13 ways to get more social media followers for your business
If you’re looking to grow your social media following, here’s 13 handy hints and tips to get you started.
1. Complete and optimise your profiles
It sounds obvious, but you’ll be amazed by the number of incomplete profiles we come across.
Make sure your profile descriptions and bios are complete, and more importantly, relevant! If someone lands on your profile, you want them to immediately know what you’re about and follow your page. If there’s no relevant description, you run the risk of losing a potentially important follower.
Including relevant keywords and hashtags in your profile description can help with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), making your profile more visible and searchable to an audience that is relevant to your business.
Where relevant, also link to your company website and other social media platforms.
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2. Don’t buy followers!
They won’t be relevant and will throw your analytics off. Your social media follower growth figures might be high, but your engagement figures will drop because your content won’t be relevant or interesting to followers that have been purchased.
It is important that your followers are genuine and relevant to your target audience if you wish to use social media in a useful and meaningful way.
3. It’s not just about sales
It’s easy to use social media to talk about yourself and sell, sell, sell. If you do this, watch your follower count drop!
Social media is all about the conversation. Your social media following doesn’t just want to hear about your latest product or service.
Use social media to build your brand reputation and generate awareness. Ask questions to encourage engagement. Share industry news and content. By doing this, you can position your company as a reliable source for the latest industry updates and you can even build your company up to become an industry influencer.
4. Engage with your social media followers!
We’ve said that social media is about the conversation. But remember, it’s not just a one-way conversation. Show your social media following that you’re active on your social media channels. Monitor your channels for replies to your posts and any posts that other people have tagged you in.
5. Make the most of your email
Adding your social media links to staff email signatures can help give greater exposure to your channels.
You can also use your email service platform to send out promotional emails asking your client database to follow you on social media. Why not add a social media section to your monthly newsletter?
6. Always use visuals
This sounds like another obvious one. But it’s important to remember that social media is very visual, and your social media followers are too, particularly on Instagram.
Experiment with different kinds of images, infographics and videos. Delve into your social media analytics and you’ll see which content works best for your social media following.
7. Join in the conversation with popular hashtags
Watch out for topically relevant and trending hashtags and join in the conversation by using these hashtags within your posts, at the time that they are trending.
Daily hashtags are always handy. Here are a few of our favourites, to get you started:
- #MondayMotivation
- #TastyTuesday
- #WisdomWednesday
- #ThrowbackThursday
- #FactFriday
- #ShoutoutSaturday
- #SpotlightSunday
8. Create your own hashtag
Create your own company and/or brand hashtags and promote them across your online and offline marketing channels. Encourage people to use your hashtags by using them in your own posts.
Have you also tried hosting your own Twitter Chat?
9. Tag in relevant accounts
Build up relationships with industry influencers, commercial clients and suppliers, by tagging them into relevant social media posts. If your tagged friends share your post, you will gain further reach and more impressions, which could result in social media follower growth.
10. Repurpose your content
You don’t have to use a piece of content just once. There are creative ways to re-purpose your content. You can turn your existing website or brochure content into engaging images, videos, infographics, Twitter polls, Instagram stories and more!
11. Cross-promote your social media accounts
Gain greater exposure by posting about discussions that you are having on your other social media networks. This will encourage your social media followers to follow you across all of your platforms.
12. Post at relevant times
As part of your social media marketing plan, you should consider a social media content scheduling platform. There are platforms such as Hootsuite, which is designed for social media monitoring and content scheduling. Or you could try the all-in-one approach, with a marketing automation platform, which also covers your emails, website forms, website landing pages and lead generation.
With the ability to schedule your content, you can send posts out at any time!
The best times will depend on your area of business and the countries in which you operate. As a general rule, the best times to post are as shown below:
- Facebook – Wednesday at 11am and 1pm
- Instagram – Wednesday at 11am and Friday at 10-11am
- Twitter – Wednesday at 9am and Friday at 9am
- LinkedIn – Wednesday at 9-10am and 12pm
But, remember, it is important not to just schedule everything in and leave your social media channels to run themselves. Ad-hoc posts should also be used, for example, during an event and when using trending hashtags. Always monitor your channels and engage with people who are engaging with you! It really does make a difference.
13. Reach further with targeted paid advertising
Targeted paid campaigns and boosted posts allow you to target your content as broadly or specifically as you like. Looking to talk to decision makers within a certain industry? LinkedIn advertising allows you to target people with a particular job title, or individuals working within a particular industry. Or maybe you want to reach a specific demographic or location. You can do this on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Paid advertising allows you to reach a wider audience (or narrow, if you’re in a niche market), getting your message across to people who it will be relevant to. It helps you to get the right message, to the right audience, in the right place – which is what marketing is all about, right? You can even exclude certain demographics.
At AlphaQuad, we offer a FREE social media audit, where we will look at your current social media presence and assess your position against your competitors’. Sign up today to find out how you can increase your social media following.
