How do you drive incredible growth in online followers?

I read a great article this morning from Jimmy Mackin from Inman News about how a pair of women who go by the moniker "The Geeky Girls" drove up their number of online followers by a huge percentage, almost overnight.  The method of doing this was relatively simple, which is why I'm bringing it up here.  It's easy for a large scale business to spend thousands of dollars to recruit followers but if you're an agent with a limited budget, you have to be creative.  These ladies did just that.

In a nutshell, they went online and followed this sequence:

• Posted on Facebook that a challenge was "coming soon"
• Posted the challenge on their blog
• Posted the challenge on Facebook
• Mentioned who was winning
• Updated results
• Posted the winner

The prize in this sequence of events?  A t-shirt, one for each of the top 3 winners.  For $10, they boosted their numbers substantially over a 7 day period.  The question is, could anyone do the same sort of thing and achieve similar results?  I think you could.

What can an agent offer as a prize?  All sorts of things but keep it cheap and simple.  If you don't like the idea of the t-shirt then how about a Starbucks gift card, pre-paid VISA, some consulting time, or anything else of value.  You could give anything away as long as it costs little but offers an incentive for someone to friend you, like you, subscribe to you, or otherwise build your base of followers.  I believe this works not because of the prize but because people love getting something free.  Any chance to get a freebie with the small task of subscribing to a blog is well worth it to most people.

What networks can you use?  If you're not on Facebook, use Twitter, LinkedIn, your blog, and other places where you network online.  Any social media outlet can be used.  Put the challenge out and post the results anyplace you want to drive growth in your followers.

So, read the original article for the details on how The Geeky Girls did their thing and give some thought to how you might implement something similar.