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11 Ideas to Guarantee More Social Media Followers Now!

melissa • Feb 25, 2023

Growing a social media following doesn’t have to be hard if you have a plan and consistently follow that plan. It should be like a snowball, once you get rolling it will grow bigger and bigger. These tips are largely free so that you can grow your following organically with little impact on your budget.

1. Establish Your Purpose 

Why do you want your business to be visible on social media? Who are you serving? Why should your target audience follow you? What do you want your target audience to do when they reach your social media pages? Think about your interests – why do you take the time to follow someone else or follow brands? What actions will you take on social media for the brands you support?

 

Consider these questions to determine where social media fits into your overall strategy. Social media channels are not standalone. They give you more ways to engage and communicate with your audience. But how, what, and when you share on social media channels should be considered part of your overall marketing plan for building awareness and generating demand.


2. Choose the Right Channels to Be On


Who is your ideal customer or target audience? You only need to be on social marketing channels if your target audience is actively using these channels. The channels your audience uses should dictate which social media channels to be on. You don't have to be everywhere; just be where your customers are actively engaging and looking for information.

 

Do some research before launching your social media pages to ensure you spend time and energy on the proper social media channels. A few ways to determine what channels your customers are using most include:

 

  1. Find your customers online – see which channels your customers are posting to, following other brands, making comments, and engaging.

  2. Check out your competitors – search your competitors on social media channels to see where they are represented. You can check their followers (if they haven't blocked them) to get a sense of the number and type of people following these brands to ensure the social media channel is worth it for you too.

  3. Look for groups – search for groups in your industry and business category to see if there is a good representation on each social media network. Check to see how active these groups are and if they have a lot of followers.


3. Understand Everything the Channels Can Do for You 


Once you identify the platforms your audience uses, you must gain familiarity with them to produce rich content. 

Each channel has specific features that are also a good idea to know. For example, Twitter has polling, a great way to get feedback and engage with your audience. Instagram allows you to enhance your posts with fun gifs. With LinkedIn, you can publish content directly on their platform with LinkedIn Pulse. A quick online search for each social media's special features will give you everything you need to optimize the channel and your posts to generate more engagement, resulting in more followers.


4. Establish Your Brand on Social Media Channels 

Developing company branding is an essential initial task when starting a business. It is vital to ensure your social media accounts reflect your branding. Maintaining consistency will help your brand stand out to your audience. It is essential to ensure that your posts focus on a particular subject area or industry. Creating a platform for tips and input related to a particular area can help build trust and credibility among those interested. Using your company logo as your profile page image is recommended, and incorporating branding colors into your profiles where appropriate.


To optimize your social media profiles with your branding:

 

  • Include a photo, logo, or video for additional impact. 
  • Use the same image across your profiles to ensure recognition from your audience. 
  • Select handles, the name your company uses for your social media accounts, to be the same on each channel. 
  • Optimize your content for keywords that your audience may use when searching.
  • Include links to relevant web pages, such as your website, landing page, and social profiles.
  • Make sure to set up a complete profile on your social media accounts. You want to demonstrate that you are committed to being a resource for your audience on social media. 


5. Create and Share Content


Although the most critical advice in helping grow followers is to share content consistently and frequently, you need more than this advice to boost your following. Remember who your audience is and why you are on social media channels in the first place. Stay true to your niche, theme, and market. People will want to follow you because you offer expertise in some area of their interest. You have a lot of latitude on what to post related to your niche, theme, and market but stay within your overall purpose and pay close attention to how your audience engages with your content and posts. Do more of what they like and tweak or stop posting what your audience isn’t engaging on.

 

The best tool to help you maintain the right cadence and align to your themes is creating a posting calendar. Think about the more important things taking place over the year that you can leverage as anchors on your calendar. Then, fill your social media calendar with engaging, relevant posts around these anchors and fill time gaps with relevant information your audience will find helpful.




Free Checklist: 30+ Ideas to Post on Social Media




6. Find the Right Time to Post so You Maximize Engagement

There is no rule on exactly when you should post. It is going to depend on your audience and your topics or themes. You can look up industry reports; a lot of research and surveys provide recommendations you can leverage to start your posting schedule. You should test different times and days to post to get a comparison. Then pay close attention to your analytics to identify when it seems to be the best time for your audience when you are getting the most engagement – opens, likes, CTR, shares, comments, and more.

 

Be mindful that your ideal posting schedule could be seasonal. Therefore, continue to watch analytics to see if you notice a change in engagement during certain times of the year that require you to make temporary changes to your posting schedule.


7. Make it Easy to Share Your Content 


Remember to include the share buttons on your post, making it easy for your audience to share it with their network. Also, ask your audience to share your posts. Even though those share icons are there, they are often overlooked. But when you ask your audience to share your post, they are directly triggered to act. You can try different ways of asking to share your posts. A few options include:

 

  • Bold the ask in your image.
  • Add the ask at the end of the post.
  • Give your audience an incentive to share.


8. Use Hashtags


Hashtags are used as keyword phrases on social media posts to help those interested in topics easily find posts and content. Hashtags are those keywords on posts represented with a hash symbol (#).

 

To find the best hashtags, consider the keywords you use throughout your content strategy to gain visibility with your target audience. Look at what key groups or influencers in your business category or industry are using as hashtags since they have likely researched to pick the best hashtags to be searchable. There are also tools like Rite Tag, Hashtagify.me, and Keyhole offer hashtag suggestions.


9. Follow the Right influencers, Organizations, or Groups


Find organizations and influencers in your space to follow so that you get automatic content from these groups in your feed. Your followers will appreciate the content that you share with other people. You can repost and share content from the groups or individuals you follow. The bonus for you is that you don’t have to come up with your own posts all the time. 

 

When you follow an organization or individual, they will likely follow you back, exposing your content to their network. Make sure to tag or reference the group, organization, or individual when you repost their content so they can see that you are promoting it. It is a good idea to follow accounts back which could lead to the account sharing your content to their network in the future. 


10. Interact with Your Followers and Get Active in Groups

In addition to posting, you must be active on your social networks.

First, ensure you respond to comments, new followers, and likes on your content. Consider reaching out directly to new followers, thanking them for following you, and giving them an offer. Start conversations with your audience, asking for their opinion or comments. Their activity will be shared with their network, which might encourage others to engage in the online discussion you started on your page.

 

Second, get active in groups and on other accounts pages. Comment, answer questions, and share helpful content. Don't sell! But be an authority on your topic. You can do this by responding to comments, liking/commenting on photos, sharing relevant articles, answering questions, and sparking new conversations.


11. Make Staying Active Easy on Yourself with Automation Tools


To fully leverage these steps and simplify the management of social channels, consider automation tools that help you schedule posts in advance, review and respond to comments, and action content from your feeds. You can also get centralized data across your social platforms to see what posts your audience is interacting with at what time so that you can further refine your strategy and spend your time creating content that your audience wants to hear at the time they wish to receive it.


Commit to a Plan!


If social media marketing fits into your marketing strategy, commit to the best channels for your audience and plan for what, when, and how to post to build a genuine and engaged following. No golden rule works for everyone regarding the number of followers you need to be successful, how often you need to post, or what you need to post. Finding what works best for your business and learning from your audience will be best. It isn't about building the most followers, it is about building the right followers. You do that by staying true to your brand and offering and finding ways to bring value to your followers consistently. Be patient; if you follow these rules, your followers will come.

 

Red Panda Marketing is here to make launching and managing your social media marketing channels easier. Reach out for a free social media marketing consultation to get a roadmap you can leverage to build the social media plan that best meets your needs.

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