Do you want to grow your social media audience by gaining organic followers who are genuinely interested in your brand? These tips are effective.
Your following can influence not only the decision of people deciding whether or not to follow you but also the decision of social media influencers and other businesses who may be willing to collaborate if you have a large enough following to make the effort worthwhile.
Getting a large following can benefit you and your business far beyond the limitations of any particular social media platform. Indeed, social sharing sites can help boost SEO and direct traffic to your website.
Tips To Get More Social Media Followers
- Build A Strong Brand Identity
You should have a consistent brand identity whether you are a certified business or a personal brand.
Every post should reflect your brand’s identity. Choose your primary color scheme, filters, graphic designs, tone, and so on. Everything you post and comment on should reflect the voice of your brand. People are drawn to brands that have a strong identity.
Follow Relative Accounts
There must be given and taken in any healthy relationship, which means you’ll gain followers if you’re a follower yourself.
You can follow the following accounts to find relevant accounts:
- Groups and Communities: Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and other social networks make it simple to find and join groups.
- Find Out Who Influencers Are Following: Pay special attention to influencers who have a positive follow-to-following ratio, which means they have a large number of followers but are picky about who they follow back.
- Lists of the “Best People to Follow”: These lists are published online for a variety of industries and areas of interest. While they can be valuable resources, they aren’t always carefully curated, so proceed with caution and thoroughly vet these potential influencers before following them. (For instance, top SEO experts to follow)
- Engage Your Followers Actively
Rather than treating your social media platforms as continuous advertising campaigns, invite connections and conversations. Respond to comments on your posts and encourage genuine debate.
- Share-Worthy Content
People who follow you expect you to post content that excites and engages them. Your followers should want to share your content!
Post types that receive a lot of shares include: Opinions, Trends, News, Data, Cute/Humorous Content
- Make a Strategic Scheduling Calendar.
The key is to strike a balance between posting frequently enough to stay relevant and posting infrequently enough to spam newsfeeds and become a nuisance.
Consider investing in tools that allow you to schedule posts ahead of time – preferably in a single dashboard so you don’t forget to post on time.
- Market on your other social and marketing platforms as well.
Links to your social platforms should be included on your website and newsletter.
You might also think about promoting one platform on another. For example, a tweet encouraging people to follow you on Instagram and use a special hashtag you created for an event.
- Select Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags can be a great way for new followers to find you, but try to focus on specific hashtags rather than generic ones that are overrun with the competition.
Make your hashtags more targeted so that they work in your favor. You can look for hashtags used in relevant posts or use a tool like Hashtagify to get analytical data and alternative suggestions.
- Look for press features, interviews, and speaking engagements.
Every presentation is an opportunity to reach out to someone who may be interested in what you have to say and will actively seek out your social accounts to learn more.
These types of thought leadership opportunities can also be a great way to increase the number of links to your website.
- Create Partnership Campaigns With Businesses And Brand Advocates
Joint content campaigns between non-competing businesses can generate a lot of attention.
A successful collaboration will benefit both brands by allowing each to gain new followers and overall exposure from the other.
Another huge opportunity is to work with influencers and brand advocates. User-generated content, particularly when created in collaboration with prominent influencers, has the potential to generate a high level of engagement. Affiliate flash sales, contests, and drawings are also popular.
- Tailor Your Strategy Using Analytical Data
Understanding your content’s performance can help you make better strategic decisions.
Don’t ignore this information! It can give you valuable insight into what you’re doing well and where you could improve.
Many platforms provide their analytics tools, but you can also invest in free or paid third-party tools like Sprout, Hootsuite, Buffer, Later, and many others.
- Incorporate Your Customer Service Team Into The Strategy
It’s a good idea to incorporate your customer service team into your social media strategy, either by coordinating with them to stay informed on company policies and resolutions or by bringing in your Customer Experience team to respond directly to unhappy customers.
Keep in mind that organically growing followers is a time-consuming endeavor. If you come across a “hack” that promises amazing results overnight, it’s most likely a scam.
The goal of gaining followers is to increase ROI and generate genuine buzz about your company or products, which leads to people sharing, discussing, shopping, and engaging with your brand.