How to Get Social Media Followers in Baseball & Softball Without Even Creating New Content

Whether we like to admit it or not, we sometimes fall into instantly judging a given social media content creator’s value based on the number of followers they’ve acquired. 

This naturally leads many to worry about how they are perceived as they build their own brand. 

Thoughts like “how do I get more followers fast,” “why am I losing followers,” or another common misconception, “If I don’t have followers yet, it must mean my content isn’t good enough,” can run rampant. 

Well, the great news is that this last bit might be the farthest thing from the truth. 

Because, in reality, the number of followers you see displayed on an account is often not a direct reflection of the contents’ worth. 

Instead, it can be caused by a host of adjacent factors, aside from content quality, that we’ll explore below. 

This guide will give you a ton of serious tips on how baseball and softball coaches and entrepreneurs can get more authentic followers on social media.

#What Are Social Media Followers

Before getting into the nitty gritty, it’s always helpful to define our terms. 

So what's a follower? 

If we open up a dictionary and look up the definition of the word follower, we find that it means "a person who supports and admires a particular person or set of ideas". 

It is basically an individual that agrees with or aspires to be “something.” That something could be a person, a place, a thing, or a way of doing things.

#Why Authentic Followers Are Beneficial For Your Coaching Business

One obvious reason that comes to mind is a feeling of accomplishment. 

And yes, if you work long hours on your content and do everything right at the right time, having a particular follower count can feel like a reward for all that hard work. 

But besides that internal sense of success, there are other benefits to a greater following number. 

For one, you’ll have more public social credibility. This isn’t us condoning or admonishing this fact, but just pointing out that it’s true in many cases.

Whenever a viewer stumbles upon your profile or page and sees you have a certain amount of followers, they’ll often think – whether consciously or unconsciously – that your services, product, or content is trustworthy and must be worth their time because many other people are implicitly signaling value by following you. 

This sentiment can, in turn, attract new clients and attract more customers wanting your products or services. 

This is the biggest and, for many, the most important benefit you can get from growing your social media presence – actual money. 

And follower growth in and of itself can sometimes create this type of powerful and self-sustaining network effect for your business.  

Another point in its favor is the potential to attract more collaboration work with other brands. 

What brands are looking for when they decide to collaborate with others is to have their own offerings reach a wider or just different audience than the one they’ve currently cultivated themselves. 

For that reason, they will be on the lookout for content creators with an advantageous follower count, but most importantly, those who have a favorable follower-engagement ratio.

You can see where you currently stack up and compare your engagement to average follower benchmarks by trying out this free engagement calculation tool.

#Why You're Not Gaining Followers, Coach

The only way you'll know how to get more followers, is to first understand why you aren't getting any in the first place. 

Below are a few of the most common reasons.

#Inconsistency is Killing Your Gains

The number one culprit of follower loss or stagnant growth on social media is a lack of consistency. 

This regularity can only be achieved through the practice of creating content true to your brand’s value – whether in terms of brand voice, customer experience, or visually speaking – and through delivering that content at intelligently chosen times, repeatedly. 

But this article isn’t here to tell you the obvious about creating great content. It should also be your goal to find sustainable posting schedules that work with your life and goals in the industry. 

Having a posting schedule and considering the third-party pre-scheduling applications is very helpful in this regard. 

You should strive to do anything that ensures you won’t forget to post or that helps you avoid posting rushed and low-quality content for the sole purpose of posting something. 

Luckily, we wrote the ultimate guide on how baseball and softball creators can batch create, organize, and auto-schedule their social media posts.

Because people are creatures of habit, individuals are more likely to follow a brand if they know that it will consistently be putting out the content they’re looking to engage with.

#Not Paying Attention To Posting Times

Not paying attention to the time of day you’re uploading your posts could also reduce your chances of getting followers. 

To make sure you post at optimal times, check your social media analytics often by identifying which ones of your already posted posts have performed the best, and at what times you’ve posted them. 

This may require a lot of testing to determine the best time for you up front, but it will definitely be worth the effort. 

As long as your social media account is set to “business,” as we argue it should be in most cases, then you’ll have access to some sort of analytics. 

This data will give you important insights about your account and which direction to take your social media strategies. 

If you’re on Instagram, don't miss our guide on how to use Instagram analytics for baseball and softball brands. 

But, regardless of which social media platform you’re looking to grow on, a great place to start is to think through what the typical day of a ballplayer or parent in your target audience looks like. 

This’ll quickly give you some hypotheses on which moments they are most likely to be scrolling on social media versus at a team practice or game?

Posting based on the free time of parents and players in your unique time zone is especially great for coaches offering local in-person lessons or clinics. 

But if you're looking to reach the entire world with your online lessons or product offerings, then we’ve got you covered with the best posting times for one of the most popular platforms in our games, Instagram, below. 

#Unclear Account Goals Stifle Growth

When people look at your account or channel, they should immediately know what you’re about. 

In user experience and user interface design – creators of the functional experiences and look and feel of things like apps and websites – we have a concept called a “five second test.”

Basically, you show a person in your target audience something visual – like a social media account – for five seconds and then ask them questions based on their quick impressions. 

You may be wondering, why five seconds?

It’s because Studies have found that visitors only spend a few seconds checking things out online before deciding whether to stay or leave.

But the point is to make sure that your baseball or softball social media accounts or channels pass this five second test. 

When you don’t know who or what you want your social profile for, it’s even less apparent to new visitors. 

Also, first impressions aside, neither potential followers nor social media algorithms like content and tone being too disparate on a single account. 

Internalizing this reality can be one of the biggest mental hurdles you must overcome to see consistent growth.    

To repeat, have a clearly defined purpose for your social media accounts. 

Try to decide from the get-go when and if you will be uploading more personally inspirational content, user-generated content, or informational content rather than  randomly uploading all different sorts onto one account. 

Pick a few content types and stick with them – at least for a bit.

#What Not To Do To Gain Ballplayer or Parent Followers

One strategy you might be tempted to employ when you're just starting out with social, but that isn’t a worthwhile long term solution to your brand's growth, is called “follow/unfollow.”

#Follow Unfollow Strategy

This involves mass following other accounts only to then unfollow them shortly after. 

It is still a commonly taught and used strategy used by many. Unfortunately, it doesn't generate any of the meaningful things you're looking for when building your brand. 

Your profile on any social media platform is meant to attract and engage with individuals interested in your content genuinely. 

Spending time trying to get followers to inflate your numbers will only serve as a waste of your valuable time and can lead to fewer real fans or revenue for your products or services.

#How To Get Social Media Followers in Baseball and Softball

#Consistency

There’s that word, again. 

We've talked about how being inconsistent is a main factor behind follower loss, well we'll once again place it on top as one of the most essential ways to ensure you get organic follower growth. 

Even though this article is about what you can do aside from creating new content, this reality is just unavoidable. 

We know your next question is something along the lines of “How often should I post?” 

The real answer is it depends – as unsatisfactory as that is. It depends on the specific social media platform we’re talking about and your specific goals. 

For example, if you’re trying to grow organically on Instagram right now, we’d recommend 2 posts a day as ideal. You’d mostly want to alternate between posting Reels and less-polished, but more intimate Stories – with only 2-3 purely Feed posts per week. 

But, such recommendations are fleeting at best, changing every few months when social media platforms add new features or change up their algorithms.

A much more important and timeless concept to internalize here is to still always prioritize quality over quantity. 

Rushing out half-baked ideas and posts just to meet an arbitrary daily quota isn’t doing you or your followers any favors.  

#Update Your Coaching Profile

Just as the seasons change, your various profiles should continually be evolving.

If you want in-depth guidance on creating or improving your Instagram bio specifically, don’t miss our ultimate coach entrepreneur’s Instagram bio guide.  

But here, we’ll be laser-focusing on social media profile pics. Every social media platform will require one – so they’re about as universal as we can get. 

As a professional baseball or softball coach, you really have two primary options for these profile pictures. 

You can either use your brand’s logo or an image of yourself. 

One is not more or less correct. It all depends on what your brand and your products and services are all about. 

If you are primarily a private baseball or softball lesson instructor, you would likely opt for a photo of yourself, for example. 

#Profile Logo Creation Best Practices

If you go the route of using your brand’s logo, we have some recommendations. 

If you’re on a tight budget and want to create a logo yourself, your best bet is doing so with Canva  – unless you’re also a professional designer, of course. 

Without naming names, I can tell you that quite a few brand logos you’d recognize in our industry were made using Canva. 

If you’re looking to get some professional help, logo designers or brand creators have massively different pricing depending on things such as their experience, past clients, whether they are a single freelancer or an agency of varying sizes. 

These differences and more can make the price of getting a logo fluctuate from around $40 on the very lowest end to $20,000 on the highest. 

However, a viable and practical option for most baseball or softball creators and brands could be to try out 99Designs – where logo designers from around the world compete in a contest with each other for your business by submitting logos for you to consider, and you only pay for the one you like best. 

This is a great way to check out a bunch of options in a short amount of time for the starting price of $299, as of the writing of this article. 

The possible downside is that sometimes designers will recycle popular and well-liked concepts and ideas in many different designs and for many different industries – because these tend to win the contests. So your design may end up being less unique than you might prefer.  

But it’s still a great place to start for most coaches. 

There are also tons of platforms to connect you to logo designing individual freelancers, like Fiverr and TailoredLogo, but we’ve always had the best luck working with creators on UpWork. 

Freelancers on the other platforms may be a bit cheaper in the short term, but talent and professionalism on UpWork have always stood out to us. 

Usually, logo design experts work on hourly rates, but you also can try to negotiate a fixed price along with how many revisions you’ll get for that fixed price. 

Regardless of where you get professional help, you want to make sure to not only get a single .png file logo design. 

This is a prevalent mistake made by first-time entrepreneurs. 

You are also looking for a brand style guide, also called a “brand book,” that gives you: 

• Different color and style variations of that logo and in different file types 
• Potentially icons to use in other social media post graphics or on a website
• Your new brand’s official color scheme
• And your official fonts and their styles and variations to be used depending on context (whether on your online profiles, on a tee-shirt, a mug, etc.).

#A Big Caveat on Purchasing Logos

Please do not drop hundreds of dollars on a shiny new logo if you’re just starting your coaching career and haven’t yet figured out the other more important things, like how and where to make money with your services or products. 

And, even after this step, you’d still need to do all of the other more important work of establishing your baseball or softball coaching brand, before even considering a custom logo design. 

On the other hand, a great-looking and sales-optimized profile picture of yourself is usually free and works great for professional baseball and softball coaches at all stages of their careers. 

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#Personal Profile Pic Best Practices for Coaches

#1. Pick a photo that looks like you

It might sound obvious, but your photo should give potential followers a clear idea of what you look like. 

If, for example, they ever book an in-person or online lesson with you and you look completely different these days, this can be jarring and does not start things off on the best foot.

#2. Use a high-resolution image

Try to avoid small, low-resolution images. If the picture looks a bit blurry when you upload it, you may want to opt for a different one. 

#3. Have your face take up at least 60% of the profile frame

Using that picture of yourself taken from across the ballfield or that epic mountain-top landscape shot is not ideal when you want followers to know what you actually look like. 

Instead, aim to have your face filling about 60% of the profile space. It feels more personal and intimate, which helps people connect with you and your brand faster. 

You should crop the picture from the top of your shoulders to just above your head so that your face fills the frame.

If you’re not sure how to crop pictures with your iPhone or iPad, here’s how:

1. Launch Photos on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Find and select the photo you want to crop.
3. Tap Edit in the upper right corner.
4. Tap the Crop button in the bottom menu – it’s a square with two arrows circling it.
5. Tap and drag on the corner handles of the crop until you're satisfied with the results.

#4. Try to be the only person in the picture

You’ll have plenty of space in your actual social media content to show note-worthy clients or teammates from your playing days. 

But multiple people in a profile pic is generally confusing to potential new followers or clients.

#5. Look the part

Try to put yourself into the mindset of a mom or dad scrolling on social media. And keep in mind that not everyone is an expert in baseball or softball the way you are. 

If you look like the amazing baseball or softball creator or entrepreneur that you are in your profile picture, it will definitely help your cause. 

#Always Use Any Social Media Platform's Newest Feature – A Lot

This deceptively simple strategy is one of the most powerful in terms of results. It’s at the root of countless social media success stories. 

Every single time a platform rolls out a new feature or a new way to post content – which they each do almost every year – you have to use it a lot, and you have to use it well. 

Easy, right? But you may be asking why.

Machine learning algorithms work on positive and negative feedback inputs, defined goals, and adjusting incentives.

But you don’t really need to fully understand these things to understand why using new features helps you as a baseball or softball brand or entrepreneur reach your own business or professional goals. 

Algorithms, complex as it very much are, are, at the end of the day, just tools to help Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or LinkedIn and their employees most effectively reach their own business goals.      

So, the basic answer as to why this new feature strategy will work so well for you is that whenever a colossal platform like Instagram rolls out a new worldwide feature or way to post content, you can be assured that a ton of research, design and development time and money went into that feature. 

And you can also be assured that the platform has a particular overall business goal in mind for that feature – usually, in Facebook’s case (owners of Instagram), to outcompete and crush an up-and-coming competitor or trend. 

And the product leads and engineers who created it want and need that new feature to become successful and popular on the platform, as it’s often tied directly to their future with the company – and their livelihood. 

In order to give their new feature the best eventual chance at universal adoption and popularity, platforms give what they hope is an irresistible offer to us content creators and brands: 

The platform knows that giving creators and brands – the heaviest wielders of influence – this juicy incentive is the best way to foster future adoption of the feature by the rest of the social media platform’s ecosystem.    

However, we say that doing so is “deceptively simple” for a reason that has nothing to do with how it works and all to do with how to make it work for you. 

In order to employ this strategy effectively, you must first stay up-to-date on each platform you hope to grow in’s newest feature rollouts. 

This part’s actually pretty easy – here’s Instagram’s company blog where they post all such updates, for example. 

But then, you need to learn the in’s and out’s, do’s and don’ts, of every new content posting feature a platform releases so that you can maximize your reach and growth. 

You’ll need to do research, read articles, and follow industry publications to stay ahead of the curve. 

But ultimately, such impromptu crash courses and adaptations are par for the course for the lifelong learners who make up our best baseball and softball professionals. 

And adaptation has always been an integral part of the difference between failure and success in any endeavor.  

#Get Active In Baseball or Softball Online Communities

Get active in our industry by becoming a member of one or more of the many online communities available. 

Of course, this means engaging actively on social media with your followers, subscribers, and colleagues in the baseball or softball space.

On Instagram, for example, you should like at least 30 posts and comment on at least 10 posts related to baseball or softball per day. 

Doing this keeps the algorithm happy, which directly affects your growth. 

Also, commenting on others posts in the same industry is a great way to get found and followed by their audience on any platform. Moreover, it’s a way to begin forming partnerships. 

But, in order to supplement the overall growth of your brand, you should also consider finding and joining relevant groups of individuals with the same interests as your target audience on Facebook, Reddit, or even Quora, and generously offering your knowledge.

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#Facebook Groups

On Facebook, find at least 2-3 Facebook Groups related to what you do in baseball or softball. 

Join these groups and become a real member. 

Like and leave real answers and comments on posts once a day, if possible. Also, take notes of the questions from parents that you find posted on these Groups. 

These parent questions can be a source of great social media content ideas to write or film answers to. 

Besides a great source of content, being a part of these groups has two other major benefits. 

It keeps you and your brand top of mind for the type of colleagues and parents who have a higher than usual tendency to like and engage with your content and services outside of the group. 

The second benefit is that if you are really contributing honestly in a group and then a while down the line you have a huge event or promotion that you’re running, you can share it to the group and its members are likely to help support you.

#Quora & Reddit

If you have additional time, Quora or Reddit can also be worth engaging with. 

In both places, you’ll want to focus on searching for and typing in questions or keywords in the search bar, and see if there are any questions your expertise can answer. 

Share your expert opinions as much as you can to assist those in need of more experienced advisors, and simultaneously promote your brand by adding your social links under your responses. 

As you can see, you can find interesting queries without much effort:

#Seek Brand Crossovers

Once you’ve established a pretty decent relationship with other brands, collaborating together just seems like a logical next step.

Deciding to undertake a collaborative project is a mutually beneficial endeavor. 

This is where two businesses with matching interests or goals, combine their assets together to reach higher growth levels.

As CEO Bruce Chizen once said: “Bringing together two or more people with complementary strengths not only compensates for the shortcomings of each but also results in a team in which the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.”

What are the actual benefits of starting a collaboration? 

• Increases your chances of being discovered due to higher reach also known as brand awareness.
• Your business will be perceived as more trustworthy and connected.
  
• It’s cost effective. 
  
  Especially if you decide to work with micro influencers – brands who have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers and are known to be experts in their respective niche – who may be ready to partner up with you in exchange for mutual promotions.
  
• It ultimately increases your overall sales and the demand of your services.
  

#How to collaborate on social

Now, onto some ways in which you can collaborate with others on social media:

• Shout outs: This can mean caption shoutouts, screenshots of your brand shoutouts, image shoutouts, or simply tagging you in a post.
• Co-hosting content: This can mean doing 50/50 collaborative podcasts, webinars, or going live on social media together.
  
• Guest appearances: This can mean writing a guest post on another brand’s blog, or appearing on their podcasts, webinars, or social media feeds.
  
• Account takeovers: This is where a person or brand is perceived to be given the ability to post whatever they like on another’s account.
  
• Product or service reviews: These are pretty straight forward. 

#Additional Engaging Activities on Social Media

Nobody likes to follow a brand who's communication only seems to be one sided. 

Lack of engagement is easily a reason for your followers to click that unfollow button. 

But luckily for you, there are many ways for you to be more engaging with your audience that doesn't require you to upload new post content all the time. 

No matter the platform you are on, here's a list of activities worth considering.

#1. Hold Ask Me Anything/Q&A sessions

Have people ask you any type of question they wish – they'll get to know you better and you'll be forming a more personal connection with your followers as time goes by. 

Your followers generate the conversation and visitors who come across the conversation’s questions and answers see real social proof that you are a trusted expert teaching students and engaging with the community.

#2. Initiate conversations with your audience

You can do this by asking probing questions, such as: “What is the baseball game you'll never forget?," “What do you like best, option A or option B?” and “If you could improve X, what would it be?”

Use more or less similar questions to these if relevant to what your personal brand is offering.

#3. Ask for feedback

After all, the whole purpose of your social platform is to bring more value into people's lives, right?

What better way to do that than to directly ask your followers what they'd like to see from you.

You can ask them questions on ways for you to improve your content: “What kind of content would you like to see more of?” or “Do you think I should have a whole course to specifically solve X problem?,” “Would you prefer tee-shirts or mugs [of my brand]?,” and much more.

Make your audience a part of your projects and take note of every recommendation you get for later use.

#4. Incorporate current events into your content

Mentioning Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Father's/Mothers day, Super Bowl, and almost any national day you can think of in your content is an easy way to stay consistent and fill content gaps on social media.

Such posts are relevant – which the algorithms like – and often engage with what your followers and community are experiencing on a given day.

The best versions of such posts happen when you can find a specific angle on the event or holiday that aligns to your brand’s core messaging or values.

Current event posts can also be an opportunity to run special promotional deals to your audience if you sell, or become an affiliate for, physical products.

With all of these possibilities and benefits, it’s pretty easy to see why current event posts made this list.

Here's an example below from @baseballogist celebrating 4th of July with his followers.

#4. Respond to comments and or mentions

This will serve you in building your brand's social proof and textually displaying the values you hold.

Also, when you respond and acknowledge people's comments, you encourage them to keep on engaging with you.

An outsider that comes and takes a look at your comment section and notices that you respond to many of them, if not all, will be more inclined towards thinking that you genuinely care for and value your followers.

This sentiment can lead visitors towards hitting that follow or subscribe button.

But if you are too busy to reply to the many comments you are receiving, you can surely tap on a like or heart icon to show your appreciation for the comment.

#5. Mention your followers

If you find yourself noticing one or a few especially loyal fans, don't be afraid to reward their dedication by mentioning them somewhere on your platform every now and then.

Not only will it make them feel amazing to be noticed by one of their favorite brands, but will also motivate others to engage with you as well.

Also, take the time to also regularly thank your followers or subscribers at large – for instance, after reaching a new account growth milestone.

#6. Mention other brands

It might seem counterproductive to offer free traffic by mentioning your potential competitors, but this isn't the case.

When you mention another brand or individual that you personally recommend, people will perceive you as a brand with their best interests in mind.

Such actions showcase that you are not solely focused on self-promotion but, instead, on providing them with the information they need to better themselves.

Mention other content creators that you admire, and who knows; they might give you a shout-out in return.

#7. Share customer reviews

If you've already worked with a few customers and they're satisfied with your services or products, why not use their testimonials to positively reinforce your brand’s image in the market. 

#Wrapping Up

Now you have some tangential strategies and tactics you can use to grow your baseball or softball social media followers, aside from the obvious posting great content regularly or dabbling with paid ads.  

You now have the knowledge and tools. But, just like on the ballfield, success on social media ultimately comes down to execution. 

But you got this, coach.

Wanna grow your baseball or softball coaching brand?

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