My latest guest on the Marketing Tales show is a former higher-ed marketer turned B2B SaaS evangelist serving higher-ed clients on all things engagement, enrollment, marketing, and student success.But that's not all, folks.He's also the host of the Attention Podcast and Audience Growth teacher at Danchez, Element451's Director of Inbound Marketing, and author of the children's book "I Want To Be A Marketer When I Grow Up."Meet my friend #Danchez, a.k.a Dan Sanchez.Dan's love for graphic design led him to become a marketing leader early in his career.He was well established as a marketer when he felt the "itch" to return to school and earn his undergraduate degree in Marketing Management, followed by an MBA with an emphasis in IT Management.He specializes in audience growth and grew his LinkedIn following from 1,000 to 10,000 followers in just five months.The secret sauce to building an audience is to "build real relationships with people and make lots of friends," Dan says, which in his opinion, is the best way to build an audience in the beginning."It's kind of like making friends," he says. "You have to go one by one, be helpful to lots of people and help them succeed."When it comes to setting up a successful SaaS social media strategy, Dan likes to refer back to his days at Sweet Fish when the company developed an "Evangelist program," where the firm's leadership encouraged its subject matter experts to be consistent on LinkedIn because, in general, people engage more with personal brands than companies.It's easier to build a one-to-one relationship with a person than a brand, "which in B2B land makes all the difference to building trust with your ideal buyers," he says.Yet, nothing worthwhile is going to be given to you.Building an audience takes a lot of hard work!When Dan grew his following from 1,000 to 10,000 people in five months, he posted two to three times a day for five months, spending four to five hours on LinkedIn:Every.Single.Day.Engaging with everybody!"If you showed up to a new city and somehow discovered where all the social gatherings were, worked the rooms, shook hands, laughed, and listened to people, you'd make a lot of friends, and it won't be long until the whole city knew your name," Dan says.It's the same thing on LinkedIn, except that you show up in people's comments, engaging with the people there.That kind of grit and determination can work for anybody.You just have to decide to go all in.For more nuggets on making new friends on social, listen to the whole episode by clicking the link in the comments below.To learn more about audience growth directly from Dan, follow him on LinkedIn or visit his website, danchez.com, to discover links to his social media channels, podcasts, and blog.And if you have little ones, get a copy of "I Want To Be A Marketer When I Grow Up."I did, and my kids love it.Until next time. ✌️