How to Gain One Million Followers on Social Media in 30 Days with Brendan Kane

Hey lovelies,

I have to be honest, I have waited impatiently ALL week to share this post with you! 🤩I dropped the latest episode of the Not Basic Blonde Celebrity Podcast today, featuring Brendan Kane author of “One Million Followers: How I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days.”

Listen to the episode below, and keep reading for great show highlights and more information about Brendan Kane’s best seller. If you’re wanting to grow your following on social media & gain mass exposure in 2020, YOU NEED THIS BOOK! 📕

How to Gain One Million Followers on Social Media in 30 Days with Brendan Kane

Meet My Friend Brendan Kane

Brendan Kane is a growth hacker and thought leader for everyone from Fortune 500 Companies to brands, celebrities, and influencers.

He helps brands find and engage new audiences around the globe to build a mass followings. In a career spanning 15+ years, he’s worked on optimizing social media campaigns across the board – from MTV, billion-dollar corporations to movie studios and everywhere in between.

He’s even worked with Taylor Swift and Rihanna! 😍

His book, One Million Followers is filled to the brim with insights, tips and must-know secrets to growing your following in record time & gaining mass exposure, and he was happy to share some of his knowledge with me!

About the Book

Brendan’s tell-all focuses on an actual case study he performed on himself with the goal of building a one-million strong following in a hundred countries in just 30 days.

He also interviewed friends and partners who have built massive success on different platforms like Snapchat, youtube, Facebook to glean their insights on how they did it. Brendan structured the book to cover several different perspectives and ways to grow.

“One of the things I find frustrating is when there’s experts in the field who say this is the only way to do something. I firmly don’t believe that, there are so many different ways to achieve success no matter what area of business or life you’re trying to work on.

It’s a matter of finding what’s right for you and the right strategies for you.”

Brendan Kane

Brendan’s Guidance to Grow Your Following.

1. Find Your Hook

“In the world we live in today, where there are over 60 billion messages sent on digital platforms each day, you have to find a way to stand out and overcome the clutter and noise.”

Brendan Kane

According to Brendan, if you don’t have a good hook, no one will be interested. Getting very clear about what makes you unique and differentiates you in the marketplace. You want to be so unique that people just want to know more!

Brendan references the title and the case study that inspired his book. If he had just called it “How to Grow Your Following”, it probably wouldn’t have performed very well. But let’s admit it, when you see “One Million Followers in 30 Days”, you definitely want to hear that story!

2. Never Stop Testing

“Most people approach social media with the mindset of, I’m just going to produce content, put it out there and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work, they deem social media as a medium they’re not good at or can’t be successful with.”

Brendan Kane

One of the biggest themes in Brendan’s book and in our podcast interview was a testing mindset. It’s not only the cornerstone to success on social media but really in any business environment anywhere!

Approach your social media this way:

It’s not winning or losing, it’s finding answers. You’re testing, learning and constantly changing things to find out what content works for your business or brand and not giving up until you find the answer. Connect with your audience to see what they want to see from you.

If something doesn’t work, figure out why it doesn’t work and make a new test! It’s all about testing in social media that will help you succeed.

“Be relentless until you find the answer you are looking for. I’m going to test, I’m not going to give up. It takes time and a process to be successful.”

Brendan Kane

3. Don’t Be Scared of the Algorithm

“Algorithms are just designed for one thing. When you open the app, you have the most engaging content in front of you. That’s it. The goal is to get you to open the app multiple times a day, and stay in the app longer and longer.”

Brendan Kane

The algorithms on social media (on Instagram in particular) get a pretty bad reputation. Most people suspect that its squeezing engagement and reach so that paid ads become necessary to reach a meaningful audience – in other words, pay to play.

This isn’t actually true. The algorithm is just trying to put the 5 pieces of content first in a user’s feed that they are most likely to engage with and want to know more about based on their past behavior. It can make it hard to see reach and engagement when you’re not creating content that matches up to what the algorithm wants.

If you aren’t seeing growth from your content, chances are you’re not designing content for the algorithm.

Like most people, you probably approach content creation by considering first what you want to say, and then what your audience wants to hear.

The right way to do it is actually to first design content that the algorithms are looking for, then that the audience wants to engage with, and lastly, what we want to say.

Curious how to accomplish this? Brendan details it in his book!

4. Do Your Research

To be successful on Instagram, you need to understand the dynamics of the algorithms, contributing factors for driving growth and being successful on each platform.

How do you do it?

Competitive analysis.

Who is reaching your audience, and how are they doing it? What is working for them and what is not working?

It’s important not to stop there. You need to go one step further and figure out why it isn’t working. Once you understand what makes a content creator more successful than another, you get closer to unlocking the answer of what works – and how to make it work for you. You need to transform your business or brand direction sometimes to understand what works & what doesn’t.

5. Prioritize the Right Goals

It’s not impossible to reach one million followers in thirty days. In fact, Brendan and his team have done it ten times at this point! However, he asks an important question:

Do you NEED a million followers?

A million followers is a huge investment of time and energy. And it’s not the right goal for most brands and businesses! If you need to make money now or drive leads and sales from your social media, then that should be your first goal.

Growing your audience can come later when it’s time for reinvestment. However, a huge following doesn’t always mean a huge list of leads and sales.

Make sure your social media goals are aligned with your business or brand goals.

Amazing words of wisdom, right? Let me know in the comments below if you’ve read Brendan’s book or plan to, and what your favorite part is.

And don’t forget to keep an eye out for his second book, releasing later this year.

Until next time, lovelies!

-Olya