In the digital era that we live in, there is a non-zero chance for your business to be on social media in some form or other?
Why?
Social media delivers results. But you can’t expect social media platforms to deliver results with one or two random posts here and there. While opening a business account is a piece of a cakewalk, we all wish that operating and attracting customers was also that easy.
Hard luck because success on social media is dependent upon how well you create a social media strategy. Also, you may have thousands of followers who never interact with your post or click on your links.
So, the key to success in social media is growing a thriving online community. In this post, we will look at actionable tips to grow your social media presence.
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With 800 million active users on Instagram and 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook, you cannot afford to overlook them.
Here are seven tips to get started for growing your social media presence:
1- Identify Your Audience And Build Your Profile
The golden rule of social media marketing – not everyone is your customer or audience. They can be your prospective audience.
Identifying your audience is the key to understanding how to build a strong Instagram following. Don’t be among brands that spin the wheels because they don’t share content that speaks to the demand of a defined audience. For example, sharing posts relevant to LinkedIn on Instagram is not going to yield any result.
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Why?
The audience on LinkedIn expects professional messages, whereas Instagram is for brands that share eye-catching and attractive photos and videos. So, before jumping on the bandwagon to grow your Instagram or Facebook followers, spend some time studying your audience persona.
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This would provide answers to these questions:
- Which social media sites to remain active on
- Your posting schedules
- The content type you will publish
- The information in your profile
To create beautifully branded social profiles designed for modern-day creators and help you accelerate the growth of your followers, consider investing in a social media design tool like Unum. From customizing content to making reels to lifting engagement with hashtags, Unum can help you accelerate your growth on social media platforms.
2- Create A Great First Impression
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
When it comes to Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter profiles, this famous idiom isn’t true – a customer judges your brand by the look and feel of your social media platform.
It’s now time to spruce and spice up your social media profiles to boost customer engagement.
Creating a basic profile or page for your brand is no longer going to work.
Your profile is the first thing a customer sees about your brand, and creating a great first impression could be the difference between a few hundred followers and thousands of actively engaged followers.
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To further increase your followers, mention your hashtag in your Twitter or Instagram bios along with any promotional hashtag you’re using.
However, as Instagram allows you to use only one link in your profile, use an Instagram bio link tool for creating a landing page that helps you share multiple links with your followers.
The first impression you create is what decides the success of your social media strategy.
3- Interact With Your Audience
After understanding your buyer’s persona and gathering some followers, start posting helpful content from your account. Simply posting once a day or thrice a week won’t help you grow your social media presence.
So, what to do?
Interact with your audience to start grabbing their attention. The sole purpose is to connect with your audience and make them feel like a part of your brand. Unless your customers feel connected with your brand, they’re less likely to show interest in learning more about it.
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On feeling connected, they would visit your website or store to make a purchase. When sharing content is funny and ironic – just don’t be boring.
Think-out-of-the-box to create a mix of content that resonates with your audience.
4- Find Your Best Time To Post
We did not say the best time to post on social media. In reality, there is no universal best time to post on any social media platform. If someone tells you that your posts will receive maximum interactions on Tuesday or Thursday, they’re probably misleading you.
Instead of blindly following some unproven fact, focus on using Instagram or Facebook Insights.
Use the data from Insights to figure out when your audience is online. Based on the time when most of your audience is online, it is your best time to post.
Also, analyze when your content is most relevant. For instance, a step-by-step recipe video may show high interactions outside of work hours because that’s when your customers are likely to see them. However, if you share a funny meme, sharing it during work hours can help your customers de-stress and relax.
The key to success is experimenting with different posting times and tracking the engagement of each post. This would provide you with your best time to post on different social media platforms. Also, a time that may work on Instagram may fall flat on Facebook. So, analyze the Insights from both platforms.
5- Humanize Your Brand
Regardless of your company’s size or the niche you operate in, focus on humanizing your brand on social media.
Social media is all about building relationships and enhancing communication with people. It’s not about talking in-depth about faceless corporations.
That’s why your brand has to showcase a real personality. Otherwise, your target audience will likely lose interest, and you will have a hard time interacting and connecting with them.
That’s where influencers can help. They can bring in that missing human element to your brand when you partner with them. Even though they may not be a part of your business, their audience would associate them with your brand, hence giving a human touch to it.That’s why you must be careful when you’re looking for influencers or brand advocates. You must only partner with the best ones out there by leveraging an influencer audit tool to figure out if they’re genuinely driving engagement or not. Collaborating with a fake influencer would hamper your brand reputation.
Come out of the myth that customers will come running to your brand if you portray your brand as a huge and busy company. Though this strategy may work on search engine ranking pages,
it doesn’t yield any result on a social media platform.
Social media demands transparency, and that’s why brands want to understand the human side of your company.
Humanizing your brand is all about replying to customer queries, sharing helpful information, and sharing some fun and light moments with your followers.
Also, remember that connecting with your brand’s human side goes beyond communicating with customers.
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6- Participate in Popular Conversations
For every post, use a mix of relevant hashtags and trending and popular hashtags for that
niche.
Usually, the relevant hashtags are long-tail keywords that help understand the intent and help you connect with the right people. But, some universally trending hashtags can help you gain business and help you connect with customers who are interested in that topic.
Mastering the usage of hashtags is a great way to get your business in front of more people in general.
However, don’t overuse these popular and trending hashtags. They might bring a lot of traffic but many of those customers may not be interested in your social media offering.
So, use a wise mix of specific and general hashtags to achieve growth on a network.
Businesses that participate in popular conversations are the ones that grow their business at an accelerating rate. According to research, posts with 11+ hashtags have the highest interaction of 79.5%. So, flow with the trend to see your online business flourish.
7- Focus On Growing And Not Selling
One biggest mistake a majority of brands commit is focusing only on selling to their audience.
Give selling a break for some time. Focus on growing your business and building a thriving online community because customer purchases will eventually follow.
Write it on a post-it note or create a reminder, hard selling is a strict no on social media for brands looking to make a difference.
While social selling is acceptable, don’t bombard your customers with buy now messages, or they will hit the unfollow button more often than the purchase now button.
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One tactic to push your customers through the sales funnel without sounding overly sales-oriented is offering deals or offers with valuable content.
You can even focus on creating content that answers the queries of potential customers. A solution-based content could be the answer to your sales-related misery.
Offering real solutions to real problems is an excellent way of building authority in your niche.
Conclusion
At first, glance, growing your social media presence may seem like an uphill battle, but if you follow these tips religiously, it’s a task you can conquer.
Setting it and forgetting all about it attitude doesn’t work in social media. The platform requires dedication, consistency, and quality to grow a brand that your competitors will envy.
Expecting success within a few days of launching a campaign is a distant dream because growth on all social media platforms requires patience. You need to keep modifying your strategies dynamically to witness exceptional growth.
Whichever platform you decide to market your brand, do it with utmost dedication and consistency.
Which of these seven tips are you planning to implement for your next social media campaign?
Do share your thoughts with us in the comments section.
