Social media has become the number one way to reach customers. Success on social media isn’t just a bonus anymore; it’s a business imperative. That’s why you need to invest in growing your social media following every day. To make this a little easier (especially when you’re just starting out), we’ve identified seven awesome steps to grow your social media following.
- Identify your goals and objectives for each social media account and your overall social media presence. It’s impossible to achieve your social media objective unless you know what they are. That’s why you need to set goals before ever attempting a new strategy. You’ll find that simply knowing what you want to do with your social media presence will go a long way towards achieving the bigger following you want.
- Optimize your profiles. It may sound simple, but simply optimizing each of your profiles can increase your page rankings and the reach of your content. The more your content gets out there, the bigger your following, so it’s worth the effort to fully optimize.
- Prioritize sites and content most likely to appeal to your ideal customer. Unless you have a full time social media staff with a team on each account, you can’t do it all. Choose the social media sites that are most likely to appeal to your target audience and focus your efforts there. It’s better to deliver excellent, targeted content on several channels than to deliver mediocre content everywhere. Quality beats quantity every time.
- Promote your social media pages everywhere (including cross-profile marketing). An easy way to increase your following is to make your profiles easy to access. Promote your social media profiles everywhere: your website, on blogs, in email signatures, in storefront windows, on your business cards, everywhere. The more exposure these profiles get, the better reach they will have. Remember that means promoting other social media profiles within social media profiles, too!
- Make content easy to share. Simply integrating buttons that make sharing content easy will go a long way towards increasing your reach and growing your following. People will share content they love, but only if it is super simple.
- Promote only your best content. Target your ad money towards promoting your very best content. When you see that a post is gaining traffic, paying to promote it will increase your momentum, getting you the most bang for your buck.
- Invest in your community 24/7. Social media has to be truly social to work. That means you must give back to your community by responding to them and interacting directly with followers. Invest in your community on social media, and they will share you with their friends. Remember that this requires a practically 24/7 response nowadays. People will expect you to address their needs asap, so invest in your profiles every day and all day long.
When you follow these seven simple steps, your social media following will explode– and it will be as awesome as you’ve always hoped it could be. Start with step one today to grow your social media following and overall success in the new year.
