How to grow your social media following
Social media performance is often measured by engagement metrics, which is the smart way to go as engagement is important. But another area of social that should be tracked is your follower growth rate.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that engagement is a better indicator of real performance of your social media marketing, but you do want to make sure you’re gaining new followers and retaining loyal customers on social channels for the long run.
I do want to reiterate that it’s always better to have a smaller number of followers that are actively interested and engaged with your content than a massive following that means nothing. I’ll always trust a brand that may not have millions of followers but they have an active community. People interact with the brand and the brand responds back – without using too many auto replies.
That said, if you’re sharing quality content you should also see an increase in followers month-over-month. Increasing follower growth shows that your content is valuable, credible, and applicable to a growing audience.
If you’ve struggled with increasing your social media following lately, maybe these marketing tactics can help!
10 ways to increase your following on social media
1. Create and curate great content
One thing that drives engagement and follower growth is your content. If it’s valuable, educational, or entertaining, you’ll succeed in both performance metrics.
You need a healthy balance of original content and quality curated content to keep followers engaged – as well as reach new audiences by appropriately tagging your content with their handles. Consistency is key here as you can’t grow your following if people don’t know how often you’re posting. Post too much and they’ll be annoyed and scroll by, but post too infrequently and people will forget about your brand. Track the number of posts you share and your follower growth to find the right balance of posting frequency.
2. Use the right hashtags
By using the right hashtags you can widen your reach and get your content in front of the exact right people who are looking for it. It helps catalogue your content and get you involved in the right niche communities.
3. Follow the rule of reciprocity
Social media engagement thrives on reciprocity. It’s a best practice to follow back users who follow you, unless it’s a bot or spam account. The rules of reciprocity also apply to engagement as if other accounts are sharing your content, liking it, or commenting on it, you can do the same for them. Plus, your liking and commenting on other accounts gives yours more exposure and shows that you’re an active participant in your social media community.
4. Start a conversation
Similar to the point above, to grow a following you need to be a conversation starter. Ask questions in your posts, host polls, reply to people, or even simply comment on other people’s posts and enter their conversations.
5. Partner with an influencerÂ
One of the easiest ways to grow your following is by working with an influencer in your space to widen your reach and make a great first impression. The good thing about working with influencers is that you can really reach the right target audience for your brand. A negative can be that it’s hard to get these users to convert as they’re interested in the influencer and their content, not necessarily your brand.
6. Amplify your reach through paid posts
Throw some money at growing your social media following by paying to share your best content with new audiences that aren’t engaging with your older content. Paid is often looked at as a lead generation tactic or to get people enrolled in email campaigns, but if you’re paying to boost posts you should also see the added benefit of follower growth.
7. Try a contest
A fun way to get new followers is to run a contest (either on your own or through a partnership). Obviously this can be a costly endeavor and can take a lot of coordination – as well as making sure you’re following any legal requirements by each network. But, it’s also an effective tactic to quickly grow your following.
8. Market your accounts through email
Share your best performing content or highlight user-generated content in your emails to encourage those that may have signed up for emails but haven’t taken the plunge and followed you on social yet. It should feel organic for them to want to follow you on social so let them know why they should. Maybe to access exclusive content or get sneak peeks not shared elsewhere? Whatever it is, give them a reason to receive your messages on multiple channels.
9. Encourage shares of your website content
Make it super easy for your website visitors to share your content. That can be through social share plugins or even the tweet to share functionality that can automatically tag your brand for increased exposure.
10. Sponsored content
Finally, like working with an influencer, write sponsored content or advertorials for other websites that have links to your social content at the end. Make sure the partner does social promotion of your content for you – and of course tags your brand.
What’s a tactic you’ve used to grow your social media following? Tell me in the comments below! Oh, and be sure to follow me on social media over on Twitter at @sjdonelson303!
