By Rhonda Campbell

15 minutes a day is all it takes to grow your followers. But, you have to spend 15 focused minutes every day performing at least one growth initiative.

Examples of growth initiatives are:

• Asking and answering LinkedIn group questions. Join groups that cover subjects that you have experience working in. If you’re a nurse, join a regional or national nurse or healthcare LinkedIn group. Add in a few groups that you’re socially interested in. These groups include alumni, current and former employer and hobby groups.
• Publishing educational videos on YouTube and Vimeo. Provide keyword rich descriptions with videos to attract search engine attention. Keywords in descriptions also help the right people to find your videos, so that you can grow your followers.
• Posting questions in Google Plus groups that lead to answers that help identify areas of expertise that group members have. Also, ask questions that offer solutions that several group members are looking for (but may be too tentative to ask for on their own).

Work social media platforms that yield the best results

Choose one social media platform to engage followers and potential supporters on. Consider working one social media platform a week to see which platform grows your followers the most. You may find that:

• Twitter yields the best traction for your book covers, motivational quotes or business event photos
• Google Plus works best when sharing surveys
• Facebook is good when conducting private online chats
• LinkedIn is great to use to share longer forms of written content and when seeking new business partners, freelance clients or a new job
• MySpace puts your videos in front of a more narrowly defined audience better than YouTube
• ScoopIt is effective at presenting you as a subject matter expert, especially if you publish several pieces of related content a day
• Podcasts work well with marketing or advertising joint ventures, particularly when messages are presented in interview for discussion format

Use social media scheduling tools like StumbleUpon, HootSuite, Sprout and Vista Print to save time. These apps are great ways to keep your message in front of current and potential supporters.

Get Active Outside Social Media To Grow Your Followers

But, don’t limit your engagement with followers to social media scheduling apps. Actually, log into social media platforms and ask and answer questions, respond to surveys, “Like” other posters’ content, follow influencers and post motivational messages, photos and videos. Be comical, informative, open and honest.

Fill out your social media profile. Include a link to your website in your profile. Decide on topics that you are going to raise and respond to. Share information that sets you apart as a specialist in one to three areas. Respond to private comments that other social media platform users send you. It’s a great way to build relationships.

You can be active at social media platforms while you’re working on a new blog posts, updating your website tips or writing out the script to an upcoming YouTube video. The important thing is to be consistent and to define the topics that you are going to comment about or ask and answer questions on. Again, choose topics that align with your products, services and brand.

Devote 15 minutes a day to grow your followers. Do it for three months and the payoff could be significant. If you want to realize sizable growth, devote 30 minutes or more to online and offline marketing activities. It’s also important that you keep a list of contacts you make. These are people who you complete joint business endeavors with. These are also people who have requested to receive marketing, advertising and other communications from you.