Strategies for Growing an Organic Social Media Following and Excelling in Customer Service
There are tried-and-true methods that can help you reach your objectives if you want to increase the number of real Organic Social Media Following who actually care about your company.
The potential reach for your organization is enormous, with an astounding 3.6 billion people using social media globally in 2020, with that number expected to increase to approximately 4.41 billion by 2025.
Growing your social media audience can significantly influence how many new followers you get as well as how many influencers and companies you attract who want to work with you. Collaborations are more attractive when there is a sizable following that indicates credibility.
Furthermore, the advantages can extend beyond any particular platform if you have a sizable social media following. Social media platforms can help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and increase direct website traffic.
Given these benefits, it is unquestionably worthwhile to spend money on expanding your Organic Social Media Following.
The following advice is given without any sort of ranking, yet each piece of advice is helpful. You might find that some approaches work better for your brand and business strategy.
1. Create a powerful brand identity
Both certified businesses and personal brands must create a unified brand identity. It takes more than just putting a logo on your profile photo to build a good brand.
Every post you create should clearly express the identity of your brand. This includes deciding on your main color palette, picking the right filters, creating images, and establishing the mood for your material. Whether it’s a post or a comment, every engagement should convey your brand’s voice. Brands with a distinct identity typically have a larger following.
Think about the case of splat hair dye, for instance. It’s hardly surprising that bold, colorful colors are an important part of their branding, given that their business is centered around color. Their bio’s unicorn and rainbow emojis immediately give off a playful and happy vibe.
The photographs on their Instagram page nevertheless uphold a consistent and unified corporate identity despite their heavy reliance on user-generated content (which we’ll cover later).
They also have a direct link to their main website in their bio and a special hashtag they’ve developed to promote participation (which we’ll go into more depth about later).
What tone does your company use?
Is it vibrant and vivacious, with a positive and relaxed tone? Or does it take a more somber stance and use a muted color scheme?
Once you’ve made these fundamental marketing choices, you can start creating a distinctive brand that connects with your target market.
2. Follow Relevant Accounts
Like in any healthy relationship, there must be a balance between giving and receiving. This implies that you can increase your following on social media by following other people.
It’s not necessary to follow back everyone who likes your account, though. Instead, think of it as a networking opportunity.
Find accounts who publish amazing stuff that motivates you. Find prospective influential brand ambassadors with whom you might work in the future.
Here are some ideas for accounts you might follow to find related ones:
- Communities & Groups: Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and others offer easy-to-use tools for finding and joining groups. Active participation in these communities can dramatically increase exposure for your company in addition to serving as great resources for content inspiration and discovering new accounts to follow.
Participating in group conversations and imparting your knowledge will help you become recognized as an authority in your industry who knows her stuff. You can earn exposure and garner interest from other group members by offering insightful commentary and making a significant contribution to the project.
Additionally, joining groups enables you to make contact with like-minded people, future clients, and even potential partners or collaborators who have same objectives or ambitions. Creating connections within these communities can result in natural growth and more brand recognition.
To optimize the advantages for your brand, keep in mind to respect the group’s norms and guidelines and to consistently concentrate on adding value and making significant contributions.
- Check Out Who Influencers Are Following: Influencers with a healthy follow-to-following ratio are crucial to keep an eye on. This indicates that although they have a sizable number of followers, they are picky about who they decide to follow back. The people they follow are typically of high caliber and relevance.
Finding these influencers and interacting with them will allow you to access their network and perhaps even draw some of their followers to your own account. Their support of or connection with your brand might enhance your exposure and reputation because these influencers have gained authority and a sizable following.
It’s important to contact these influencers with genuine curiosity and substantive interaction, though. It is more likely that developing a relationship based on genuine contact and mutual benefit would benefit your brand over time.Keep in mind that prioritizing quality over quantity while creating relationships and interacting with influencers can result in partnerships and collaborations that are more meaningful and effective.
- “Best People to Follow” Lists: Online platforms frequently produce lists of influencers in a variety of businesses and subject areas. Even while these lists can be helpful, it’s crucial to use caution and carefully consider possible influences before choosing to follow them.
While these lists could serve as a place to start when looking for pertinent influencers, they are not always carefully vetted. To make sure these people are credible, knowledgeable, and consistent with your brand’s ideals, you must undertake your own investigation and thoroughly evaluate them.
Review their content, audience interaction, and general industry reputation when you have the time. Instead of relying solely on their inclusion in a list, look for indications of their sincerity, knowledge, and sincere commitment.
You can make sure the influencers you select to follow are actually helpful to your company and can make a significant contribution to your social media growth and engagement by being meticulous in your evaluation process.
3. Actively Engage With Your Followers
If you spend all of your time on social media talking about yourself without allowing others an opportunity to participate, you’re unlikely to properly engage your audience, just like on a date where one person dominates the conversation.
It’s essential to think of your social media platforms as more than just advertising platforms to prevent this. Instead, cultivate a setting that promotes interactions and insightful discourse. Spend some time engaging with your audience by starting conversations, responding to comments on your posts, and posting new content.
You may develop a feeling of community and strengthen your relationship with your audience by being interested in the ideas and viewpoints of your followers. Encouragement of conversation and active participation in online discussions on your social media accounts will not only boost engagement but also improve the relatability and approachability of your business.
In social media, communication happens both ways. It’s about developing connections, cultivating relationships, and making an environment where people feel appreciated and heard. You may build a devoted and active following by emphasizing sincere connections.
4. Post Share-Worthy Content
People who choose to follow you want you to post gripping, interesting content that they will want to share with their own followers. Consider including the following content kinds in your posts to promote sharing:
Opinions
It might be risky to share strong thoughts on social media. On the one hand, it can lead to a lot of engagement and conversation. To preserve the reputation of your brand, you must implement this method carefully.
Make sure to support your strong opinions when expressing them with reliable data and persuasive arguments. This shows consideration and establishes your brand as knowledgeable and informed.
Be wary of delicate problems, though, as they could backfire and damage your brand. Think about how your actions might affect your audience as well as the larger societal backdrop. It’s crucial to strike a balance between airing your views and keeping a courteous and welcoming atmosphere.
Remember, informed and well-supported viewpoints can start valuable discussions and boost engagement, but it’s critical to steer clear of controversial subjects to protect your brand.
Trends
It’s important to stay up to date on the forecasts and trends in your sector. You may establish yourself as a go-to authority for updates by portraying yourself as a trustworthy source of current information.
Being knowledgeable about market trends enables you to give your audience insightful commentary and analysis. Share pertinent news, sector reports, and timely updates that highlight your knowledge and show that you’re committed to staying on top of things.
You may establish credibility and trust with your audience by constantly offering accurate and relevant information. They will look to you for the most recent information and rely on your knowledge of the market to make decisions.
Remember that providing trustworthy information about current trends establishes your business as a thought leader and enables you to build strong relationships with your audience.
News
Sharing breaking news is a good strategy to keep your audience interested and current. To stay ahead and regularly be among the first to report the news, it takes a lot of effort and dedication, though.
Being a trustworthy source for breaking news necessitates initiative. Keep an eye out for breaking news, business developments, and new trends. This makes it possible for you to find and inform your audience about breaking news quickly.
To keep up this level of reactivity, it’s essential to budget enough time and resources for research. This could entail keeping up with news sources, signing up for pertinent newsletters, setting up alerts, and diligently investigating market trends.
Delivering breaking news often positions your brand as a reliable source of information and draws interested readers looking for the most recent developments. Before sharing information with your followers, it’s crucial to confirm the reliability of news sources and guarantee its correctness.
Keep in mind that keeping up with breaking news demands commitment, effort, and a dedication to provide your audience accurate and timely information.
Data
Data has a big impact on how well your audience is engaged. Incorporating statistics may be quite powerful when supporting or challenging someone’s point. Citable and trustworthy material is advantageous to your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and stimulates social media sharing.
Including facts in your social media postings gives your message more authority and credibility. It gives your claims a factual foundation, which strengthens and enlivens your arguments. People are more likely to interact with and spread content that has been thoroughly researched and supported by data.
Additionally, data-driven content might improve your SEO plan. Citable data can increase the visibility and ranking of your content in search results since search engines respect authoritative, well-supported information.
When using data, be sure it is correctly attributed and that it originates from reliable sources. This increases audience trust and increases the credibility of your material. Additionally, making data aesthetically appealing can increase its impact and shareability. Examples of this include infographics and charts.
Cute/Humorous Content
Without a question, adorable and hilarious content has an amazing capacity to evoke responses. People are drawn to content that includes animals, children, babies, humor, wise quotes, and anything else that makes them smile.
Consider integrating these appealing components into your brand’s content optimization while staying true to your set tone in order to engage your audience. Look for original methods to incorporate these themes into your postings, making sure they go well with the tone and messaging of your brand.
You can appeal to your audience’s emotions and foster joy and a favorable association with your company by including charming and hilarious material. People are more likely to engage with such content because they want to share things that make them happy and laugh.
5. Create A Calendar To Schedule Strategically
It’s important to strike the correct balance while publishing to social media. It’s crucial to keep up a frequency that keeps you current without annoying your audience or coming across as spam.
Consider using tools that let you schedule posts in advance in addition to preparing your social media calendar. Investing in a thorough dashboard enables you to effectively organize and manage your postings, lowering the chance that you’ll forget to release new content on time.
You can benefit from consistent and timely content distribution without the hassle of manual posting by scheduling posts in advance. With this strategy, you can maintain an interesting social media presence even during busy times or when you can’t access your accounts immediately.
6. Cross-Market Across Your Other Social And Marketing Platforms
Are you making the most of every chance to engage your audience? To enable easy navigation and participation, make sure your website and newsletter contain connections to your social media channels.
Additionally, think about spreading the word about one platform via another. You could use your Twitter account, for instance, to invite your fans to use a specific hashtag for an upcoming Instagram event. This method of cross-promotion broadens your audience and promotes a consistent online presence while improving exposure on many platforms.
You may encourage users to explore and interact with your brand across numerous platforms by connecting your digital channels. It enables you to capitalize on the distinctive qualities and advantages of each platform while keeping your brand’s identity constant.
Remember that cross-promotion strategies and aggressively marketing your social media presence across many platforms can improve audience connectivity, boost brand awareness, and maximize interaction chances.
7. Choose Targeted Hashtags
The use of specialized hashtags rather than generic ones that are subject to stiff competition can be a strong tactic for gaining new followers.
The likelihood that the proper audience will find your material rises when you use highly targeted hashtags. Avoid using hashtags that are too widely used, such as #love, which is linked to more than two billion photographs on Instagram alone and makes it difficult for your post to be seen.
Prioritize more specialized and narrow hashtags that complement your content and audience in order to maximize your hashtag strategy. Explore postings that are related to your research, and use tools like Hashtagify to collect data and find alternative hashtag possibilities.
For instance, utilizing hashtags like #lovegardening might be more practical and efficient in reaching your target market if you’re a gardening enthusiast.
Additionally, you might think about developing your own brand-specific hashtags, like Splat’s #splatsquad, to entice your followers to post pictures and produce user-generated content. This strategy encourages participation, creates a sense of community, and raises brand awareness.
Remember that adding brand-specific hashtags and using targeted hashtags can improve your content’s discoverability, draw in the correct audience, and encourage user engagement through user-generated content.
8. Seek Out Press Features, Interviews, And Speaking Opportunities
Your online followers may be significantly impacted by developing a strong offline presence. Every presentation you give gives you the chance to interact with people who are drawn to your message and will proactively look for your social media accounts to engage with further.
Speaking engagements and presentations are excellent platforms for showcasing your knowledge and establishing reputation in the thought leadership space. You may pique your audience’s curiosity and encourage them to look for your online presence by providing them with insightful information.
Utilizing these in-person contacts can also help to increase the number of backlinks to your website. People are more inclined to reference and share your information as you become recognized as a thought leader, which will enhance website traffic and visibility.
Keep in mind that having a big effect offline can have a big impact on your online audience. Take advantage of thought leadership possibilities to broaden your audience, build up your brand’s reputation, and increase website traffic.
9. Build Partnership Campaigns With Companies And Brand Advocates
Collaboration on content initiatives between businesses that are not competitors can result in a lot of visibility and advantages.
What’s the most thrilling part? You have the chance to connect with a completely other audience. Each partner can benefit from a strategic alliance that supports their respective brands, increasing their exposure and generating mutual benefits.
Influencers and brand evangelists offer considerable prospects in addition to joint efforts. User-generated material has the potential to significantly increase engagement, especially when combined with powerful individuals. Participating in competitions, drawings, and affiliate flash deals is also well-liked and successful in grabbing audience attention.
Utilizing these joint initiatives will enable you to reach a wider audience, increase your reach, and improve brand recognition. This not only results in more followers, but it also encourages deep engagement with your target market.
10. Utilize Analytical Data To Tailor Your Strategy
Making wise strategic decisions requires having knowledge about how well your content is performing.
Data-driven insights can be obtained by analyzing a variety of indicators, including the effectiveness of various post kinds with your audience, the best posting times for maximum views, and the demographics you are primarily targeting.
By paying attention to this data, you may determine which material speaks to your audience the most effectively and adjust your strategy appropriately. You may improve your content and choose a more effective social media strategy by being aware of the preferences, actions, and demographics of your audience.
Ignoring this crucial information means passing up the chance to find out what is successful and pinpoint areas that want development. By utilizing the performance analysis findings, you may improve engagement, adjust your content strategy, and get better outcomes.
11. Loop Your Customer Service Team Into The Plan
Dealing with consumer concerns, which are increasingly being made on open forums, is part of running an active social media account. The Wall Street Journal reports that from 12% in 2017 to 43% in 2020, people contacted businesses via live chat, email, and social media. Surprisingly, 55% of dissatisfied consumers who complained on social media never got a reply.
Given that these unfavorable remarks are made public, prospective clients are intently watching your answer to see how you handle problems and look out for your current clientele.
Include your customer service personnel in your social media plan to efficiently handle client concerns. This can be done by keeping them informed about corporate rules and solutions through frequent coordination, or by incorporating your Customer Experience team into social media conversations so they can reply to dissatisfied clients directly.
It’s crucial to understand that building a robust community of organic followers takes time. Any “hacks” promising instant success should be avoided as they are probably frauds. False followers don’t help your brand in the long run because social media sites are good at identifying and removing bots and phony accounts. When genuine people see poor engagement on your account, investing in such followers not only represents a waste of money but also damages the trust of your company.
Increasing ROI and creating actual buzz about your company or products is the main goal of getting followers, since these actions will result in real engagement, sharing, conversations, and transactions. Acquiring a loyal and engaged following helps to promote brand legitimacy and long-term sustainable growth.
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