcome them to the fold as well. I give them a short pitch about the channel, tell them what activities they can do in my chat, and ask them about their day. It's only about thirty seconds overall, but people usually mention that they appreciate the fanfare. At the end of every show, I take time to thank everyone who joined and wish them a wonderful day. The way I look at it, someone following my channel should immediately feel like they made the right decision, not that they're just a drop in the bucket who will never get noticed. 

Whatever size your channel, you could likely be doing more celebrating. Are you reaching for a follower goal that increases your channel size by more than 5% in a single week? Then you should either scale it back, or shoot for smaller goals that get achieved more often. Followers aren't just a number on the top of your channel, each of them is an individual person with a personality, stories to tell and love to share. Give yourself more chances to get excited with your followers. If someone followed your channel, they want to see the community grow just as much as you do!

Plus, who doesn't love celebrating?

So give it a shot: try gaining your first followers using the power of celebration!