11 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Audience

11 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Audience

Brands, organizations, and institutions use social media platforms every single day to connect with their audiences, raise awareness, and drive leads and business. With an engaged following on one or more of the major social networks, brands can effectively spread the word about campaigns, new initiatives, and new products and services. However, simply having 1,000 Facebook fans or 200 Twitter followers is not the best indicator of social media success. It’s possible to have thousands of followers who never read your posts or click on your links. The key is to build a thriving online community of your ideal fans, the ones who'll actively engage with your content, share it with their networks, and ultimately, become paying customers. It takes work to establish such, but that effort can pay off, big time. Looking to grow your social media audience? In this post, we'll look at eleven simple ways in which you can grow your social media following. Contests can be a great way to get new people to Like and follow your accounts, while also keeping your current fans engaged with your Page. It's worth experimenting with contests on every social network on which you are active. 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. 2. Include a visual with every post Visuals are high-performers on social media, so be sure to include an eye-catching, colorful image or graphic with each post. Consider these visual marketing statistics, Content with relevant images rack up 94% more views than content without images. Compared to other types of content, visual content is more than 40x more likely to get shared on social media. Instagram photos showing faces get 38% more likes than photos without faces. 3. Share more video Video is the most engaging content type on every social media platform, so if you can, it's a good idea to create at least some form of video content to maximize engagement. Be sure to upload your video directly to your platform of choice, rather than posting a link to an outside website (like YouTube). This way, your video will autoplay as people land on it while scrolling through their feeds, grabbing more attention. Lots of views can lead to increased reach, engagement, and exposure for your brand. 4. Be proactive in listening to and responding to your online community Did you know that 83% of your Facebook fans, and 71% of your Twitter followers, now expect a response from you on the same day that they pose a question on each respective platform? In fact, 32% of Twitter users now expect a response within just 30 minutes. Give your followers a fantastic user experience on social by being exceptionally responsive. Listen to their needs, and respond accordingly. You should also look to publicly recognize people who retweet, favorite, and mention your organization on Twitter, and thank users who comment on Instagram and YouTube. When you make your online community feel heard and acknowledged, they're more likely to become raving fans and your most loyal social media ambassadors. 5. Change your Page profile photos and cover photos Your profile photos and banners are some of your best and most-viewed social profile elements. Use these visual tools to showcase the impact of your work, and the stories of those who benefit from your services. On Facebook, consider changing up your cover photo at least once per month, and remember to write a great caption. On Twitter, use your profile picture and banner photo to highlight your great work. Don’t just stretch out and pixelate a horizontal version of your logo - no one wants to connect with just a logo on social media. Personalize, humanize, and customize every channel you can, with a visual image that speaks volumes. Also, make sure you use the right social media image sizes for each platform. 6. Give people a reason to follow you Give both prospective and current fans reason to follow you on multiple platforms. Don't simply “set it and forget it” with generic, automated links blasted across all of your social media channels. Tailor your content for each channel’s users. For example, you should use Twitter to share latest news and real-time alerts, while you can use Facebook to tell more compelling, longer stories about the people who benefit from your work. You should look to strategically use each social media channel based on its strengths and demographics, and give your target audience a good reason to connect with you on that specific network. What value are you providing? What are you offering that will entice them to stay tuned in? Think about the reasons people use each network, then formulate a plan to consistently post and share content that will resonate with your specific audience, wherever they congregate online. 7. Encourage tagging An effective strategy to engage your followers is to encourage them to tag other people who may benefit from, or enjoy a specific post. If you post an inspiring quote, write “Tag a friend who needs this today”; If you share a video about Mother’s Day, encourage your online community to tag a friend (or better, friends) who means a lot to them, and with whom they would like to share your message. Ideally, these new people can be drawn into the fold, and join your online social media followers. But a word of caution - ensure you employ this method sparingly and only where it makes sense, or it can look spammy. 8. Use hashtags to get found There are two great ways to use hashtags to increase your social media followers: a) Use popular hashtags strategically and sparingly I suggest using one popular tag per tweet or Instagram post, such as #OOTD (outfit of the day), #TBT (throw-back Thursday), #fail (self-explanatory), #FOMO (fear of missing out), etc. There are thousands of hashtags out there - check out Hashtags.org and Hashtagify.me to find ones that are relevant to your audience and your content. b) Participate in relevant trending topics and current events I check my Twitter feed regularly to see what's trending for the day. If it's something that I think would be of interest to my followers, I share a tweet with the relevant hashtag. For example, on Monday you could use the trending hashtag #MondayMotivation to share a quote or an inspiring story with your followers. People searching that particular hashtag might come across your post, and will hopefully check you out and even follow you. 9. Be entertaining, and use humor to engage Take a note from the Frederiction SPCA, an animal adoption and protection agency which often shares entertaining memes and photos on their page. Brands that show a bit of humanity and humor do well on social media - but that said, you should always ensure that any content that you do share makes sense for your particular audience and your brand voice. There's no point in sharing cat memes for the sheer sake of sharing cat memes. Even if such posts do get a few likes, it can confuse your messaging, which won't help in your broader brand-building effort (i.e. connecting with the right people for your organization). 10. Explore paid social Leveling up your social media success often involves allocating ad spend, however limited it may be. One of the best ways to grow your audience and gain more exposure is to invest a modest amount into paid social advertisements. When done well, paid social ads can promote your content, increase conversions, and help you reach new people. Precise audience targeting enables you to focus your ads on "warm" audiences - people who've visited your website (if you use the Facebook pixel), people who are subscribed to your email list, and your current fans and followers. Facebook's advanced options, in particular, can be hugely beneficial in reaching just the right people with your paid outreach. 11. Never, ever buy followers and fans Some people assume that purchasing fans and followers is a shortcut to building a huge online community. This is not only bad practice, but it will largely end up being more of a problem than it's worth. The biggest issue here is that it pollutes your audience with robot profiles, which will ruin your audience insights, limit your ongoing performance, and will end up restricting the organic reach of your posts. And that's before you consider ads. For example, if you tried to boost one of your Facebook posts, Facebook's system would look to show it to more people like those who already follow your Page. You'd essentially be paying to reach bots, and the same implications apply to various other ad targeting measures.

How to Use Social Media in Your Career and Business

Social media is making its way into the hearts of many brands and businesses today. What used to be termed “a time-waster” and “a distraction” now helps many enterprises in growing Twitter followers, Instagram followers, and Facebook too, to boost their online presence. As the days go by, social media keeps proving to be a resourceful tool in facilitating business operations and plays a huge role in building a functional career in any field. With billions of people on these platforms, social media has given businesses the opportunity to reach out to a larger audience at a go. And for people who need to build their career, it allows them to connect with other professionals and possible employers from anywhere in the world. That said, in this article, we’ll be discussing the best ways to integrate social media into your career and business to give you a better shot at growing and becoming successful at what you do. If you thought social networking was just for fun and a time-wasting activity, think again. Social media has become an essential part of how people communicate, and is often a critical part of the workflow in various sectors of business and life, from companies to government agencies. So there are several ways in which social media can help your career. Here are 7 ways to make the most of social media and make your career more successful. Create a Professional Profile Give your profile a professional look that shows visitors what you stand for. If you already have an existing profile, you might need to make some changes. And for new profiles, getting it right saves you the stress of having to update it frequently. The first thing you’d have to do is include a display picture of your brand or business name, or a well-edited photo of yourself, depending on the products or services you intend to offer. Next, write a short, yet comprehensive detail of what your brand or business stands for in your bio. Ensure that it highlights your best skills and each description is free of grammatical error. This will help people in need of your services locate you more quickly with the help of the algorithmic system of the social media platform in use. Showcase your expertise Job hunting gets easier with social media. Employers and jobseekers will always find a common ground on social media, especially if they’re the right match. To save yourself the trouble of having lengthy conversations or having a potential business partner, employer, or customer overlook your talent, you need to put it on display. There are unique features on social media platforms that allow you to include a link to your portfolio, a link to other professional accounts, or simply upload images of your products or services where applicable. This way, prospects can review your skill and expertise before formally reaching out. Engage in online job platforms Online job platforms usually contain vital information on how to build your career and offer value. They also keep you updated on the latest job trends. By becoming a part of these platforms, you can gain access to knowledge that’ll help take your business or brand to the next level. On some occasions, you could find recruiters and investors that may be interested in your products or services, which may eventually prompt them to work with you. Connect with the community No man is an island, especially when it comes to business. With social media, you can connect with like-minds and other individuals or businesses in the same industry as yours. These experts will give you insights into the corporate world and the trends that would influence your decision-making and action plan. When doing this, try not to limit your connection activities to just your geographical location. As a matter of fact, it is better to connect with both local and international communities if you want your brand or business to go global. Connecting with international communities acts as a form of effective self-advertisement, as partners and investors from these geographical locations find it easier to hear about your brand or business and partner with you when the demand for it arises. Be valuable to the community Social media platforms require interaction. Try not to be the passive member that only receives information, but the active member that gives information too. With your profile, share your opinions, resources, and observations that could be of interest to other brands and businesses in the community too. By doing so, you’re building a reputation for yourself and adding value to the community. Measure results Results are proof that your efforts are effective. Since you’re utilizing social media to build your reputation online, you should seek results over a specific period. For instance, you can google your brand or business to see the results the search engine brings. You can also try this on other social media platforms, or set a notification that alerts you when your name is mentioned. Stay consistent Do not leave your profile dormant for even a day. Ensure that you’re actively engaging in tweets or trends that align with your business and its community. Keep your profile updated by adding new skills and recent projects you have completed. Consistency will help you achieve more growth than you desire.

6 Tips to Improve Your Social Media Presence

It's become nearly impossible to grow your customer base and sales without a social media presence. Here are six tips to improve your social media presence in 2019. There are 335 million users on Twitter, 1 billion users on Instagram and a whopping 2.23 billion users on Facebook. A lot of people who could become your customers are hanging out on social media. You may already have a social media account, but are you getting tons of new followers each month who are interacting on your platform? If not, you need to step up your social media game. Whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, growing your social media presence is important to get your business in front of more consumers and make more sales. With some simple tips, you can turn your lonely social media accounts into popular communities bustling with activity. Get ready for your popularity to explode next year. Here are six tips for improving your social media presence in 2019. If you want to improve your social media presence, you need to post on social media often and at the optimal times. In fact, according to studies, businesses should be tweeting 15 times per day. But as a business owner, you don't have enough time in your day to constantly be logging in to all your social media accounts. That's why you need to use the right tools. Using tools to schedule posts will help you stay active on social media and save you time. With Buffer, you can manage all of your social media accounts in one place, schedule posts weeks in advance, post at preferred times when the most users will see them, and analyze how well your posts are doing. Using tools to help with your social media accounts will ensure you're posting often enough to improve your social media presence. 2. Focus on customer service. Social media is the new platform for customer service. Instead of giving a business a call or waiting hours (sometimes days) for a company to respond to an email, many customers who are having issues now turn to social media to get help from brands. In fact, 54 percent of customers prefer social messaging channels for customer care over phone and email. So, instead of focusing so much on selling, you need to focus more on helping people. Using your social media platforms as a customer service platform will send more users to your social media and make it easier for them to solve their problems. You can even create a Facebook chatbot that can answer questions when you're not around. Customers will also be more willing to buy from you when they trust that you'll help them with their issues quickly. Don't expect your customers to know about all your social media platforms and go searching for them themselves – you've got to tell them they exist. If you make it easy for customers to follow or like your social media profiles, they'll be more willing to take action. Start promoting your social media accounts to your customers and ask them to interact with you on your profiles. You can add social media icons to your site, add your social media feeds to your sidebar, tell people to follow you on social media at the end of your blog posts, and promote your social media accounts in your email marketing. The more people are aware of your presence on social media, the bigger it will be. 4. Pay attention to what's trending. One of the best ways to create a bigger social media presence for your business is to piggyback on popular social media trends. This will get your profile in front of a ton of users who never knew about your business before and could even help your posts go viral. You can stay on top of trends just by taking a look at what's going on. For instance, on Twitter you can see the top trending hashtags on the left side on the homepage in the Trends for You section. Look at what hashtags you can use to get more views. While it helps to use hashtags that relate to your business, they don't have to be strictly relevant. If your accounting company can create a fun post for #NationalDonutDay, go for it. 5. Focus on eye-catching visuals. It can be difficult to get noticed in crowded social media feeds, so you need to make your business stand out. One of the best ways to stand out on social media and increase your presence is to focus on using eye-catching visuals. Try to avoid using too many boring stock photos. Instead, focus on sharing images that will connect with users. Share high-quality behind-the-scenes photos and people using your products. You can even share your customers' photos of them interacting with your product with their permission, which also creates social proof. 6. Actively engage with your audience. Would you keep talking to someone who never returned your messages? Probably not. Users won't want to follow you on social media or interact with you if they get nothing in return. That's why it's so important to actively engage with your audience on social media. If you want to create a social media presence, then your social media accounts need to become a community. That means when someone comments on your posts, you should reply to them or at least like their comment. You can also pose and answer questions in posts, and show appreciation to your followers and customers by thanking them and sharing user-generated content. Engaging with your followers will not only increase your social media presence, but help you develop real relationships with customers. Get ready to have your best year on social media yet. Following these tips, not only will you get more likes and follows than ever before, but you'll gain more loyal customers too.

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