 18 strategies to become an influencer with no audience. Hey guys, have you wanted to become an influencer? Have you wanted to get paid to do endorsements or paid to talk about products or paid just to mention a company's name? This video is for you. I'm going to walk you through 18 strategies on how to become an influencer even if you don't have an audience now. If you're new to the channel, be true to the channel. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button down there. Turn it from red to gray. Don't forget. Bring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live or if I upload a video. Now, let's get right into this. You're going to be an influencer by the end of this video because you're going to know what to do. Let's get into all the steps. Number one, be a niche influencer. Here's what I mean by that. You want to niche down. You want to be very, very specific. The more specific you could possibly be, the better off you're going to be. Let's say you were talking about pets. That is a niche, but it's too broad. We narrow that down to dogs. We're going to narrow it down to dogs, which are pets, still too broad. Maybe we want to narrow it down to pets nutrition. That's still a little bit broad. Pet nutrition is kind of broad for dogs. What if we narrowed it down to food and we went down and we said we are a raw food proponent? In other words, we believe in raw food feeding for dogs. That isn't a great niche right now. There's a lot of products sold in that area. If you niche down to a product like that, you're going to more easily build your influence. Number two, develop a content strategy. Now here's what I mean. You're going to be posting content. Maybe it's a blog, maybe it's a video or whatever, maybe it's tweets. You want to make sure you have some type of strategy. Don't randomly post twice a week and then wait three months and then post once more. You've got to have a content strategy. You've got to have specific times and days that you're going to post your content. Also develop your voice at that time. Are you going to be humorous? Are you going to be serious? Are you going to be educational? Develop that content strategy so it makes sense and so people can start to follow it. Number three, select your channels. Don't randomly post on one channel and then some other channel than another channel. People can't follow you if you jump all around. So pick two or three channels or four channels, whatever you want, and make sure you consistently post on those channels. It's very important that you pick the channels where your audience is going to be. The audience for Pinterest is vastly different than that for YouTube. So make sure you find something similar to what you're doing and figure out what channels they're on and you get on the same channels. Number four, network within your industry. Whatever your niche is, whatever your industry is, find out who the leaders are. Start following those leaders. Converse with those leaders. Talk to them. Go to events where you can meet people that are also going to be leaders in that community. You've got to get entrenched into that community to be seen as an influencer. Number five, participate in online forums. Start attending things that has other people that are like-minded as you. You need to start getting to know people online. You can also go to live events and meet people at live events, but you've got to start meeting the people within your niche to be known within your niche. Number six, you want to create a website or a blog. Guys, this is so important. So many people say, do I have to have a website? The answer is no, only if you want to be successful. People have to have a place online to get more information about you, to talk to you, to send you messages, to see your content. Websites are very important, guys. Websites are easy to develop. If you don't know how to do it, you can hire somebody on Upwork or Freelancer or Fiverr, get yourself a website. Number seven, contribute to the conversation. Don't just go and try to build relationships with people saying, hi, how are you? Come see my website. That's not what you want to do. If they're talking about a particular subject, you want to talk about that subject. Put your input on the comment section, okay? Send them your input in emails, whatever you want to do, but actually contribute to the conversation and make sure it's positive. Don't start tearing people down. If you have something negative to say to somebody, don't. Just don't. Number eight, stay ahead of current events. This is super important. You can set up reminders in Google that will send you an email when a particular subject is written on online, and it will let you know where that subject is. You can go there and look it up. But you need to stay cutting edge. If you stay cutting edge, people are going to start coming to you for information because they know you know it before anybody else. Number nine, know the social media platforms that are important to your niche. This is super important, guys. Certain platforms cater different niches. Not saying that there isn't your niche on every single platform, but certain ones will attract more people. Figure out what those are. Look at your competitors. Figure out where they are. Get on those platforms and know those platforms so that you can get your message out to your audience. Number ten, don't copy other people. Just don't do it. Don't do it. You know, it's tempting to go out there and see a Gary Vee and say, well, I'm going to use the F word throughout everything I do because he does that. There's a lot more to Gary Vee than using the F word, okay? And to try to emulate somebody else's personality is almost always doomed. I don't know of anybody that really got super successful because they copied somebody else's personality. You have your own unique personality. Now, you may think it's not as dynamic as somebody else or it's not as funny as somebody else, but it's yours. And if you just come across genuine with your own personality, there's going to be people that are going to resonate with you. You know, whether you're tall or short or what color you are or what race you are or what ethnicity, it doesn't matter. You're you. Just be you and people will find you. If you put out good content and you work hard, you're going to become an influencer. Number eleven, respond, respond. What am I saying about that? I mean, respond to comments. When people are commenting on your content, they obviously want to have a conversation with you. If you ignore them, then they're not going to try to have a conversation with you anymore. Now, why is that important? Well, because most platforms like YouTube here looks at engagement. Are people actually engaging with you? Are they talking to you? Are they reaching out to you? And if they are and then you don't reach out back and you don't say something back to them, then they're going to quit. And the other people that we're going to write a comment sees that you don't respond to any comments and they're going to think, well, what's the point? This person never responds to anything. Test me on this. Test him on this video and ask me a question. And I almost guarantee, unless I miss it, which I don't usually, I almost guarantee you I'm going to respond. I'm going to say something back to you. I'm going to answer your question. And I may even ask you a question to keep the conversation going. So you've got to respond to all the comments on all of your content. Now, you will be tempted to hire somebody to do this. They won't be your voice. And you're going to say, well, JR, that would be a lot of work. You know it won't. Because in the beginning, you won't get hardly any comments. Okay? So you're going to be lucky to get any comments. And when you do get them, you should respond to them. And that's going to build your audience. And that's going to build the loyalty between your audience and yourself. Number 12, engage with your community. Don't always think that the way you're going to build your audience is always staying on your channel and doing your stuff. You need to get out there and you need to join some communities, maybe some groups on Facebook. Maybe you look at other people's blogs and you put some comments in there. You've got to be in the industry. You've got to be out there. You know, it's hard to build an audience and be an influencer. If nobody knows who you are, you hide all the time. So it's really important that you get in some of these groups, you comment, and you contribute. And don't say negative things. Number 13, consistently post fresh content. This is so very important, guys. People can only read your content so many times. Okay? They're not going to read it, but once. If you're lucky, right? So you need to constantly publish good content. And you need to do it consistently. If you're on my channel here, I've got a little over 1200 videos at the time of this recording. I'll probably have a lot more by the time you see this in a few months or years or whatever. But the point is I've published a lot of content. There's a lot of stuff there for people to latch on to. There's a lot of subject matter there. There's a lot of learning there. You have to do the same thing. You need to publish fresh content. Never mind the fact that the algorithms, all these social media algorithms, will show your content to more people if they see that you're consistently posting fresh content. I'll try to do that. Number 14, listen to criticism. So hard to do, right? I remember when I first started doing videos in the beginning of my channel, some of the first videos, and you don't want to look at those. Please don't go back to the first videos. But I was doing these little short one or two minute videos, and I had way too much energy. I mean, no human should have that much energy. And somebody said, and I quote, you sound like a used car salesman. Now, this hurt a couple ways. You know, I'm sorry, you know, you felt that way. But I did used to sell cars, and I didn't mean to offend you or anything. And they actually responded back. They were very kind. They were like, oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings or anything like that. I just kind of noticed. And that helped me. It helped me know that I was doing something wrong, and I need to change it. I was overdoing it, okay? That's what they were actually saying to me as I was overdoing it. So listen to criticism. Number 15, remain approachable, okay? You're never going to get to a level where you're better than anybody else. I don't care who you are. I don't care what you've done. You're never better than anybody else. So when people want to talk to you or say hello to you or whatever, make them feel comfortable. Make them feel welcome. Let them know they're appreciated. Because if you want to be an influencer, you better respect the people and be approachable. Number 16, research new topics on a daily basis, okay? You've got to constantly come up with new content. If you want to be an influencer, you've got to come up with new topics. You can't talk about the same thing over and over and over and over. You've got to have new angles on it. You've got to have new topics. This is going to require that you do some research on a daily basis. Number 17, automate your post. Things on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube. It'll do all these things for me automatically. Use some of these tools. Hootsuite is a really good one. I recommend it. Check that one out. It'll help you out. You can also schedule your posts. They go out certain times of the day and certain days of the week. Super helpful for planning your content, especially if you want to sail around the world to be a digital nomad, which you probably will. Follow the influencers in your niche. A lot of people say, well, I don't want to send any traffic to my competitors out there. That would be terrible. When you give a shout out or you tag one of your competitors, they're going to know that you exist. Who knows? Maybe they'll tag you. If they tag you, guess what? You may build your audience. Be kind to other people. If I could end this with anything else, it would be just be kind to other people. I'm always a good person. I've changed over the years. Maybe you were mean to people in the past, but that doesn't mean you've got to be mean anymore. I go out to restaurants a lot, and I would usually comment if I liked the food or didn't like the food. Years ago, I quit doing that. The only way I'm going to comment on a restaurant now is if I like it. If I don't like it, I'm going to keep my mouth shut because that's my opinion. In my opinion, it may not be the next person. Why do anything to hurt that restaurant? I've been here for so many years. We might as well be kind to other people. Now, be kind to me if you would. Please subscribe. That would be really kind. Hit the subscribe button. Turn it from red to gray. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live or if I upload a video. Give me a thumbs up. That matters so much. If you give me a thumbs up, of course, of course, I'll get more distribution of this video and that's what I'm looking for. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really appreciate it. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next video.