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How to get 300,000 Followers In 2026 (not fast)
- Thomas Blakemore
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
A 10 year overnight success
How did you get those numbers?! Someone from my basketball squad asked.
Since moving home from Dubai to the UK, it's still felt like this crazy transition.
I've been away for years and, as a result, many old frineds have moved on and in some ways, it's like building from scratch again, moving to a new country/town again even if it is the one that I've lived in for most of my life.
This time of year has been my gratest struggle with reverse culture shock. I feel like I need to make a new email or reflection about that.
Back to the story. As part of moving home, I've started basketball and more recently, started adding people on Instagram. Some of the lads on the squad are younger and all of them are aspirational. I had one lad who is building a business ask how I'd pulled it off. 'I'm one of those 10 years, overnight successes!' I joked.
What do I mean? I've been building for 10 years.
When I moved to Dubai, I'd already been creating for 2 years and yet, I only moved out with 400 subs on YouTube. Fast for
wards 7 1/2 years and that number is nearly 300k when adding up the major social media platforms.
There's a few things that have enabled this:
-Borderline obsession: Being able to constantly research new updates, make tweaks and changes as things go. For example, I was one of the first teachers to start posting my same videos on LinkedIn. Back then they'd just decided they wanted to change to be more creator focussed. As a result, my content got pushed out earlier. I think this was a huge part of my growth to 44K in 2 years.
- Consistency: This doesn't mean doing something every single day. Although, it can in some ways. It means showing up and delivering what you said you would. For example If you have a weekly podcast, do that. And, if changes need to be made, be transparent so people aren't waiting on you.
- Content consistency:
Okay, I think this is an area I struggled with. If you make videos and products about fishing and then suddenly come up with vegan baking tutorials. That would be fine but you better have some fish in there somewhere. Not only will people disengage, the algorithms will punish you. Know where you're at and keep hammering that drum. If you see something does well, ride the wave. Do it again. My biggest problem has probably been distraction and boredom in this area, moving me onto new things when I should focus on one.
- Try again.
People say not to do this but you absolutely can repurpose content. I've ran many an experiment where I trim the ends, change and intro or even just post the same thing again and it works. You've got to think that not everyone will have seen your content when you first published it so you need to be prepared to post it again. It's almost a kindness really. Oh, and you'll now have new followers who might not have seen it.
If you're interested, my recent Podcast episode delved into this more. I decided not to push it out this week and it's kind of flopped but I'm a big believer that the people who needed the value, got it.
Anyway, check it out below and feel free to check out some of the guides I've shared below.
Next week I'l share a bit about reverse culture shock and whether I think Dubai is still worth it in 2026
All the best
Thomas
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