Social Media Marketing has garnered a lot of attention in the past few years. Leveraging from the influencers such as Legendarylea or from the targeted ads, your social media presence matters today, more than ever.
We have seen a surge in social media users along with technological development. 10 years ago, we had 1 billion users on the online platform. Today, the number has tripled to 3.08 billion and increasing. With the emergence of new content creation platforms and their ever-expanding reach, social media is your ladder to success.
With just a click, you can do so much on online platforms, but the most difficult part is to get more organic followers, which eventually leads to better engagement and audience interaction.
The struggle to get more followers is real! The ever-changing algorithm, the competition, and the vast number of options make it extremely difficult to reach the desired figures.
Even though many may argue that social media presence is judged by the kind of content you do, which is entirely true, but you need an audience who can interact with the content.
So, before any further delay, let’s see what you and your brand can do to escalate the numbers and give you some thumbs up and shares.
Here are tips that you can follow to see a spike in your engagement and followers:
1. An Impressive Feed
Start at the very beginning of your media journey and be unapologetically at it, until you see the desired numbers. It might be discouraging to have 2-3 likes in the first few posts, but you have to keep posting regularly to garner attention.
The reason you should post from the beginning is that nobody follows a sparse account that does not have any posts. It seems fishy and brings down the engagement considerably. So, the idea is to build an impressive feed pretending you have a million followers to showcase until you get to that number.
When talking about building a feed, try to follow a theme. Be relevant, stick to your community, share news, and give opinions. You have to measure your words, and actions, and be a responsible brand.
Lastly, your profile should be complete, sending a clear message about what you do, where you are based out of, what products or services you engage with, etc. This helps the potential and relevant audience to instantly get an idea, and they might just hit the “follow” button.
2. Follow for Follow
No, I am not talking about the famous hashtag trend, but the fact that you should follow before you start expecting followers.
Social Media is an ever-expanding platform where you can find artists, brands, influencers, everyday people, comics, books, and all clustered in one place. You have to sift through that and get to the most relevant set of people.
And, how do you do that?
Start by following relevant people.
If you’re a restaurant, follow the hot topic of the town, the delivery partners, the food news channel, and so on. If you cannot find them on your own, Google them, stalk them, and then hit the follow button (or not). Make sure to pick the most relevant accounts.
This also helps you to stay in touch with what the industry is talking about.
For, if you were following UberEats and Zomato on LinkedIn, chances are their collaboration news reached you instantly, and you can post these on your other social media channels, and spread the information to your followers. Apart from fun content, it is the opinions and news that are the most reshared by the audience.
Here are some other ways you can be in touch with the industry:
- Stalk into the “following” tab of the niche-related influencers to know who the big guys are in your industry.
- Twitter “List” is a curated group of Twitter users. Find a relevant list and subscribe to it, and you will receive the tweets from the people on the list without following them.
- Follow related groups and communities to be in touch with the buzz of the industry.
3. Promote Yourself
A part of your social media presence involves asking people to follow you. Before you think you have to go all out and interact with everyone, there’s an easy way to do it. Starting with the most obvious one; Have your social media icons or “follow buttons” on your website.
This helps your audience to know on which platform they can find you. These icons usually go in the footer but if you want to make a more prominent promotion, you can creatively show it on your homepage. Now, why does this matter? Customer support is always a crucial aspect of any business or brand.
Previously, people used to go through the whole “filling out customer support form” or calling a toll-free number. These practices are still followed today but there has been a shift, with more people tagging the brand on social media and voicing their grievances, especially on Twitter.
Your social media platform also becomes a grievances platform and the way you handle the issue will speak a lot about how much you care about your customer. Similarly, you can use your blog page to ask your audience to follow your social media account.
Another way you can promote yourself is through Email Marketing. A business usually has a subscriber list to which they communicate through their regular newsletters. You can add your social media links there and ask your audience to click on the “follow” button.
Handling social media can be overwhelming, especially when the business part takes away most of the time. To make things easier, you can hire a digital marketing agency, like King Crescent, which keeps you at the top of your game.
4. Post, post, and post, but responsibly
The world of social media is uncertain and can make anything viral for the right reasons, or even the wrong. Regular posting is necessary, especially when you’re trying to make people familiar with your brand name and communication. But here’s a golden tip- Don’t overdo the posting.
A good way to judge your frequency of posting is by the type of social media platform. Instagram and Facebook; work on an algorithm. You can use these platforms to schedule your regular posts and stories. On the other hand, a platform like Twitter works in “real-time” where you have to be present and post more frequently than others.
As stated before, social media can make anything viral. So keep your game top-notch, and you may wake up to thousands of followers.
5. Hashtags, hashtags, everywhere!
Hashtags are all the games for Twitter and Instagram. And if you’re tapping on their benefits, you’re missing out on a lot!
Hashtags are relevant words or phrases related to your industry that people use to summarize their posts. E.g., you may put #foodie as a relevant hashtag on Instagram or Twitter. It is the hashtags that go viral on Twitter, and so you can create an organic buzz by starting a Twitter hashtag.
Before you start wondering how to use hashtags on Instagram, let’s clear that up too!
On Instagram, people can follow specific hashtags and hence may end up coming across your posts even though they do not follow your account.
You can also use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram, allowing you to reach a plethora of people and audiences. You can even use them in your stories to reach out to more people. Make sure your hashtags are relevant, closely related to your posts, and have a good amount of usage.
Here are some other tactics you can use to increase your social media engagement:
- Run Social Media Ads on your platform A good and relevant campaign can make you stand out from the crowd. Use social media ads to benefit from their algorithm and increase your reach through that.
Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, each has its own social media strategy that can help you leverage them. - GiveawaysEverybody likes free things! Giveaways are a great way to attract followers and engagement to your profile. There are so many challenges that become viral with just one post. But before you plan to start big, here’s a little bit of advice.
When you’re trying to build a presence on social media, keep the rules of your giveaway simple, like commenting or tagging, to get maximum engagement. Once you’re all the rage, you can go for bigger campaigns that demand more involvement from the audience.
Everybody likes free things! Giveaways are a great way to attract followers and engagement to your profile. There are so many challenges that become viral with just one post. But before you plan to start big, here’s a little bit of advice.These are all the ways you can gain followers on your social media platforms in 2024. If there is something you’d like to know, feel free to comment below.
