You don’t necessarily want to stand outside on a street corner with a sign pointing to your location to grow a social media following. Well, you could, but there are some more efficient ways to get eyes on your small business.
Social media is a fun, simple, and effective way to gain exposure for your small business. It provides an outlet for you to be creative in showing users the personality behind your brand while enticing them to engage with you. In fact, 63% of marketers found social media to be useful when building a loyal fanbase.
However, it is pointless to invest time, money, and effort into it if you don’t first gain a solid follower base.
How to grow your social media following as a small business
Let’s take a look at a couple of methods for getting more people to follow your small business’ social media account. Implement these, and you should see a spike in your number of followers.
Understand your audience
Social media without the right audience would leave you with messages floating in social platform limbo.
To effectively use social media, you must understand your audience.
If you send a message to middle-aged men that’s meant for teenage girls, not only will it go right over their heads, but they will also see your brand as something that doesn’t suit their buying habits.
Collecting information on your customers and follower base will help you craft social messages to optimize your following. Consider using customer data platform software to help consolidate data and use it for your social media efforts.
Here are some factors you should take into account:
Demographics: What is their age, gender, income, education level, profession, and location?
Psychographics: What bothers them and how can you fix it?
Behavior: What do they like and dislike?
With the right audience in mind, you can share messages on social media that will significantly increase your following.
Produce quality content
When building a social media following, it can be easy to pump out a lot of tweets, Instagram photos, and Facebook posts without much thought.
While focusing on your audience, make sure you aren’t posting offensive, irrelevant, or boring content on your social media accounts. Read everything over twice and edit when necessary to make sure you are truthfully representing your brand while also providing your followers with quality content. Simply ask yourself, “Do people care?”
Remember that social media is not a place to write a 500-word essay on how unique your product or service is. Grab users’ attention by keeping your posts brief but interesting.
If you feel the need to share more, you can always include a link to your website or an infographic that gives them the option to interact further.
Engage with your followers
Being social is all about connecting and creating relationships. Social media is no different.
As a small business trying to gain social media followers, you want people to engage with your account. But you can’t expect to take without any giving.
Engage with users who engage with you.
As to how to get more likes on Facebook, you don’t have to interact with every single person that gives your small business social media account some love, but liking a response or replying to a comment every once in awhile shows your users that you are looking to create a relationship, not just earn new followers.
Tip: Pay special attention to your inboxes on social media. People who send you messages could be asking you questions because they are interested in your business.
Use hashtags
Hashtags, while sometimes used jokingly, actually serve a purpose when trying to get more followers for your small business’ social media account.
When posting on Twitter and Instagram, include relevant hashtags.
Don’t hashtag something that is trending just to get more eyes on your post. People might see your brand as inauthentic if they expect to see something trending, but your post doesn’t deliver.
Take advantage of tools
Managing multiple social media accounts at once can be a lot to handle. Each platform offers different metrics that are important to pay attention to, but gathering that data can be the first thing to go for an overwhelmed social media manager.
Take advantage of social media management software and other tools that help you manage and analyze the data you collect across multiple social media platforms.
Post consistently
If you are going to do it, do it right.
After you’ve started an account and acquired a decent amount of followers, it doesn’t end there. Don’t neglect social media. One secret on how to get more likes on Facebook business page is to post on all of your accounts regularly. Your followers are going to expect content, and if they don’t get it, they won’t bother to follow your account anymore.
Consistency is key.
Hold a contest
A lot of people like the rush of competition and everyone loves the thought of getting a free gift.
Offer the chance to win a prize to anyone that follows you, likes one of your posts, or leaves a comment during a specified time period. When people interact with your account, their followers that don’t follow you will see it. If your posts are engaging enough, they will check out your profile.
Be sure to post about the results of the contest afterward. If you get decent engagement and consider it to be a success, include the prize, time, and date of another contest.
Tag others
Sometimes, a direct approach is best.
To gain exposure and followers to your small business’ social media account, don’t hesitate to tag people that might be interested in your content. Don’t overload them with notifications, but give them a nudge to make them aware of your presence.
Keep it casual, and make sure these people would actually benefit from your content.
Conclusion
Social media is a great tool for growing your small business. Your questions on how to grow a social media following have been answered. Once you have that exposure, relationships form and you could end up with some loyal customers.
What’s next? Engage your social media followers so you can start converting them into raving customers.
Mary Clare Novak
Mary Clare Novak is a Content Marketing Associate at G2 in Chicago. A recent graduate, she is happy to be back working in her favorite city. In her free time, you can find her doing a crossword puzzle, listening to cover bands, or eating fish tacos.
