Brands, organizations, and institutions use social media platforms every single day to connect with their audiences and drive leads and business. Social media is also a great way to raise awareness for your brand or organization.
An engaged following on social media is an effective way for brands to promote campaigns, new initiatives, and products and services. Having a large number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not necessarily an indicator of social media success.
You can have thousands of followers and they may never read your posts or click on your links. The goal is to have an online community of fans that are engaged with your content, share it, and become paying customers.
It takes effort to establish a good reputation, but it can pay off greatly.
Looking to grow your social media audience? This post provides 11 tips to help you expand your social media following.
1. Choose the right social platform
Before you do anything else, understand that you don’t need to be on every social platform just because it exists.
To see if a platform is right for your business, you need to understand what the platform does, who uses it and how people use it.
Do you know for certain that your target consumer is using every social media platform available? The answer is likely no.
This means that your brand should be present on the platforms that your consumers use. Your content and presence on Facebook means nothing if your target audience is not also on Facebook.
Let’s look at five of the biggest social media platforms as of September 2019 to help you make a decision.
There is no denying that Facebook is still the number one social media platform. Its top priority is increasing the amount of time users spend on the platform.
Over the past few years, Facebook has been increasingly expanding the range of services offered on its site in an attempt to keep users from having to leave for another site. This has included adding new features for Facebook groups, live streaming videos, building a stronger advertising platform, and adding news publishers.
” You might be thinking that these new services won’t help your company, but I assure you that they will. Our audience is not on Facebook, so we can’t use it to market ourselves.
Even though your audience may not be using Facebook for work, they are probably still using it for themselves- maybe as a way to take a break from work during their day.
You can still be found online and make an impression.
– For example, SurveyMonkey created a great Facebook post about using surveys to create winning ads, logos, and packaging using puppies (always a win in my eyes). – For example, SurveyMonkey created a great Facebook post showing how surveys can be used to create winning ads, logos, and packaging – all with the help of puppies (always a win in my eyes). This text is saying that the brand is appealing to consumers and offers something that is unique and catches their attention.
YouTube
Some people may think that YouTube is not a social media platform. There may be some truth to that statement.
Did you know that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, after Google? Video content is continuing to grow in popularity, so it’s not surprising that YouTube is the second most-visited website after Google.
Although YouTube seems like a one-size-fits-all platform, there is a lot of variety in the content that is available. You can find content creators who produce videos on a wide range of topics, from vlogs to gaming to beauty tutorials. This is like every other social platform.
This means that in the time it would take you to watch all of the new YouTube videos that are uploaded in one minute, over two months would have passed. And in the time it would take you to watch all of the YouTube videos that are watched in one day, it would take you over 100 years.
I personally find YouTube to be a happy place, and there are a number of content creators whose videos I watch on a weekly or even daily basis.
Although it may be difficult to justify using YouTube for some brands, it can still be a useful tool. This is because YouTube offers a way to connect with a wide audience.
I could argue that the four most popular types of videos on YouTube are comedy, music, pop-culture, and “how-to” videos.
Think about your brand and ask yourself if you have any “how-to” information or tutorials that your customers might find useful. If you do, make a video and share it on YouTube!
By optimizing your website for search engines, you will improve your brand’s visibility and make it more likely that consumers will find your website.
Videos on YouTube have a strong chance of appearing as the top search result when a user searches for something on Google, for example if they search for a guide on “How to…”
The results of a search for “How to use HubSpot 2019” on Google are mostly YouTube videos, with the first text-based search result coming from HubSpot.
What started as a social media platform for posting filtered pictures has become the third most trafficked platform in the world.
Instagram has now achieved over 1 Billion monthly active users since being acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram posts are seeing 10 times more engagement than Facebook posts.
In August of 2016, Instagram launched Instagram Stories. In 2019, more than 500 million Instagram users were using Stories every day, representing more than half of total Instagram users. More than half of the most viewed Instagram stories are from businesses.
The former lets you buy from brands directly through an Instagram story, while the latter makes it possible to purchase the items you see in someone’s regular post. Instagram has also created shoppable tags, which allows you to buy items either through a story or a regular post. Brands can now use Instagram business accounts to tag their products with links to their e-commerce pages. This allows users to make purchases directly on the platform.
This feature is useful for businesses that use e-commerce because it allows businesses to manage their inventory and track their sales.
Instagram strategy need that little extra boost?
Combin is a desktop application that helps you manage your Instagram account, schedule content, attract new followers, and track your activity and growth. It is available for iOS, Windows, and Ubuntu.
The company offers two main tools: Growth and Scheduler.
Growth gives you powerful insights into your existing audience, such as gender, language, and location demographics, as well as advanced search capabilities to target new followers based on your findings.
The tools also allow you to see which users have unfollowed you, followed you back, or not followed you back. You can also automate actions like following or commenting on certain posts.
Scheduler eliminates the need for you to manually post content to Instagram, freeing up your time to focus on other tasks.
You can plan your posts in advance with a lot of the same controls you would have on the platform, like changing the size, adding location tags, hashtags, and mentions. You can also bulk upload Stories. The tool cannot be used to create content from scratch, but it can be used to speed up the process of posting.
You can get growth pricing for as little as $15 a month, or you can get Scheduler for as little as $7. Both are available for free with limited features.
Ever since Twitter launched in 2006, it has been incredibly popular due to the 140 character limit on posts (which has since been increased to 280 characters). It was the first social media platform to truly embrace being in real-time, revolutionizing how social media was thought of.
Twitter has become a popular source for news and information because it is updated in real-time.
Twitter’s international reach makes it a valuable tool for global brands, especially when it comes to making big announcements or launching new products.
LEGO got a lot of attention when they announced their new game LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. They got over 500 retweets and over 2,300 likes.
The platform has also introduced other features, like advertising, the ability to upload videos, and live streaming.
Be sure to research the platforms your target market is using and make sure you have a strong understanding of how those platforms work. To build a strong presence and following on social media, you need to choose the right platform.
2. Analyze your competitors
You should be analyzing your competitors in marketing, and social media is no different.
What platforms are they active on? What kind of content are they sharing? How often are they sharing?
It is beneficial to understand your competitor’s social media strategies and engagement in order to create a roadmap for your own social media activity.
Differentiating your brand is important to attract target consumers. Analyzing your competitors will help you find ways to make your brand stand out.
3. Complete your profiles (yes, your personal ones too)
You’ve figured out where to create your profiles, so now it’s time to put in the effort.
Be accurate and up-to-date
Be sure that the information you showcase about your business on social media is accurate and up to date on all platforms.
When you have different addresses on your website and Facebook page, it can be confusing for people.
By providing this general information, you can help build credibility and prompt people to take action if they desire.
Building out profiles shouldn’t be siloed to just company pages
Each of your employees should have completed profiles on social media platforms so they can share company news, industry insights, etc. With an employee advocacy program, you can extend your reach significantly.
When your employees share company content on their personal platforms, they become brand advocates, potentially reaching all of their followers and connections.
It is important to remember that your company and personal profiles are never truly complete when you are building them.
You should always improve the user experience and reflect your company in a positive light.
4. Hold contests
Running contests on your social media accounts can be a great way to get new people to like and follow your accounts. Additionally, it can help to keep your current fans engaged with your page.
Contests are a great way to increase engagement on social media, so it’s worth trying them out on every platform you’re active on. Some examples of social media contests include:
- Comment to win – Participants leave a comment or answer a question
- Caption contest – Either the best caption (you choose) or the one with the most likes wins
- Fill-in-the-blank Contest – Ask participants to answer a trivia question
- Photo contest – Either the best photo (you choose) or the one with the most likes wins
- Multiple choice contest
Tips for a successful social media contest:
- Promote it everywhere – Use your website, email list, and other social networks to drum up participation.
- Do not give away prizes completely unrelated to your brand – For example, if you give away a new iPad, you might drive a lot of engagement and participation, but not necessarily from people who will eventually become customers or lifelong fans.
- Follow the platform rules – Each social platform has its own rules and regulations around contests – here’s an overview of the key details.
- Follow up with entrants who don’t win – Send them a thank you for participating, along with something about your brand/organization’s work.
5. Give people a reason to follow you
It is important to have a presence on multiple social media platforms to engage with both prospective and current fans. By posting interesting and exclusive content, you can give fans a reason to follow you on multiple platforms and continue to support your brand.
Do not use automated links on all your social media channels without investigating where they lead first. Tailor your content for each channel’s users.
For example, Twitter is best for sharing news and real-time alerts, while Facebook is better for telling longer stories about the people who benefit from your work.
It is advantageous to take advantage of the strengths of each social media channel and the demographics of the users on that channel by providing content that is appealing to your target audience.
What value are you providing? What can you offer that will make them want to keep watching?
Think about the reasons people use social media networks, then create content that will be interesting and useful to your specific audience. Post this content regularly and share it on the networks where your audience is most active.
6. Never, ever buy followers and fans
Some people think that buying fans and followers is a way to build a large online community quickly. Doing this is poor form and will likely cause more difficulties than it’s worth.
The main problem with this is that it fills your audience with fake profiles, which will ruin your audience insights, limit your ongoing performance, and eventually restrict the organic reach of your posts. And that’s before you consider ads. If, for example, you were to try and promote one of your Facebook posts, Facebook’s system would look to target individuals more like those who already follow your Page. Advertisers would be wasting their money by targeting ads at bots instead of real people. This also applies to other methods of targeting ads.
Think about who your target audience is and create content that will attract them and make them want to engage with you. Share information that will prompt them to take action and deepen their relationship with you over time.
When used correctly, social media platforms can be a great way for businesses to connect with customers, cultivate loyal followers, and expand their reach and audience.
The following are some ideas to help you increase your social media following.
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