Since almost half of the world population is actively using social media now, only the sky is the limit for your business development. With social media, you can hypothetically reach them all, but surely you need a strategy. In this article, we are going to tell you how to grow your social media business with the following tips.
Never Buy Followers
Among all the strategies and tactics to increase social media networks, buying followers is the worst one. We decided to start from this point since even despite the fact that all business owners know that this practice is prohibited, some of them still do it. However, it makes no sense.
- Firstly, it is impossible to buy followers who will be really interested in your offer. The feeling of interest should be sincere, and your offer should match the needs of your followers.
- Secondly, you will never be able to develop your social media profile if your subscribers are bought. Yes, you will have some, but in general, your profile will be stagnant. The only lively audience makes the profile lively too.
Know Who You Are Targeting
Even despite you can reach them all, you should perfectly know what user groups are your primary goal. The issue of expanding the social media audience is relevant only when you understand who you want to attract. Facebook has succeeded most in resolving this issue.
If you’ve ever set up Facebook ads, then you probably know how many different settings this platform offers. You can target users depending on their gender, age, place of residence, education, marital status, occupation, interests, last visited places, subscription to competitors, and much more.
This point-based segmentation has only one goal – to reach the right users on the first try. And this is what you should do before you start to grow more social.
Be Stylish With Your Visuals
The first impression a user receives when opening your business profile on a social network is visual. Moreover, you cannot change this impression – you have only one attempt. One of the secrets of how to grow your social media following is the ability to create the right first impression with a visual component. This is especially true for Instagram and Pinterest.
There are only two ways to do this.
- Publish photos and pictures of the highest quality you can afford.
- Adhere to the same style in all of your publications.
Launch Engaging Contests
Competitions, giveaways, contests, and challenges are a great way to stir up your target audience, as well as attract new subscribers. Yes, maybe someone will unsubscribe from your profile after the end of the competition, but as a rule, the return on such an initiative is always more than investment. Plus, you can get additional benefits if you think over the terms of your competition. For example,
- You can ask your subscribers to leave you their phone number or email address in order to use this information for the following marketing campaigns.
- Or you can make taking the survey a condition for participating in the competition to collect custom insights.
- You can also ask subscribers to share with you user-generated content which will work as social evidence for other potential customers.
Share More Videos
Social media posts with videos are more engaging than static ones. That is why users will spend more time on your profile watching videos and discovering your brand more and more if you allow them to. In a nutshell, video is the most powerful marketing tool nowadays since the list of ideas you can realize with the video is endless, and there are a lot of places you can publish your video at, in addition to YouTube and TikTok.
For example, Facebook users like to watch native videos. Instagram users like to watch short videos in Stories and long ones on IGTV. Short videos work well even on Linkedin and Twitter. This is your main key to user engagement and attraction.
Here are some ideas.
- Publish your video on YouTube and add a transcription to make Google know what are you talking about in your clip.
- Share short videos on Instagram and Facebook stories.
- Use appropriate hashtags to make your video searchable.
Try In-Stories Ads
As we have said, Facebook and Instagram users love Stories, so this is the right place to launch a test advertising campaign. Perhaps, the best way is to embed the video as well. This is just the case when you are going to give the users what they want to see and right in the place where they are spending their social media time.
What is more, storytelling is the mean that you can use across all your marketing channels. Users love reading engaging stories on social media and corporate blogs as well. Surely, they should be professionally written to make the right impression. There are a lot of professional freelance authors you may hire to leverage your content strategy but firstly, compare their ratings on Writing Judge and Pick the Writer custom writing services reviews platforms.
Give Your Followers More Value Than They Can Expect
In fact, the answer to the question of how to gain an audience fits in three words. Give them value. Give them value and they will come to you themselves. Think for yourself why we are subscribing to certain pages on social networks? We do this in order to get any value – for example, advice on how to assemble a car engine, or how to make up nails, get a discount on the product you like, or piece of funny content. All these are the values you may give to your potential target audience.
The essence is that they don’t want to follow you until they understand why they should do it. Answer the question “why” and they will subscribe. And also, try to give your audience more than they can expect. It will help you build trust with them, and trust is one of the keys to sales.
Use the Power of Influence
Influencer marketing is a very strong tool to increase your target audience in social media. Its essence is simple. By entering into a deal with an influencer, you automatically get access to all his or her subscribers, plus you can use his authority to promote your product or service.
In this case, the most important thing is to find the right influencer. The values of this person should be in good agreement with the values of your business. For example, if you sell fitness products, then you can choose a well-known fitness trainer or nutritionist as an advertiser for your brand.
Hint! As a rule, interacting with influencers is not a cheap pleasure. For example, one post from Christian Ronaldo will cost $750,000. Therefore, if you have not tried this marketing approach before, then firstly, choose a micro-influencer, and secondly, try this strategy on Twitter. Twitter promo posts are the cheapest – from two dollars for a thousand influencer’s subscribers.
Come up With Polls and Surveys
Users love polls and surveys, and they will love this idea even more if you offer them a small bonus – for example, a minimum discount or free shipping. However, the value that you get in return is much more.
With the help of surveys, you can find out what your users are interested in, what they like and what they don’t, and build your future engagement strategy based on this data.
Discuss Hot Topics
Discussing hot topics is a great way to point out your values and reach more users with the help of trending hashtags. So, make sure to observe what is going on on the web to pick up the trend and discuss it with your target audience firsthand. Also, make sure to use a bunch of hashtags for such publications. Some of them should be relevant to the topic you are discussing to expand the reach, and some of them – to your business to catch the most interested users.
Conclusion
In practice, every brand is going its own trial and error path trying to get in touch with more and more potential subscribers. Some of the advice we have provided are universal but some are business specific and not suitable for every company. However, you are free to try each tip to find out what works best for your business and your potential customers.
Anna likes writing from her university years. When she graduated from the Interpreters Department, she realized that translation was not so interesting, as writing was. She trains her skills now working as a freelance writer on different topics. Always she does her best in the posts and articles.