As a brand, you have the opportunity to share news and insights about your company, develop an online community of people passionate about your brand, and interact with consumers on a more human and personal level than ever before.
Brands that want to connect with their audience may find it difficult to get started.
This article provides tips on building a social media following, with an emphasis on what brands are doing to succeed on social media platforms.
1. Choose the right social platform
Before anything else, you should understand that just because there is a social platform, it doesn’t mean you need to be on it.
To see if it makes sense for your business to be on a certain platform, you need to understand what the platform does, who uses it, and how they use it.
You cannot be confident that your target consumer is using every social media platform available.
This means that you should focus your branding efforts on the platforms that your target consumers are using. Having a strong presence on these platforms will be more effective than having a strong presence on platforms that your target consumers don’t use as much.
There is no denying that Facebook is still the top social media platform.
As it approaches 2.5 billion active users, its top priority is keeping users on the platform longer.
Facebook has launched a number of services over the past couple of years that allow users to do more without leaving for another site. This includes reigniting Facebook Groups, live video streaming services, building out a robust advertising platform (more on that later), and adding news publishers.
Your audience is likely using Facebook personally even though they don’t use it for work. They may use it as a mental escape during their workday.
YouTube
YouTube, at its core, is a platform where people go to consume content. The underlying assumption here is that social media platforms are only platforms where people go to interact with each other. But if we think about social media platforms as platforms that allow people to interact with each other and consume content, then YouTube is very much a social media platform.
This is an interesting fact: YouTube is the second largest search engine, only behind Google. With video content becoming increasingly popular, it’s no surprise that YouTube is also the second most-visited website, again only behind Google.
When you look beyond the surface of YouTube, you’ll find that there are hundreds of millions of people who are constantly uploading new content for others to enjoy. This is similar to what you’ll find on other social media platforms.
Approximately 400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and over 1 billion hours of video are watched on the site every day.
Think about your brand and ask yourself if you have any “how-to” information or tutorials that your customers might find useful. If you do, create a video and share it on YouTube!
When a user types in a question like “How to…” into the Google search bar, there is a strong chance that a YouTube video will be the top result.
The social media platform that was once only popular for posting filtered pictures has now become the third most trafficked platform in the world.
Instagram has launched shoppable tags, which allow brands to tag their products with links to their e-commerce pages. This allows users to make purchases directly on the platform.
Growth provides powerful insights for analyzing your audience, such as gender, language, and location demographics. Advanced search features allow you to target new followers based on your findings.
Scheduler automates the process of posting content to Instagram, making it easy to keep your account active.
You can improve your efficiency in posting by scheduling your posts in advance, including details such as size, location, tags, hashtags, and mentions. You can also upload Stories in bulk. However, you will need to edit the content before posting (i.e. filters, text, etc.); the tool is not for creating new content from scratch.
Growth pricing starts at $15 a month, and Scheduler starts at $7 a month. Both have limited free versions.
When Twitter was created in 2006, it gained a lot of popularity because it limited posts to 140 characters. It was the first social media platform to embrace being in real-time, which was a new idea at the time.
Twitter is a popular social media platform with 330 million active monthly users. It is known for its ability to provide users with up-to-date news and information in real-time.
In fact, a lot of people use Twitter as their primary source for getting the news.
However, Twitter is much more successful internationally, with 80% of users located outside of the United States. Additionally, Twitter supports 34 different languages.
Twitter’s international reach makes it a valuable platform for global brands, especially for big announcements or product launches.
Most people describe LinkedIn as “the social media for professionals” because 80% of marketers use it for professional purposes.
Talk about a B2B marketer’s dream.
You can use LinkedIn to connect with people in your target industries and market to them directly, or you can use it to recruit quality talent to hire at your company.
With LinkedIn’s new native video feature, users can either record live video or upload and publish a video to their newsfeed. To add a video to your post, simply click the video icon at the top of the page.
The LinkedIn platform has a built-in blog publishing platform that makes it easy to share your long-form content on your profile.
LinkedIn Groups are where professionals with similar interests come together. This is a great way to connect with people who work in the same industry or field, or share the same interests.
2. Analyze your competitors
You should analyze your competitors on social media on a regular basis.
What platforms are they active on? This could be referring to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It could also refer to online platforms, such as a website or blog. What kind of content are they sharing? This could be referring to the topics they discuss, the images they share, the videos they post, etc. How often are they sharing? This could be referring to how often they make a post, how often they update their website or blog, etc.
In order to create an effective social media strategy, you should first understand what your competitors are doing on social media. By understanding your competitor’s social media strategies and engagement, you will be able to create a roadmap of what you should be doing as well.
Most importantly, you will find opportunities to make your brand stand out to the target consumers you are competing for by analyzing your competition.
3. Complete your profilesÂ
It is time to get started on building your profiles now that you know where to do it.
Be accurate and up-to-date
Most social media platforms have an area where you can enter information about your business, including a profile picture and cover photo. Make sure this information is accurate and up to date on all platforms.
It’s confusing when a website and Facebook page have different addresses.
This general information helps add credibility and allows people to take action immediately if they want.
Building out profiles shouldn’t be siloed to just company pages
Each of your employees should have completed profiles on social media platforms so they can share company news, industry insights, etc. Having an employee advocacy program can significantly increase your reach.
It’s important to remember that your company and personal profiles are never really finished.
You should always be making changes that will improve the user experience and make your company look good.
4. Be consistent with your brand
This means that the overall tone of your social media presence should be in line with your established personality, values, and voice.
Your professional image should be consistent across all platforms. Your written bio, profile image, and cover photo should all match and reflect your professional brand.
It is important to maintain a consistent message across all of your social media platforms.
Your followers will be confused and deterred from your brand if you share mixed and contrasting messages. You need to connect with them on a meaningful level.
For example, if you are a law practice, do not appear to be fun and exciting in your bio if the content you are posting is not also reflective of a similar mindset or personality.
5. Incorporate Reels into your content mix
Reels are videos you can share with your followers on Instagram that are meant to be fun.
There are audio, effects, and creative tools available. You can share them on your feed and Explore to reach new audiences.
Reels are new territory for brands. But, we suggest the following tips to gain traction:
Keep content unique and trend drive
To make your Reels more likely to go viral, find trends on Instagram and TikTok and put your own spin on them. This will help you get in front of new people.
Make content relatable and simple
Not every video needs to be a big production. Lower quality videos can perform the same, if not better, than highly produced videos.
Educate your audience
Your Reels should be a balance between education and entertainment.
6. Cross promote content
Cross-promotion across social media channels means posting similar content on different platforms.
This is a tactic to save time and resources, as well as increase brand awareness and grow an audience on Instagram.
People are spending more time watching videos on their phones. This is especially true for videos on social media platforms.
You can improve the reach of your Instagram content by making it shorter or longer.
Justin Bieber’s holiday dance challenge is a great example of a successful social media strategy that involves content shared across platforms.
In comparison, the exact same video posted on Instagram only garnered 188,000 likes. The Canadian singer posted the same dance challenge on both TikTok and Instagram during the 2020 holiday season. His video short received 9.8 million likes on TikTok and 188,000 likes on Instagram.
Posting the same content on multiple platforms can help increase your reach. For example, a post on Instagram that received 4.8 million likes could potentially reach even more people if it was also posted on another site.
7. Work with brand ambassadors
If you don’t want to pay a lot of money to a celebrity to advertise your brand, you can work with brand ambassadors who have a few hundred to a few thousand followers.
An ambassador is someone who is a supporter and advocate of your brand and will tell others about it.
The luxury shoe retailer Sarah Flint reports that its brand ambassador program has been successful, with over 500 women participating.
Every ambassador has a distinct discount code which entitles them to a free pair of Sarah Flint shoes when five new customers have used it.
Holly Hollon is an ambassador for Sarah Flint, and she regularly posts about the brand on her Instagram. Her posts are authentic and relatable, which helps the brand to grow its following and earn sales.
8. Steal your competitors’ followers
You can find and attract a new following by engaging with the audiences of your closest competitors. These people have already shown some level of interest in the products you carry by following your competitors.
The most effective way to get your competitor’s followers is to engage with them. There are several ways to engage with Instagram users, and the more work you put in, the more followers and repeat engagement you’ll get out of it.
Let’s build a social media empire
Now that you know what tools to use and how to use them, you are probably feeling ready to build your social media empire.