Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok… the list goes on. Social media is a strong pillar in the world of marketing. With the possibility to sell your brand organically and through paid ads, there are endless opportunities to promote your products and services. However, there is one catch, you need followers. In your mission to market your business, having a loyal and engaged follower base is crucial, but followers won’t come to you for no reason. Instead, you must bring them in. You can buy your followers, but there is little purpose to this other than appearing well-established. Instead, you want true organic followers who will interact positively with your posts. Learn to organically grow your social media following with our simple tips and tricks.
Persistent Posting
Be persistent. Social media marketing is all about getting your posts seen. As a rule, social media platforms appreciate accounts that post consistently. Don’t let your social media presence drop off for two months and expect the same engagement as when you posted daily. Get onto peoples ‘For You Pages’. With frequent posting you can grow your social media by teaching each platform to feature your posts on their feeds. Naturally, if you appear on more people’s screens, you’re more likely to get engagement, with more engagement you’ll appear on more feeds. In turn, if you continue to reach a wider audience, your following will increase as a result. It’s all about putting your brand in front of people, and for that you need to post regularly.
Quality and Quantity
Whilst upping the quantity of your posting, maintain the quality. It’s all well and good posting consistently, but if the content in your posts is lack-lustre those potential followers will not be converted. Keep your posts engaging, relevant, and in-keeping with your brand. Without sustaining relevancy, you might gain a bigger audience, but they are unlikely to be loyal and unlikely to bring you any business. Instead, you want to shout about what your company does with enthusiasm. Tell social media who you are, why you’re of interest to people, and what you bring to the table… and do it lots! The quantity of your posts will ensure you are seen, and the quality of your posts will transform your reach into your following.
Initiate Interactions
Want people to take an interest in your account? Take an interest in theirs. People love to be noticed and appreciated by others. By simply engaging with other accounts, they are more likely to reciprocate. Beyond just enticing people through engagement, you can actually get platforms to recognise that engagement and grow your social media with the same method. For example, LinkedIn is a brilliant platform for B2B marketing, and understands that communication between two accounts shows there is relevant content between them. Therefore, if you comment on another professional’s post, LinkedIn will register there is an interest between the accounts and ensure posts appear more frequently each of your feeds. To really capitalise on this feature, you should aim to spend 80% of your social media marketing time interacting with other accounts. Most social media platforms take a similar approach to LinkedIn and boost the posts of accounts that you are interested in, and vice versa. Again, pick the accounts that are relevant to you. Try not to waste your time engaging with accounts that are unlikely to want or use your services. As a result of engaging with accounts, you are likely to encourage those accounts to follow you, especially if your content keeps appearing in front of them.
Prime Time
Timing is key. By discovering your accounts optimum time for posting, you will gain a bigger reach for your posts and new followers will appear. Experiment with posting at different times in the day and different days of the week. By keeping track of the performance of each post you’ll be able to identify the prime time for your business to post. It may be that different content topics differ in best times to post about, and with some trial and error you will understand what works for you. Evaluating what times work best for you will assist in your mission to grow your social media following by putting your posts in front of the right people at the right time.
Content Collabs
This trick is an Instagram specific piece of advice. Instagram has a brilliant collab feature where you can post with another account. For example, you might be working with another company and want to post a case study piece onto your page. To reach a wider audience, you could collaborate with that company’s Instagram account, this will mean the post appears on both accounts’ pages. Being featured on second accounts’ page, not only endorses your company, but means you can get your posts in front of their follower base. As mentioned, the bigger the reach you get, the more chance of increasing your following. Give it a try.
Handout your Handles
Gain more followers by spreading the word about your accounts yourself. This means dishing out your social media handles wherever you can, including in your email marketing, in any brochures or flyers you have, and on any posters or banners your business might have. If you are able to show your audience off social media, how they can become your audience on social media, you will see your following increase.
With simple steps you can gain a gradual increase in followers and see your social media engagement improve. Don’t feel overwhelmed by the challenge though. Try one step at a time, and see what works for you. By mixing up a few of our tips and trialling different methods over a period, you can establish what trick works best for your business. We can always give you one less thing to worry about and take care of your social media marketing needs, just get in touch.
