Looking to grow your social media following? Social media can be the best option for online marketing for small biz, but it does require some patience and hard work. If you’re feeling disheartened at how hard it is to grow your followers, then the following tips should help speed the process up.
1. Focus, Focus, Focus
Rather than try to be everything on every social media channel, pick two or three to focus on. Once you’ve built up a following on these, you can expand to others. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn are some of the top choices for small businesses.
2. Stand Out
Your content needs to stand out from the rest. We’re bombarded with a constant stream of social media posts, so ensuring someone notices your posts requires something special. This could be extremely valuable information, a unique image or simply branding everything you post.
3. Stay Consistent
Posting regularly is the best way to gain new followers and keep your old ones happy. This works on every platform and while it does require quite a bit of work, it’s a method every marketer needs to use.
4. Be Social
It’s social media for a reason. You can’t simply post and walk away, expecting people to start following you. Interaction is an essential part of every social media strategy. It can be as simple as commenting and liking other people’s posts, but if you really want to grow quickly, implement tagging strategies, as well.
5. Set Up a Contest
It’s surprisingly simple to create a giveaway or contest and if you are giving away something worthwhile, people will happily share your contest and follow your account. Just be sure to check the rules for contests on each platform that you want to use.
6. Spread the Social Love
Tagging and sharing other people’s content is a sure-fire way to get them to notice you. Who wouldn’t be happy that their post was shared? Often, the effort is reciprocated, so it can pay off in a few ways and you may get to reach a bigger audience than just your own.
7. Know When to Publish
Each social media platform has its own “Golden Hour” or times when more people are going to see your posts. Learn what these are, not just for the platform, but also for your target audience (stay at home moms will have different peak viewing times than business people, for example). Posting at the right time will help grow your followers faster.
8. Pay for Advertising
You get what you pay for and building your accounts manually will take longer than if you use advertising. Fortunately, Facebook, Instagram and other sites tend to have variable options for advertising to suit any budget. Even if you don’t have much of a marketing budget, you should be able to set up a small advertising campaign.
9. Tell People to Follow You
Do you have a website or blog? This is a prime area to let people know that you’re also on social media. You can even add a call to action at the end of your posts to get them to follow your pages or accounts. On social media itself, you can let your followers know where else to follow your business and encourage them to follow on all platforms.
10. Join Groups
Another part of getting social is to join groups on whatever platforms you’re on. This will drastically increase your visibility, build your reputation and increase trust. Most groups have rules about self-promotion, but just posting regularly and being helpful will get more people following your accounts.
Social media marketing for biz can be done on a tight budget and is a quick way to build your followers. Using the methods here, you can grow your pages and accounts even faster.
