Growing a social media following is central to almost all online marketing strategies. After all, social media offers the ideal digital platform to interact with a relevant audience and create awareness around your brand. Social media provides the perfect platform to share creative content that aligns with your audience’s values and desires in real-time, from company news to blog posts.
How do I get my business noticed on social media?
Growing a social media following organically for your business in a crowded digital space takes a tailored social media engagement strategy coupled with industry insights and technical know-how.
Relevance’s social media team shares some of their top tips on how to get more social media followers for your business across some of the most powerful social networks.
How to grow your social media audience in 2023
Social Media Tip 1 – Community management and building – don’t forget to engage with your audience!
- Foster a sense of community engagement on social media channels by always replying to your audience, such as any comments left on posts, to ensure your consumers feel loved and heard. This also illustrates a high level of customer service, making your audience more likely to trust your brand.
- Engage with relevant profiles – for example, look at your competitor’s posts and see who’s liking, commenting, and engaging with their profile. This will help them discover your services and help you to grow your social media followers.
Social Media Tip 2 – Optimise your hashtags
- Use relevant hashtags on social platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn to help your profile and posts be discovered by relevant community members, growing your social media followers.
- On Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, you have to find hashtags that people in your target audience are more likely to check. These users will be more likely to follow your account if a relevant connection is made. It’s best to use various hashtags, from very niche community-based hashtags to larger, more widely used hashtags. Avoid spam hashtags like #love or #holiday that are too generic, and always vary the hashtags you use to avoid a shadowban.
- On LinkedIn, it’s best to use more generic hashtags as these act as keywords. So if you’re posting about luxury property, using #luxuryproperty is a great place to start.
- Finally, use a hashtag funnel. Start with your industry, then move on to your niche, then your brand, then your community, then your location and specific product hashtags based on the post theme.
Social Media Tip 3 – Create engaging and effective content your audience will engage with
- Share bespoke content across social media platforms to grow your social media audience. Create content that goes beyond just pushing your services or product. Whether it educates, inspires or provides news, don’t just bombard your audience with sales messaging. Give them a little extra, and they’ll reward you with loyalty.
- Listen to your audience and create tailored types of content that will foster audience engagement. The best way to figure this out is by looking at your analytics and seeing which posts received the most engagement, then creating more content like it.
- A good way to increase social media presence is by repurposing content. For example, you might split up your latest blog post into an engaging Twitter thread or turn it into a video for YouTube.
- Another way to know what content your audience likes is by asking them. Create a post asking your audience to comment about what content they enjoy. It’s a win-win, as your audience will feel listened to, and you’ll know what content to create.
Social Media Tip 4 – Optimise your bios and profiles
- Optimise your profile by ensuring your bio tells potential followers everything they need to know about your business and what you offer in one quick, easily digestible paragraph.
- Create a brand hashtag that is unique to your brand or business. They can range from names of companies to products, campaigns or slogans. They can help build your brand awareness and identity.
- Grow your social media followers by optimising your brand’s social posts with keywords. According to Later, users are looking for an exploratory experience with curated takes and personal experiences, such as TikTok storytelling and honest reviews. Your 2023 social strategy should include a list of keywords you want your brand to rank for and regularly create social content around them.
- Always include a call to action, such as encouraging users to follow you or go to your website.
Social Media Tip 5 – Tailor your content for each platform
- Every social media platform has a slightly varied purpose, so each requires a different approach.
- Instagram Reels can be used to reach new audiences and increase engagement. Native videos encourage your followers to engage with your content – find trending sounds and use these in your videos. We’d recommend posting at least one reel a week.
- Twitter is a fast-paced channel, so it’s important to act fast and ensure your content remains relevant. Images perform better than videos on Twitter, so we recommend using high-quality visuals to curate your brand story.
- For LinkedIn, keep up to date with your industry’s discourse and create an opinion piece around that conversation. LinkedIn articles, especially thought leadership, perform well. Moreover, creators are taking to LinkedIn, infusing personality in their posts, and standing out as experts in their respective fields. The platform has historically been used for B2B marketing, but in 2023 expect to see a shift in the content shared. If you’ve overlooked LinkedIn in the past, it might be time to reconsider.
- Facebook – join in the conversation! Comment, like, and share. Engage with your audience to drive dialogue.
Social Media Tip 6 – Try Meta advertising
- While focusing on organic growth, it’s important to consider Meta advertising. The simplest way to use Instagram ads for audience growth is to boost a post or a story and use the ‘More Profile Visits’ ad objective. You can run a seven-day campaign for as little as $5 per day.
Social Media Tip 7 – Use the platform to your advantage
- Use the platform’s analytics as part of your social media strategy to find out when your audience is actively engaged and post at these times. Don’t forget to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, so you can do it better.
- Utilise Instagram’s story features such as the ‘Add Yours’ sticker, polls, hashtag, or question box. You can also increase reach by adding geotags to your Instagram post and story.
- Tagging relevant profiles in your posts on Instagram will result in your post appearing in their ‘tagged photos’ and in turn make your page more discoverable.
- Get partners and brand advocates to post about your business – this could be an influencer campaign or to encourage your consumers to post about your product. This acts as a review, encouraging others to like your product and follow your social media page.
- Consider working with genuinfluencers, social media creators who are focused on sharing advice and information on products that they genuinely care about.
- Join related industry groups and communities: these give greater insight into what your potential customers want and are talking about to engage your audience further and increase your social media followers. Contributing to Facebook and LinkedIn groups and pages is a great way to gain brand exposure.
If you are a luxury brand and need help growing your social media following with an effective social media strategy, contact the team of social media marketing experts at Relevance today.