If someone had spoken 15 years ago of the sizable impact social media would have on our daily lives in 2018, you might not have believed them. I don’t think I would have anyway. But it’s here, and given that Facebook now has over 2 billion users – more than the population of the continents of Europe and Africa combined – it seems like it’s here to stay.
It’s clear that some companies have mastered social – they have people posting constantly with relevant content to engage audiences and boost their brand – but what if you’re struggling to understand how to develop a great social media strategy? What to post? Where to post it? How to get more followers?
It can take a variety of ways to gain a good following, and there’s no one formula to get there. Some companies use current events, others use humour, while others get a viral post and gain thousands of new followers overnight. If only there was a surefire way to boost your profile.
There’s no one way to be successful at social media. There’s no tried and tested formula to guarantee a massive increase in followers. It’s not a case of doing 50 posts a day on every social network talking about how great your business is making you gain 1000 followers – because although your content output is high, it doesn’t mean interaction with it will be. And because interaction – specifically customers engaging with your business content by doing things such as Retweeting, Sharing, Liking and Commenting on a post – is really what matters to improve your online reach. More shares means more people see your posts – who then might follow you and share more content.
There’s no easy formula, but here are some tips to help you start to build a social media presence.
Make sure it’s quality
Content needs to be good quality to make people interested in it. If every Tweet was the same then no-one would be interested after the first post, even if it was brilliant content the first time. Make it varied to ensure people stay interested in your message – even if you continue to put links to your website at the end of each mention of it, they’ll be more likely to take an interest if the rest of the post is different. Using other content like images and videos is also a great way to increase reach of your posts – as more people are likely to look at a post containing them.
Be Consistent
Posting 50 times a day is great – but not if it’s only for a week until you need to spend that time working on something else, leaving your social media accounts gathering dust in corners of their platforms. Posting less times each day but making sure you post daily is much better – it means you’re not letting customers forget about your brand. If you don’t have time to ensure you post every day, then a scheduling tool like Hootsuite is great for writing posts in advance.
Be Topical
Don’t make every post one which promotes your business – make it varied. Post about any local holidays (like the recent Easter long weekend), the time of year (apparently it’s supposed to be Spring now…), news events and TV shows (although be careful with this one if you’re posting any opinions). You could even post about something like the weather – we are in the UK after all! There are so many things to post about that it’ll make your content really varied and might even start a great discussion with potential customers. Even if it’s got nothing to do with your business, the audience will remember you in the future.
Use Hashtags
These are great. Hashtags allow you to be seen by more people online who might be interested in a topic that you’ve just posted about. They used to be mainly for Twitter, but now most platforms seem to use some form of them.
Whilst they’re certainly useful to use when promoting your business, using popular and Trending hashtags can help you be seen by more potential customers too.
Finally, don’t rush things
A great social media presence isn’t going to appear overnight. You might be lucky and one of your posts goes viral, gaining thousands of views – but don’t bank on that happening. In most cases it takes time, and more than a little bit of patience to build up the high number of followers and Page Likes you want. But providing your content is good and it reaches people, then these numbers will improve over time. Advertising could help improve this – Facebook Ads is one such tool – but if you can gather those followers organically (for free), then they might be more interested in your brand and prove to be better customers in the long term.
Social media can be difficult to master, there’s no doubt about that. But by making sure your content is of a high quality and contemporary, you’ll be able to increase your followers and make sure you can utilise this phenomenon to increase business. Social media is now part of the majority of people’s daily lives. It’s time to decide whether you want to be a part of it or not.
Still not sure?
Teknet Marketing offers Social Media Marketing services – see our Social Media Marketing page to find out more. Alternatively, you can email hello@teknetmarketing.co.uk or phone 0800 488 0400 for more information!