Top 11 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Audience

 

Every day, brands, organisations, and institutions utilise social media platforms to interact with their target audiences, increase awareness, generate leads, and increase sales.

Brands can efficiently disseminate information about campaigns, fresh initiatives, and novel goods and services if they have an active following on one or more of the main social networks. However, having just 200 Twitter followers or 1,000 Facebook likes is hardly the best measure of social media success.

Numerous followers may exist who never read your messages or click on your links. Building an active online community of your ideal fans who actively engage with your material, spread it across their networks, and eventually convert to paying customers is the key to success.

Establishing one requires work, but the rewards of that efforts can be enormous.

You want to expand your social media audience, right? We'll look at eleven easy ways to increase your social media following in this post.

1. Hold contests

Contests are a terrific method to keep your existing fans interested in your Page while also attracting new people to Like and follow your accounts.

It's worthwhile to experiment with contests on each social media platform you use regularly. These are some instances of social media competitions:

• Comment to win: Participants post comments or respond to questions.
• Contest for captions: The caption with the most likes or the greatest caption, as you choose, wins
• Photo contest: The winning image is either the greatest (you decide) or the image with the most likes.
• Fill-in-the-blank Contest: Ask participants to respond to a factual query
• Multiple choice contest
• Promote it everywhere: To encourage involvement, use your website, email list, and other social networks.
• Do not give away prizes completely unrelated to your brand: For instance, if you give away a brand-new iPad, you might encourage a lot of engagement and participation, but perhaps not from individuals who would subsequently make purchases or lifelong supporters.
• Follow the platform rules: Here is a summary of the main information on the rules and regulations that apply to contests on each social media platform.
• Follow up with entrants who don’t win: Send them a thank you for participating, along with something about your brand/organization’s work.

2. Include a visual with every post

Visuals perform well on social media, so make sure each post has an attractive, vibrant image or graphic.

Take a look at these HubSpot-gathered data on graphic marketing:

• Content with pertinent pictures increases views by 94% compared to articles without graphics.
• Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than other sorts of content.
• On Instagram, pictures featuring faces receive 38% more likes than pictures without.

You may add graphics to your blog posts and social media postings using free graphic design tools like Canva.

3. Share more video

Every social media site finds that video material is the most engaging, so if you can, it's a good idea to produce at least some video content to increase engagement.

Instead of posting a link to an external website, make sure to upload your movie directly to the platform of your choosing (like YouTube). This will draw additional attention to your video as people stumble over it while scrolling through their feeds.

A large number of views can boost your brand's reach, engagement, and exposure.

 

4. Be proactive in listening to and responding to your online community

Did you know that 71% of Twitter users and 83% of Facebook fans now anticipate hearing from you the same day they ask a question on each platform?

In actuality, 32% of Twitter users currently want a response within 30 minutes.

Being incredibly responsive on social media will provide your followers with an excellent user experience. Pay attention to what they need, then give it to them.

Additionally, you ought to thank those who leave comments on Instagram and YouTube and publicly acknowledge those who retweet, fave, and mention your organization on Twitter.

Your online audience is more likely to become passionate fans and your most devoted social media ambassadors when you make them feel heard and recognized.

 

5. Change your Page profile photos and cover photos

Some of the best and most popular social profile components are your profile pictures and banners. Use these visual aids to illustrate the results of your labor and the experiences of the people who profit from your assistance.

Consider changing your Facebook cover photo at least once each month, and don't forget to provide a compelling caption.

Use your Twitter profile picture and banner image to showcase your excellent work.

No one wants to connect on social media with simply your logo, so don't just extend it out and pixilated a horizontal version of it. Personalize, humanize, and personalize each channel as much as you can using a striking graphic.

Also, make sure you use the proper social media image sizes for each platform.

6. Give people a reason to follow you

Give your existing and potential fans a reason to follow you across several media.

Don't just "set it and forget it" by blasting out generic, automatic links on all of your social media platforms. Adapt your material to the viewers of each channel.

For instance, Facebook can be used to tell more interesting, in-depth tales about the people who benefit from your work while Twitter should be used to communicate the most recent news and real-time notifications.

Each social media platform should be used strategically depending on its advantages and user base, and you should give your intended market a compelling incentive to engage with you there.

What benefit do you offer? What do you have to offer that will keep people watching?

Consider the motivations behind each network's use, then create a strategy to regularly post and share material that will appeal to your target audience, wherever they hang out online.

7. Encourage tagging

Encourage people to tag other people who might benefit from or appreciate a given post as a way to engage your followers.

If you publish a video regarding Mother's Day, invite your online community to name a friend (or better yet, friends) who means a lot to them and with whom they would like to share your message. For example, if you post an inspirational remark, write "Tag a buddy who needs this today."

Ideally, you can entice these new people to join your online social media following.

However, a word of caution: use this technique sparingly and only in appropriate situations. Otherwise, it may come off as spammy.

8. Use hashtags to get found

Use hashtags in one of these two effective techniques to gain more social media followers:

 

Use trending hashtags sparingly and strategically:
One well-known hashtag, such as #OOTD (outfit of the day), #TBT (throwback Thursday), #fail (self-explanatory), #FOMO (fear of missing out), etc., should be used for each tweet or Instagram post.
There are hundreds of hashtags out there - check out Hashtags.org and Hashtagify. me to find ones that are relevant to your audience and your content.

 

Participate in relevant trending topics and current events:
I frequently check my Twitter feed to see what is currently popular. I share a tweet with the appropriate hashtag if I believe it will be interesting to my followers.
For instance, on Monday, you may share a motivational quotation or a moving tale with your followers using the popular hashtag #MondayMotivation.
People who are looking for that specific hashtag may see your post and decide to check you out or perhaps follow you.

9. Be entertaining, and use humor to engage

Take a cue from the Frederick SPCA, a group dedicated to animal adoption and welfare, which frequently posts amusing memes and pictures on its Facebook.

On social media, brands that display a little humanity and humor do well; however, you should always make sure that any content you do share makes sense for your specific audience and your brand voice.

Sharing cat memes for the sake of sharing cat memes serves no purpose. Even if such postings do receive some likes, they may confuse your messaging, which may hinder your larger efforts to promote your brand (i.e. connecting with the right people for your organization).

 

10. Explore paid social

Allocating ad expenditure, no matter how small, is often necessary to advance in social media success.

Spending a small amount on sponsored social media marketing is one of the finest strategies to expand your audience and increase awareness. Paid social ads can help you promote your content, boost conversions, and expand your audience when used effectively.

If you utilize Facebook's pixel, you may target those who have visited your website, joined your email list, and are already friends or followers of yours. This allows you to concentrate your advertisements on these "warm" audiences.

In particular, Facebook's advanced features can be extremely helpful in ensuring that your paid outreach reaches the ideal audience.

 

11. Never, ever buy followers and fans

Some people believe that buying fans and followers is a quick way to develop a sizable internet audience. This is not only bad practise, but it will typically cause more issues than it solves.

The major problem with this is that it contaminates your audience with robot profiles, which will skew your audience insights, hamper your ability to perform consistently, and ultimately reduce the organic reach of your articles. before taking into account advertisements. For instance, Facebook's system would try to show one of your posts to more people by showing it to those who already follow your Page. The ramifications of using various other ad targeting strategies are similar in that you would essentially be paying to contact bots.

The people you need to engage, motivate to act, and develop for a longer-lasting relationship are the ones you should concentrate on attracting with your postings and information sharing.

Social media platforms can be a terrific method for brands and organizations to communicate with stakeholders, build devoted followers, and increase their reach and audience when used wisely and thoughtfully.

Use a few of these strategies to begin growing your social media following right away.