Hopefully by now you will have taken your first steps into the wonderful world of social media. However we’re often asked how to get more followers on social media and were surprised that businesses are still struggling to grow their initial social following.

Let us share our top tips on growing a social media following from scratch so you can start leveraging your social channels to build your business.

Let’s start at the very beginning

Whether you believe in social media or not, it’s becoming harder these days to not see the business case for social media.
A strong social media strategy with a loyal following can create a lot of opportunities for a company to grow its business.

So, what is a strong social media following?
You’re probably thinking that tens or hundreds of thousands of likes and followers are the only things that really constitute a strong following. While these numbers could be part of it, they are not valuable enough on their own.

How to Grow a Social Following from Nothing

One of the more deflating things in online marketing can be when you get excited about jumping into social media and then months go by without any activity from your audience.

People aren’t “liking” your content, no one is responding to your questions and the only people following you are your family members and friends who feel guilty for not following you.

Here are some steps we suggest to build your social following the right way…

Understand What You’re Building and Why
To successfully build a social following you need to know  exactly what you’re trying to build and why your business needs it in the first place. To answer the “what”, you need to think of your social following as a community that you’re building.

Have a Plan
The quickest way to see your social media efforts fail is to try and do social media without a plan.

We see it time and time again. Someone starts using social media, they think they can do it effectively on the fly and then they stop altogether due to lack of time, engagement or results.

Don’t make the same mistake, especially since it can be avoided by spending a little time upfront to put together a social media plan.
Assuming you’re starting from scratch, remember that you don’t need to overwhelm yourself with the task of putting a complex plan together in the beginning. Start with a basic plan that provides you with some direction. This will give you a good foundation to build off and also allow you to make adjustments as social media evolves.

Stick to a Schedule
A key element to a successful social media plan is an easy to follow schedule.

You could have the best plan possible, but if whomever is responsible for actually carrying out the plan, specifically your social media updates, does not have a guide or schedule to stick to then drop off can be common.

One of the biggest advantages of a schedule as well is that it allows you to map out updates for the week or month so that you know you will have at least X amount of updates released without you having to stress over what to post each day.

Customise / Brand Your Social Media Pages
Keeping people on your website with great design, content and usability is vital to its overall success. The same goes for your social media pages and profiles.

If you’re going to invest the time and money to use social media as part of your marketing strategy, then each page or profile you use should follow the same standards.

Follow Etiquette
If you want to chase away followers from your social media channels, then all you have to do is ignore common social media etiquette.

Surprisingly, not many companies and “social media experts” seem to understand what social media etiquette is or why it even exists.

Since you’re just starting out with social media, then we want to make sure you are caught up on the latest etiquette so your efforts do everything but chase people away.

Be Responsive, Genuine and Helpful
To truly attract and keep people interested and engaged in your social media channels and content you have to be responsive to their comments, genuine with your replies and helpful with your answers.

Companies that fail to do these three things are usually just talking at their followers and hardly see any growth unless their brand is so well known and established that customers don’t care.

TOP SOCIAL MEDIA GROWTH TIP:  Educate everyone in your company on social media. Even if they never use it they will at least understand it and be more inclined to contribute to it in their own way. The ripple effect usually leads to better customer service as employees become aware of how public social media makes things so every interaction is more important than the last.

Check out our recent article  on how to chose the correct social media channels for your business here

 

If you would like to discuss how we could help your business become more social get in touch today on 02392 421 312 or email us at helen@helencope.com