When it comes to any digital marketing media plan, there’s no denying social media has a large role to play. There are few platforms that put you in contact with such a large potential audience, nor make better use of the virality of good online content. However, all of the value of a social media presence is locked behind the number of followers you have in many cases.
Here, we’re going to look at strategies you can use to build the following your social media needs, and how to best use them.
Get to Know Your Audience
Simply put, you won’t know to engage someone properly until you know them. Make good use of the tools available, such as your Facebook analytics, to learn about who exactly is engaging with your business online through social media platforms. Learn more about their age group, demographics, professional lives, and interests so that you can build a better picture of who you’re dealing with. This way, you can better speak to their pain points and those interests, sharing content, and speaking in a way that is most likely to reach them. For instance, you’re not likely to engage with young professionals in the same way that you might speak to retirees. Analytics can make sure you’re using the appropriate tone and content for your audience.
Always Be Delivering Content
While you should be sure to keep up with live engagements on social media, talking to your customers, asking questions and offering support, you should also make good use of it as a content delivery tool. There are few better ways to make use of good content that to disseminate it through social media, where others can read and share at their own leisure, too. Build a content marketing funnel that always sees you developing high-quality content. This doesn’t only include blog posts, either. You should also consider formats that might be easier to engage with on social media, where the attention span tends to be a little shorter, such as infographics.
Give Them Incentives to Stick Around
You want your followers to be engaged with the business and to comment on and share the content that you post. However, building up a following of people who aren’t quite as engaged still has its benefits. Having a higher number of followers creates positive social proof so that people who are looking at your accounts from outside can see that your business is, in fact, worth supporting since so many people do it already. Facebook giveaways and contests are a great way to get more interest than you usually would. They can also be used to encourage users to generate their own content, such as pictures with your products, which only goes to improve the brand image.
Get Connected
It’s important to make sure that you’re not speaking at or past your audience, but rather that you’re taking the time to actually engage with them. You can use social media management tools to see when your brand is mentioned, for instance, so that you can respond directly to them. Who you connect to is just as important. By making connections with industry leaders and influencers, you can encourage (or simply ask) them to share your content, helping you gain access to a much larger audience. As a result, you can get more eyeballs on your content. Providing that the audience is right, this can lead to more followers. Having conversations online also provides positive social proof. People tend to head to those who already seem active with their following.
Make Sure to Be Relevant
Keep an eye on hashtags as well as industry trends you might have some input on. It’s easy to check which hashtags are or might be trending in the future, but it’s important to plan your approach with them, as well. It can be pretty easy to spot a company or influencer who has jumped on a hashtag simply because it’s a convenient way to get visibility. Take the time to create content that is relevant to the topic at hand and make sure that your content has value. Is it newsworthy, is it educational, is it helpful, insightful, or otherwise worth reading? If it is none of the above, then a hashtag isn’t going to be much help.
When you’re building your following, be sure that you’re not simply trying to one-and-done it. Social media requires concerted and repeated effort. If you’re not able to provide that, then you may need to revisit your expectations of what it can do for your business in the first place.
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