What's your favorite way/tool to build a following?

I hear ya, Ben, building a community is VERY difficult and a lot of people overlook this at the beginning of launching a product. I think there should be a focus on building a community while you build your product.

Share your journey, I feel the Pieter Levels (https://twitter.com/levelsio) model works well for any entrepreneur.

For me, I try to learn from the people who have built a decent following, watch what they do. I'm a big fan of one of the IH members here - @daviddel

I paid for his course a few months ago and find it very helpful, lot's of great tips, tools and methods to grow on all social networks. Check it out http://www.growyourclicks.com/

Putting my comic artist community out there inherently means content marketing, since the platform's focus is collaboratively made webcomics. So that means I make pretty heavy use of social media.

My main four (from best to worst engagement) are:

• Instagram

• Reddit

• 9Gag

• Imgur

Instagram is by far the best social channel I've found. Unlike the other listed above, you can actually build a following. IG is where I speak most directly to my users (questions, polls, sliders are great to get a feel for what my base wants - can even have them vote on feature requests) as well as manage contests and shoutouts through stories.

The other 3 are handy for tapping into an already existing communities/following, but engagement can be really hit or miss, and the comments can get a fair bit more toxic. 9Gag is more forgiving in terms of up/downvotes, but I think that's because there's a lower standard for content overall.

I've also tried sharing stuff on...

• Facebook

• Tumblr

But I've never had as much luck and find it difficult to build a following. I've even mentioned my website on 4chan the odd time, but that's a risky move. Some interesting artists have joined us from there...but that placement invites plenty of trolls as well.

Recently my greatest influx of active users came from a thread someone else started on the Drawception forums - I saw over 100 sign-ups, and they were all users who already took part in online drawing games, so that was a catch! I've been reluctant to post to places like this myself because I don't want to come across as spam. To get in on more high quality communities like this, I think the best bet is to iterate on the product, take feedback into real consideration, and build a product users love so much that they have to share it.

I wonder if I'm missing out on other possible channels though...might give DeviantArt another try...anyone have suggestions?

I'm working on a Chrome extension (https://www.checkbot.io/) so I get a lot of organic traffic just from being on the Chrome Web Store. I could have made Checkbot into a desktop app but I would have missed out on that traffic so it was a conscience choice. Sometimes the platform and distribution method can make it easier to get users is my point.

I'm not having much luck getting social media or newsletter followers though (I have links for joining these in the extension and on the homepage) so would be keen to get some tips myself.

Voting up as I am very curious to read current IH opinions on this.

My favourite tool of all time was Instagress for automating Instagram. It’s been shut down now.

Currently playing with my mates app which he recently launched: postwing.co for scheduling posts for multiple social media platforms. Really useful for sourcing content too.

I find posting regularly to social media works really well, but you need to have a great store of content to link to in order to make this work. I've even found auto-posting stories works well if you have enough content to make this viable (only works for certain kinds of website, but it's perfect for a community like indie hackers). I've been doing this for Golang News (https://golangnews.com) and it's working well so far.

Blog posts which generate attention/controversy in your target market are also good for getting the name of your product out there.

BetaFamily and just being a part of several slack channels as well and asking people

Don't have high volumes yet, however, the best results were a landing page and some blog posts to get organic signups. (Opening up publicly in a week or so) Other than that had some minor interaction on Twitter, still have to set up other social media.

As for super early (closed beta users) - I asked friends and acquaintances from the relevant space if they want to give it a spin.

I've had quite some success building a following on Quora : https://www.quora.com/profile/Marc-Montagne

It could help you build a following by answering questions in the area that you specialize in. Stack Overflow or Microsoft Answers are good places to build a reputation as someone who knows what they are talking about.

I've recently started builing an audience before releasing a MVP of my new side project. I've started with a screencast presenting a prototype https://pawelurbanek.com/visual-web-scraper and managed to gather enough audiance to proceed with development.

I did a solid 6 months of blogging and social media engagement for my side project getnovelty.com

Strategies that continue to be successful (but also take up a lot of time):

1. Find out where your customers hang out and talk to them. Joining Facebook groups worked well for me.

2. Answer questions on Quora.

3. Blogging on my personal website, and then importing into Medium.

These all took a considerable amount of time but they provide a lot of SEO. I’m actually starting to get a pretty small fly wheel going. The quality of my website traffic has gone up considerably and i’m starting to convert looky-loos 👀 into users 🚀

For social media following. Use the HTTPS://2fb.me extension. It's bound to Twitter and Facebook making them work together for better marketing

I think email is still one of the best ways to build a following / audience. We all know email is super crowded and everyone is trying to be an inbox minimalist. But if you can crack that and become one of the must-read emails for people, you'll be on your way.

Think about the email you've been subscribed to for the last year. Why did you stay subscribed? How can you duplicate that feeling in your own area / industry.

IH emails are like that for me. I always look forward to opening them and looking through the new threads every day :)

Giving something away your users would find interesting or valuable is a great way to build good will. Blog posts, downloadable resources, calculators, infographics are our strategy.