When you hear the words “grow your social media presence,” you might be tempted to think that opening your account is the equivalent of planting a seed, you post a bit, and then wait for the followers to come. Growing your brand does not work this way; instead, you need to cultivate, water, and feed your accounts, all while moving them around for plenty of sunlight. Convincing people to follow and engage with you necessitates a significant amount of work.
You may also be tempted to take a shortcut and purchase fake followers, believing that if you seem like you are already popular, all the real fans will follow. This is not the case, either. Augmenting brand awareness (and driving sales if that is one of your goals) demands organic growth, so here are a few things you will need to make that happen.
An audience
When you are attempting to communicate a message, you will need, first and foremost, someone to listen to you. Not just anyone will do, though. As unbelievable as it would be to convince everyone you come across to follow you, not everyone is going to be interested in your content, so you do not want to waste your time trying to appeal to them. What you need is a niche audience; a group of people who lack something that you can provide. Before you begin reaching out to people, decide who you think is most likely to click with you.
A brand voice
No one will follow you if you look like any other unoriginal brand thirsty for followers on social media. What you need is a brand voice: this includes your tone, your message, your values, the stylistic choices of your visuals, the way you directly communicate with your audience, and more. People want to follow accounts with personality.
A reliable partner
Building an audience is a complicated process. You need to follow the right people, respond to comments, share user-generated content, post at the right times, and take other necessary steps to put your name out there. This endeavor can quickly become time-consuming, especially when you have multiple social media accounts, so it’s practical to turn to resources that take care of this aspect for you. So, rather than buy false Facebook likes, growth services like Social Gone Viral allow you to purchase Instagram followers that are real, providing you with a legitimate follower base.
Enticing content
For social media, content is vital. It is the reason why you even have accounts and the reason why people follow you. Without it, you have nothing to offer besides your product or service (and you might not have those if you are a personal brand), and no way of convincing people to do business or engage with you.
So how do you make exciting content? You could post dynamic images, produce videos, share infographics, re-post material that your followers send you (which is also an effective way of making them feel seen and heard, which is something you also need to do), host a contest, or something else that is both informative and enticing. If you run out of ideas for what to post, you can look to your own team, competitors, customers, thought leaders in your field, and other industry sources for inspiration.
Analytics
Next, you need an in-depth understanding of how effective your strategy is. How are your posts performing? Who is engaging with you, and how often? There are abundant social media analytics tools available, such as all-inclusive ones like Sprout Social or platform-specific ones like Facebook Insights. Analytics are essential to any social media campaign’s success because when you have actionable insight into how it’s working, you can adjust it accordingly to do more of what is successful and less of what is wasting your followers’ time and your own.
Knowledge of your competitors’ strategies
It’s wise to keep an eye on your competitors, too. You can look to them as models when they are successful (don’t copy their content—you can mimic their strategies, but always share your own original ideas), or you can provide your common audience with material that they want that your competitors are not producing. There are ways to conduct a competitor analysis yourself, or you can leverage tools like Rival IQ to get accurate insight into what hashtags your competitors are using, what content their followers engage with the most, and what internet users are saying about both of you through social listening.
Expanding your reach on social media is not an overnight process, but with patience and a willingness to adapt, your brand can reach its goals. What else do you need to grow your audience organically?
