Growing Your Following On Social Media
The Journey to Growing Your Following On Social Media
The youngest entrepreneur to be interviewed on Break The Chains podcast at this current time was Tom Bidgood, a expert to Growing Your Following On Social Media.
After coming across Tom on tic tok and being impressed by his content and how he has grown such a huge social media following.
I reached out and asked him to come on the podcast and tell us more.
The Young Entrepreneur
Being 20 years old it was interesting to know if Tom had ever experienced a 9 to 5 job at all.
I found out that Tom has experienced a part time job, but always had in mind to grow a social media following for the future.
Using the income he generated from the part time job to invest in his own online business.
Rather than looking at the money he could be earning working for someone else. Tom looked at the enjoyment he gets out of creating content for himself to creating content for other people.
THAT is a huge thing when working for yourself.
Being happy with the work your doing. Not just doing it because of the income it generates you at the time.
Although Tom will admit that he thinks having a 9 to 5 job would be an easier option, he followed his dream of creating a fan base and an audience of his own.
Inspired from watching endless amounts of YouTube video from a young age.
Getting a 9 to 5 job is the Old Way
I have to admire Tom for being determined to build an online business.
Even though his parents we telling him to go out and get a job to earn a secure income. Where probably being a similar age to Toms parents, that is great advice to tell your children to do what you know to be successful yourself.
Starting your own online business wasn’t popular for a lot of people in the year 2000 for some of us.
Nothing like it is today, with 12 year old children making more in a week then I ever made as an electrician in a year.
“That’s what’s so appealing online”
Tom has been able to grow a tic tok following of over half a million followers in 2 years.
That’s a huge number of follows, you must agree that Tom learnt a thing or two along the way.
Teach what you know
So what other better way to monetize that experience then to teach others on how to grow on social media.
Tom didn’t start off with growing on tic tok.
His main area of focus is Tom Bids – the YouTube channel. Which he has also grown to a whooping 26k followers.
Understanding that it IS hard work to grow on social media, also that you won’t receive the real benefits from your efforts for some time.
This is something that Tom has got a clear picture of and his goal is to grow for the future of his social media following.
The YouTube channel is around 4 years old. Starting off in a completely different niche Tom soon realized that he would have to pivot.
The channel started off in the automotive niche, filming events with cars.
The events were not on regular enough to be able to upload often enough to grow the channel.
This is where Tom went into the gaming niche. Then finally settling on building the channel arounds real life.
You could say that Tom is a quick learner and changed to what would work for him and what he enjoys.
One thing I think that separates me from a lot of the people I grew up with is that I went traveling around the world. Making friends with so many different nationalities helped me personally grow into who I wanted to be, without the influences of others.
Having Friends All Over The World
Growing a brand online Tom has made friends with people from all over the world. Not only does he meet up with the local friends in the UK but keeps in contact with friends all over.
With the ever change algorithms of social media. Tom has had to develop the skills to adapt his content to work with the algorithms in order to grow.
Through learning how to keep an audience engaged in 60 second videos on tic toc, to using that knowledge to his advantage and creating highly engaging content on you tube.
Knowing Your Audience
I was told by Tom that is all comes down to knowing your audience and creating content that will keep that audience engaged.
Although Tom has never had training on growing a social media following, it shows that the huge amount of experience he has gained is through trial and error.
In my opinion the best way to learn is to get it out to the whole wide world, then let your audience tell you what they think.
As this is exactly what Tom has don’t by spending hours consuming videos on you tube and implementing what he has learnt.
No only implementing, but checking the analytics to get a good understanding of what content to create.
Sometimes You Hit A Roadblock
Tom explained to me that there was a time that his views were going down. In order to understand what was happening he looked back on his old videos to see what was working.
Beginning to understand what was working, with the type of content.
Tom began to create content around what his audience wanted to see.
Then the views picked up once again.
I was lucky enough to find out one of Tom tactics for engagement. Once he told me. It sounded so simple – yet genius.
In a video, if you put the milk into a bowl before the cereal.
This will be something that an audience will notice. I mean WHO ACTUALLY DOES THAT!
If it will get people to comment on a video – Tom does that.
If you haven’t seen any of Tom Bidgood content, its not to be missed. The amount of value he provides to his audience is amazing.
So much so that it makes you wonder what else Tom is able to teach inside his coaching – Witch of course, as clever as Tom is – This is intentional.
Best Advice to Growing Your Following On Social Media
I asked Tom “what would be the best piece of advice, you would give to a new Entrepreneur?”
His answer was “keep going”. Tom experienced a drop in his views when he hit 100k.
No knowing what happened, he kept posting and pushed on through to eventually grow that account to over 500k.
It only to one video to do really well, then it helped the channel rocket after that.
So keep going however hard it gets.
I feel that a lot of people enter the online space for instant gratuities and quick wins. Having a mindset like Tom is a perfect way to guarantee success in the long run.
“You need to enjoy what your doing”
The life of an online influencer is stereo typical a person who just makes videos all day and has fun. Tom will tell you that its not always the case. You need to work hard to be able keep Growing Your Following On Social Media.
So you need to make sure your having fun along the way.?
Tom has a plan to continue to keep Growing his Following On Social Media to open up other opportunities in the future. His main goal at the moment is to grow that community and his own brand online. By helping others grow their social media accounts online.
A year ago Tom never imagined that he would be coaching students online. The main aim at the moment is to get his audience from tic toc to the you tube channel in order to help that grow.
As Tom never really planned on becoming a coach, he is open minded to what his next steps may be.
Becoming A Coach Growing Your Following On Social Media
With coaching a number of people from all different age groups, be sure to look out for Tom bringing out his own evergreen training.
Bring online and producing content for the whole wide world to see, you always get negative comments.
Tom is no exception here, However having a great attitude towards the online space and knowing that with 1 hater there are 100 friends – there is nothing that’s going to stop Tom reaching his goals.
The way Tom has learnt to deal with people like this is to make them laugh with a funny comment back, as Tom points out – they helped by engaging on the content.
I had to ask Tom the question of what he would say to am entrepreneur stating out online.
His advice was great to here –
“If the money and the life style is your end goal – Your never going to get there”
You need to have a passion and enjoy the path you choose.
If you are able to make yourself create some form of content online every day. That will help you grow a following for the future.
Pretty solid advice I must admit.