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Growing your social media presence won’t happen overnight – but there are plenty of ways to grow your followers in a consistent, sustainable way that will give you plenty of momentum moving forward. As long as you’re producing high-quality content and posting it on a regular schedule, you’ll see results. Here are 5 hacks to speed up that process.
Tip #1: Promote your social media accounts across all marketing collateral
The easiest place to start growing your social media presence is with your website and your email communications. If you’re sending out a weekly email newsletter, make sure that your social media accounts are clearly highlighted within that newsletter. On your main website, make sure that social sharing buttons are everywhere. If you post a new video to your homepage, make sure that there are ways to share it on Facebook and Twitter. If you publish a corporate blog, make sure that there are social sharing buttons at the end of each post. And don’t forget about your offline marketing collateral – you can include details about social media accounts on your business cards, as well as on any brochures that you make available at trade shows.
Tip #2: Tap into what’s trending
Too many people try to over-think what they post on social media. That will only slow you down. Unlike traditional media, in which you may only get one chance a week, month or quarter to reach an audience, with social media, you have an endless number of opportunities to reach people. So throw away your analog era “content calendars” and tap into what’s trending right now. Almost every major social network makes it very easy to see what people are talking about right now. And there are plenty of tools to see what’s going viral at any moment in time. Your goal is to inject yourself into these conversations. Sometimes all it takes is adding a trending hashtag and you’ll be found by others.
Tip #3: Embrace visual content
As a rule of thumb, every piece of social media content should contain a strong visual component. This can be a photo, a GIF, an infographic or a video. People are just more likely to share and pass along your content if there’s a visual component. And that’s especially true on a platform like Instagram, where the only thing that really matters is coming up with a photo or video clip that people are going to like and comment on. The more people who are talking about your content, the more likely that people are going to be signing up as followers.
Tip #4: Reach out to influencers
Sooner or later, every brand will make a decision about how to interact with influencers. Let’s face it – it’s a lot easier to gain followers if you can piggyback on someone who’s already gained a lot of followers. If you can get someone with 10,000 Twitter followers to re-tweet your content, that’s going to go a long way towards getting your own Twitter followers.
You can either adopt a passive influencer strategy, in which you simply follow the biggest names in your industry and share their content. Or you can adopt a more activist strategy, in which you reach out to them directly and ask them to help. Some of the biggest brands in the country routinely turn their Instagram accounts over to influencers for a short period of time, to let them work a little influencer magic.
Tip #5: Hand out incentives to follow
Some people will follow you because they love your content, your products or your brand. But some people need a little convincing to jump on your social media bandwagon. That’s why many brands routinely host contests, competitions, or prize drawings for people who sign up as followers. Or they might hand out a special coupon code to followers: if you want to use the special discount promotion, you need to be a follower.
A mix of all five of these strategies can be very effective. You’ll see how much easier it is to go from 1,000 to 2,000 followers than it is from 0 to 1,000. There are all kinds of network effects at play here. You’ll be amazed at what kind of response your content gets once it’s integrated with a growing social media presence.
