Five weeks ago, I found myself in an intimate lounge catching up with Sarah from Hidden Documentary and Demi from WeTeachMe after the monthly WordPress Melbourne User Group gathering.

It was whilst I was immersed in the jovial banter and ambient lighting that conversation steered towards the finer points of social media and it here that the challenged was laid; to increase my social media followers by 1,000 within four weeks.

Intrigued and curious to see whether I could, or how I could master this challenge, I flippantly – and with much bravado – declared, “1,000? Is that’s all?” before scratching my head and starting the process of connecting the links necessary to formulate a strategy.

All I knew at the time was that the challenge was set, there were clear and measurable goals, and that all the tools I needed were already on my plate so it was without much ado, I set forth to achieve the complete the challenge of increasing my followers by 1,000 within four weeks.

Experiment parameters

The scope of this experiment was so wide that I needed to define some parameters for my modus operandi. They are as follows:

1. In true spreading-the-love-fashion, this challenge was conducted over four key projects:
   1. Stories of Our Journeys: Inspiring stories of adversity over hardship.
   2. WordCast: The blogging ecosystem that bloggers can immerse themselves into.
   3. Verona: Audio-soundscapes created upon the ideas of freshness and ambience upon a framework of electro pop
   4. Kym Huynh: My personal blog.
2. The experiment ran for approximately five weeks.
3. The experiment covered the use of Facebook and Twitter only.
4. The use of ethical/white-hat strategies were the only methods permitted.
5. No public lashings or public humiliation would result from not achieving the goal of 1,000 followers.

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