Brands and organizations use (or should be using) social media daily to connect with audiences, raise brand awareness, and increase sales. With an engaged following, you can effectively market your business. Social media success is measured in several ways, from the number of followers to the engagement rate. However, to get a high engagement rate, you first need to have followers. While having 1,000 followers is a great start, for many businesses, it’s not enough to indicate success.
You might have thousands of followers who never read a single post or click links. While having more followers looks good, it doesn’t mean that your social media marketing strategy is performing well. Growing your social media audience means gaining followers that engage with your pages and posts. It’s not easy to do, but this article can get you started. Here’s how you can gain followers on social media.
Work With Influencers
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that uses people called influencers to reach new audiences. These influencers are seen as industry experts, and they have huge followings because they’re people, not brands. People trust an influencer’s word over brands because they have proven themselves to be knowledgeable and trustworthy, and great content creators. Working with influencers can help you gain followers on your own social media pages. After vetting the influencers you want to work with, you can develop a campaign where influencers market your brand’s social media pages asking their followers to follow your company.Make Great Content
The best way to earn new followers on social media is to create good content. Learn about what your audience likes and make content geared towards them. If your audience is young and enjoys videos over photos, opt to create more videos that will get you higher engagement rates. Making great content doesn’t mean that you have to hire multiple graphic designers. There are tons of tools out there that can help you design the right content for your audience. Remember, the goal is to make people respond or take action. If your content doesn’t provide value for your audience, then you will not have success on social media.Hold Contests
Another great way to get followers on social media is to hold contests. Not only do contests keep your current followers engaged with your page, but they promote likes and follows from new people. Experiment with different types of contests so you can see which works best for you. The types of contests you can try are:- Comment to win: asking your followers to leave a comment
- Caption contests: asking your followers to create a caption that can win through your choice or the most likes
- Photo contests: ask followers to send in photos
Listen & Respond
Social media is more than posting something on your page and then walking away for the day. To have true success with gaining keeping followers, you have to listen and respond. Anyone who messages or comments on your posts expects a response, which means you’ll need to manage your social pages daily to meet the needs of your followers and customers. Because social media can be a place to improve upon your customer service, you must reply to messages and comments promptly to show your customers that you care. You should also monitor your brand mentions so you can share posts from people who mention you on their social media.Using hashtags can increase your followers when they are relevant and used strategically. When you use hashtags strategically, you can use one popular hashtag per post that coincides with your content or your business. For example, if you do laser hair removal and post a photo of treatment, you can use the hashtag #laserhairremoval. To participate in trending topics or current events, you can check your Twitter feed to see what’s trending. If it is something that might interest your followers, you can make a post about it and share it with the relevant hashtag. For example, someone who recently lost weight might participate in #TransformationTuesday where they show how far they’ve come.
Be Entertaining
People don’t scroll social media just to see what their high school friends are up to; they scroll to be entertained. Being entertaining can be done in many ways, but most people prefer comedy. Social media is about connecting with real people, so humour is typically the best way to attract and keep attention. The brands that use humour typically do the best on social media, but it’s important to make sure any content you post makes sense for your audience. If you’re a company that provides funeral services, you wouldn’t want to make light of the passing of someone’s loved one.Use Paid Social
In the last few years, organic social media has taken a hit. Fewer people see your posts than ever before, which means it might be time to try paid ads. Luckily, Facebook and Instagram offer the cheapest digital ads out there, so you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get followers. Ads can help you reach new people who may not have known about your brand before, not to mention they’re great for brand awareness and every stage in the sales funnel.Never Buy Followers
Purchasing followers might seem like a sure-fire way to gain new followers and build a community. However, buying followers doesn’t do anything for your brand because it pollutes your fans with bots, which will destroy your insights when tracking campaign performance.Final Thoughts
While every social media page needs loyal followers, they are not the only metric to focus on when measuring your social media success. You should consider engagement rates, traffic, and conversions. While typically the more followers you have, the better your campaigns will do, this isn’t always the case. Make sure you create content that everyone can enjoy.
