Whether you’re starting a blog or just wanting to engage with a community, social media is an amazing tool for bringing people together. Connecting with others is pretty much necessary if you want to have any kind of audience, even a small one. That said, every platform is different and can be used for different things. I’m of the firm belief that if you want to find your people, especially if you’re trying to grow a following, you don’t need to be everywhere all the time (although it certainly helps!) Instead, it’s better to pick the mediums that most appeal to you and engage with them regularly. 

I thought it might be helpful to someone who either wants to start a spiritual blog, is interested in learning more about spirituality, or wants to make some friends in the community if I broke down each of the social media platforms I use and how I use them! This is NOT a post on “how to get a bunch of followers” on any of these platforms, mind you, but rather a post on how I’ve used each one to make meaningful connections (although of course it’s nice to see those numbers go up, right?) I can honestly say that I’ve found a wonderful community of like-minded people who lift others up and celebrate each other and that’s an experience I think everyone should have. It helps that in the “spiritual” community, most people are interested in putting good out into the world instead of tearing others down (not to say there aren’t still problematic people, but I’ve been lucky enough to avoid them so far!)

Note that spirituality looks different for every person, and I’m using it as a blanket term to cover a lot of things, many of which are completely not considered spiritual to other people. I found that my people are mostly tarot readers, witches, and wildcrafters who are into stuff like crystals, herbs, essential oils, yoga, energy, rituals, astrology, and keeping up with the moon. That’s not to say that liking those things makes you a witch or that you have to read tarot in order to be spiritual, of course! These are just the areas where the overlap happens for me and my community. If your spirituality is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or none of the above, you might find some overlap here too or not at all. That’s okay! I just wanted to throw it out there because I know that the specific niches you pursue will have an effect on which social media platform might be best for you – there are probably a lot more Christian Facebook groups, for instance, than ones for tarot, which might make it a more successful platform for you and your purposes. 

I’m totally not a social media professional by any means and as I mentioned before, this is NOT a post on how to get the most followers – it’s about what I personally did to connect with others on social media. I’m not claiming to have a huge community by any means, but it’s a good size and I think these are good tips if you want to find your own folks!

Anyway, enough with the disclaimers. Here’s what I did to find the community I have today! 

Tumblr
Tumblr was the first platform I joined, before a blog was ever on my radar, before I ever thought of reading tarot for complete strangers. I actually joined it to gather resources and create a sort of digital “sacred space” as I learned more about the different spiritual paths that are out there. I had had Tumblr blogs in the past and never accumulated more than about 100 or so followers, so I truly never expected it to become anything big. Reaching 1k followers completely blew my mind, and now I’m close to 4k! 

What I Did: Basically, I followed everyone I could who posted things I liked at first. After a while you come to see certain people on your dashboard over and over again and you sort of form a bond with them, especially if they follow you back! I reached out and sent messages to blogs I really liked, and in many cases struck up genuine friendships this way. I found my niche in the tarot community and reblogged things I thought would be helpful or enjoyable to others like me. I’m not going to lie, my growth was pretty slow until I made a text post that got reblogged by one of the larger blogs and BLEW UP. I was in Croatia at the time and every time I checked my phone, my eyes about popped out of my head! When I hit 1k followers I held a giveaway that ended up earning me almost another 1k by the time it was done. Tumblr is great because you get to see a little bit of everyone’s personality from the things they blog about, and it can be an amazing resource if you want to learn more! 

My Tips: Use the tags. Always tag your posts (although I think only the first five are used in search results, so be strategic). Be patient, as you have to post using the tags for a while before your posts will start showing up there. The tags I used most often are tarot, tarot community, divination community, witches of tumblr, and witchcraft (but obviously yours will vary depending on what you post!) Go through the tags to find other people to follow, and then engage with them! Support others and they’ll have your back, too. And be genuine – don’t just send the same message to a billion blogs. Also, don’t get discouraged by slow growth. These things take time, and the more followers you have the easier it is to gain more (since more people are reblogging your stuff!) You’ve just gotta power through the beginning stage to get to where you want to be. If you really want to grow quickly, host a giveaway – but be careful. Tumblr’s rules about that kind of thing are weird and pretty specific. 

Instagram
The next platform I joined was Instagram, and this is probably my favorite of all of them, honestly! 

What I Did: I browsed through the tags to find people to follow and also asked on Tumblr if anyone following me there had one, which allowed me to connect a little more and make more friends! I didn’t go follow-crazy with this one – while that might be a quick way to get followers, I really wanted to use Instagram as a way to connect with people. I follow people I genuinely like seeing updates from and I always try to like their pictures and comment on them when I can. I met a lot of really awesome people this way and now my Instagram is like a little oasis full of cool peeps and pretty pictures! I find that Instagram is a pretty personal platform, weirdly enough – while someone might have thousands of followers, not everyone takes the time to leave a comment and if you DO leave one, most people tend to respond to it! Plus, scrolling through your feed you can’t really tell how many followers a person has – it feels one-on-one, a little peek into their life delivered right to your screen. I love it!

My Tips: Show your appreciation for the pictures you like. Like them with the heart and leave a meaningful comment – it’ll make peoples’ day and they’ll probably check out your account, too! I regularly spend a half hour a day just going through tags and liking pictures I think are cool. Also, with Instagram there’s no limit to the number of hashtags you can use, so make sure you find the best ones for your niche and use those in your posts when they’re relevant. Instagram has this handy feature that shows you how many posts are in each hashtag when you type it in, but note that more isn’t always merrier – the really popular tags like #happy move very quickly, so your photo might get drowned out! Stick to a balance of tags that are more generally about your niche as well as specific to your post to make sure your pics are getting seen. Most bloggers will tell you to keep your photos consistent, like very similar to each other. I agree and disagree. While I think it’s aesthetically pleasing if you always use the same filter or whatever, at the end of the day, this is supposed to be fun. And I like seeing a glimpse into peoples’ lives, so post that selfie or that picture of your tea even if you’re a tarot blogger. If you’re looking to form genuine connections, that will go a long way towards putting your personality out there! Also, DON’T BE THAT JERK who follows a bunch of people only to unfollow them all once they follow you back. It really hurts a small account when they see their tiny follower count dwindling – be genuine!

Twitter
I am fully aware that I’m not using Twitter as well as I could be. As a whole, it overwhelms me – I can’t check it more than a few times a day, and every time I do it’s like 10000000 new Tweets for me to read and I just can’t, you know? 

What I Did: I made a list for people I like and connect with regularly and for the most part I just check their updates. If I strike up a convo with someone new, I add them to the list. It makes it a lot easier to keep up with the people I care about even if it’s not a good way to gain new followers!

My Tips: Interact with people! Retweet their stuff and like their posts. Even if someone is a celebrity or an idol of yours and you’re 100% sure they won’t see your tweet, try anyway. Tweet at them, share their blog posts and tag them in the tweet, reply if they ask a question. Chances are they WILL see it, and if you’re constantly supporting their work they’ll take notice of that. I’ve gotten to chat with some seriously cool people on Twitter that I would have thought were WAY out of my league, but it turns out they’re nice humans just like anyone else! Also, participate in Twitter chats – they’re a fun way to meet people.

Pinterest
UGH, PINTEREST. Okay, that’s not entirely fair: I love my personal Pinterest. I scroll through the Weddings section all day erryday despite NOT being engaged because wedding things tend to be pretty, which I like, and pastel a lot of the time which I also like. BUT when you’re trying to grow your Pinterest, you can’t just pin whatever you want. So I have another Pinterest just for my blog and like… what am I even doing with it? Figuring out how to use it right is too much effort, tbh. I use Tailwind and I just queue up a bunch of pins and leave it to do its thing until the queue is empty and I have to stock up again. Pinterest isn’t really as interactive user-wise as the other platforms, in my opinion. While I have connected with people by joining group boards, we don’t like, message each other or anything. HOWEVER, it has been a good source of traffic to my blog, and THEN I can interact with people from there! So it’s worth it to have one, in my opinion.

My Tips: If you want to gain followers, have a cohesive theme. My page is mostly purple, for example, since that fits with my “brand.” Try to keep your pins themed around your niche (although you can make a secret board for all of your other pins if you want to still save them!) Also, I highly recommend using Tailwind (and not just because that’s an affiliate link, which it is.) It’s $15 a month and I seriously have seen growth every single week since I started using it despite the 0 effort I put into it. Because who has time to be pinning consistently throughout the day?? Not me. I’d rather be Instagramming.

Facebook
Fam, I am not a Facebook expert. I didn’t even really want to make a Facebook, but then I was like “man, but it’s really cool and convenient to keep up with brands and people I like that way,” so I figured I’d just have one because why not? When it comes to Facebook, I’m a creeper, not a poster, so this one is hard for me. I also don’t advertise it as much as I should… and just now realized that I haven’t put a link to it in my e-mail signature or newsletter footer yet. Whoops! I don’t really have much advice for making a page because I have not yet figured it all out, but as far as Facebook-for-connecting-with-others goes, be careful not to just join every group out there that’s relevant to your niche. You’ll have a hard time keeping up and participating in all of them. Instead, find groups that you really love and be sure to engage with others. I’m only a member of two Facebook groups and I think that’s about the max that I personally can handle right now. 

I think my #1 tip that’s consistent through all of these platforms is: engage with others! Even if you’re shy – you have nothing to lose. People are generally kind unless they have a reason not to be. Respond to as many comments as you can, leave comments of your own, respond to tweets and messages, things like that. Finding a group of people with whom you have a meaningful connection is SO much more fulfilling than seeing that follower count go up, trust me. 

What’s your favorite social media platform? Do you have any tips for me? ♥