How to get followers without spending money

Creating a buzz for your brand can be difficult without spending any money.
A few days ago I wrote about Branding Yourself and how important it is to own your brand name across social networks.

Today we will talk about how to find and cover the most engaging topics.

Become an expert in your niche.

Keep up with the topics in your category.
Connect yourself with Klout to measure your influence. Add the topics in your niche to your profile and Klout gives you the latest insights and stories in your topic. Share some of the news daily (better yet write your own article, video, or headlines about it).

Subscribe to some leaders in your topics, or a mailing list such as SmartBrief to get stories early and see what others are writing about.

Another good tip I got a long time ago (though I often forget to follow it) is to focus on one social network at a time. With a service such as Hootsuite you can easily posts a message to several networks at once, but there is a limit to how much you can keep up with on all the networks, replying or engaging with other brands and people.