In order for social media marketing to work, you need an audience.
Unfortunately, growing an audience is also one of the most difficult tasks for any business. Not only are you competing with other brands for your audience’s attention, but you’re also up against content from their friends and family, your competitors content, and their favorite influencers.
Growing an audience may not happen overnight, but with the guide below you will be on your way to building active and engaged social channels.
Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy
The first thing you need to do is start planning your social media marketing strategy. Otherwise, you’ll fall into the trap of aimlessly publishing content and randomly engaging with people.
When you know who you want to target and how you plan to reach them, building an audience is much easier.
The first step toward building an audience on social media is simply figuring out where your customers are. Is your brand’s target audience on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram? Choosing the correct channels (I suggest two to begin with) will help you with targeted content creation, copywriting, and a solid engagement strategy.
If you’re not creating content people want to see, it’s difficult to convince people to follow you. That’s why you need to create a content marketing plan that outlines what type of content you will create across all your social channels as well as your blog.
The content you post on social media has the power to turn your brand into a household name.
Set Achievable Social Media Goals
Setting goals for your audience growth on social media is a good way to stay on top of your progress. That way if you’re behind your goals, you can think of ways to ramp up your efforts and prioritize getting more followers. On the other side, if you notice a spike in followers you can go back and analyze what you did that led to the increase.
Social feeds are packed with noise from brands people follow, as well as their friends, co-workers and every other connection. If you want to grow your audience, you need people to share your content. The question is, what do you need to post in order to get people to share?
The best place to start is, what types of content do you share or stop to read?
Far too often, brands spend days building a social ad campaign strategy in hopes of getting lots of shares and likes, only to see their post go live and flop. It is important your ads have a clear call-to-action and a solid value proposition for viewers.
Social networks collect a lot of data about users including demographics, education level, interests, hobbies and more. As an advertiser, you can use this information to target your message to your specific audience.
Master the Art of Hashtags
Hashtags are one of the most effective ways to increase visibility for your posts. However, not all hashtags are created equal. You need to know which hashtags to use as well as how to use them strategically.
#tbt #love #summer #nofilter Instagram hashtags are everywhere, but do they relate to your brand? Probably not.
We use #stickybranding on the majority of our posts. Other hashtags we often use are #branding #brandstrategy #businessgrowth and #jeremymiller. As you can see, they are all directly related to who we are and how we can help our customers.
Attract the Right Audience
Having followers is awesome, but what’s even better is getting followers that will engage with your brand.
Has your brand seen positive returns on your social channels? Is your Instagram following big enough to drive profitable traffic to your website? The key is quality over quantity.
Getting followers is kind of like getting people to stop on a busy road and visit your store. Everyone is moving so quickly and there are a ton of stores to check out. This makes it difficult for your brand to stand out.
The key word there is difficult. It’s not impossible. You just have to approach it strategically.
If you can produce a piece of content to stand out so that people can’t help but share it all over social media, growing your audience becomes a lot easier. The challenge is that only a small percentage of content goes truly viral. Therefore, the better way to grow your audience on any social network is to increase engagement. The more people who engage with your content, the more likely social media algorithms are to recommend your account.
The bigger your brand’s social media presence, the easier it is for you to stand out on multiple social networks. Growing a social audience is not for the faint of heart. It takes consistency, hard work, and lots of trial and error.
Still feeling unsure of where to start? We’re here to help!
