How I Grew A Facebook Follower Count From 500 to 50,000

Once upon a time the job market super sucked. Not the 2020 time, I’m talking about the 2008 time. I graduated with a Marketing degree in 2008, and was tossed into a terrible job market. I applied for 30+ jobs. One interview went something like this:

Interviewer: Why should we hire you for a marketing position when there are marketers with 10 years of experience applying for this job?

Me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I went back to my parent’s basement and cried. From then on, interviewers could sense I was dead inside.

A doctor’s visit and 100mg of Wellbutrin later, I decided to go get a part-time job so I didn’t feel so dang useless. I worked at Starbucks. I wrote a (crappy) food blog. Having a purpose made all the difference in my mood. I kept applying for jobs on the side.

I finally got one at a mom-and-pop ecommerce company. The office was in the basement of the owner’s house. (What is with me and basements?) The boss said she liked my food blog writing! And I passed the ‘technology’ test which required me to take some names on a word document and put them in ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ columns in Excel. I was officially the PR and Social Media Coordinator.

The company had a Facebook page with 500 followers. I made a teeny square banner ad and set the budget to the minimum daily spend, $5.

The ad said: “Do you like ‘X THING COMPANY IS KNOWN FOR’? We Love ‘X THING!” like our page!”

Literally, that is all it said.

I posted on Facebook daily and maintained the blog, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.

By the time I left that position 2.5 years later, the Facebook page had 50,000 followers.

That’s right, I 100x’d the follower count. 

Pretty cool! But what can we take away from this? Hint: It’s not ‘buy Facebook ads for $5/day’. Keep reading!

What can my story teach us about social media? 

·   Social media is a long game – it took YEARS to get from 500 to 50,000 and that was when I was on Facebook at the best possible time for growth.

·   A small advertising budget can help you stand out from everyone else spending $0

·  Your content doesn’t have to be perfect, just get started! My crappy food blog led to an ecommerce job which got me an agency job (where I worked my face off for 4 years) and now I have my own business where I work in my jammies. You never know how you are going to get where you want to go. Do what you like and unexpected doors will open!

·  Get on the right damn network at the right damn time! I repeat, don’t go creating a banner ad on Facebook and expect to get 50,000 followers. That’s not the point. The point is, you missed the boat on Facebook and Insta growth period. BUT! You still have time to leap off the dock and make it on the TikTok or LinkedIn boat if you go NOW!