How To Increase Your Following on Social Media
The golden question, right?! I get this question all the time, and while everyone’s social media growth journey is going to be different, I have some consistent methods for growing my clients’ follower base.
Be patient and hold out for quality engagement. Growing followers takes time, and if you are impatient and jump the gun to to pay for a boat load followers, they won’t be the quality, engaged audience you are striving for. Paying for posts is okay, but tread lightly on getting too imbalanced with paid followers vs. organic followers.
Focus on your core. Social media will not save you (more on that here). If you work so hard to create a quality feed with carefully curated messages, you want to make sure that what you’re selling is leak proof and ready to go. Be prepared for those that see your products on social media to purchase what you’re pushing!
Make friends. Just like real life, make yourself some friends on the platforms you’re on! It makes sense if they’re your actual neighbors, businesses you partner with in real life, etc. - basically, your cheerleaders. Encourage them to help share your content and be willing to do the same for them, too.
Be consistent with posts. Don’t go silent for too long! Be sure your plans are steady and that posts are dripping into your followers’ feed.
Put yourself out there. Encourage activity that will get other accounts talking about you, and make sure they’re tagging you and @mentioning you! In reality, this should already be happening in your business (think about events, collaborations, etc.) and it’s a matter of doing the due diligence to close the loop on social media coverage. If you are coming up short here, it might be time to think about running an influencer campaign.
Be present. Don’t go silent when it comes to engagement! Comment, like, share, follow others and be present in your social media community. This often draws a steady flow of new followers.
Use hashtags, tags, @mentions and locations. Be sure to add up to 30 hashtags to your Instagram posts so that you’re more discoverable from followers outside of your current community. Also, if you have any relevant tags in your photos, be sure to include them! Another thing to remember is to add a location to your post whenever it makes sense.
Finally, be real. Your uniqueness is what sets you apart, and ultimately if you look like all the other accounts, you won’t develop a strong following. In reality, this is the easy part!
