Social media is the best place to grow your brand’s following. With over 3.6 billion users worldwide, social sites connect you to global audiences and offer creative, dynamic ways to display your products and services.
Of course, being successful on social takes more than having a good product. You need to know your audience, harness your content marketing powers, and have a consistent, emotive message to keep your users engaged.
The reward for having a strong social media presence is increased brand power, customer retention, and more opportunities for sales.
Here are a few more reasons to commit to growing your social media presence:
- 54% of social media users use their platforms to research products
- The average person spends around 3 hours per day on social media
- 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social will recommend it to their friends
- 52% of all online brand discovery happens on social media
How to grow your social media presence
Establish a strategy for finding and speaking to your target audiences
Modern marketing is all about the consumer.
On social media, you are in the consumer realm. Although promoting your products and services is a no-brainer, you should also be paying close attention to what your consumers are doing, saying, and looking for.
Every social media account needs a distinct strategy to guide it and no strategy is complete without a deep understanding of your target audiences.
You may have already done some work creating your target audiences when building your initial brand guidelines. But, it’s important to remember that your social audiences stand apart from your general audiences. To fully understand the needs of your channels, you need to create social-specific target demographics.
Here are a few ways to determine detailed social media audiences:
- Take advantage of existing analytics such as your Google data or website analytics
- Create audience personas based on your collected data
- Dive into your Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter data
- Conduct regular audience surveys
- Monitor your social activity and track the ways your customers talk about your products or related products
It’s important to continue modifying your audiences over time. The more data you collect, the more refined these can be. Never stop optimizing!
None of this matters if you don’t tailor your messaging
Once you know who your audience is, you can start to modify your messaging to fit their needs.
For example, if you’re a Slack integration service focused on improving user productivity, your audience will be looking for content related to remote communication etiquette, or time management tips.
Focusing your social content on improving these pain points will help you forge better relationships with your audience.
Show up! Maintain a consistent flow of content
Consistency is key when growing your social media presence.
You need to have regular, interesting content flowing through your social system in order to stay relevant.
Consistency is important in:
- Your brand voice
- The quality of your content
- Your aesthetics
- The frequency of your posts
Having a cohesive, clear message across your social media channels will ensure that your brand is unique, recognizable, and reputable in the eyes of your consumers.
Always keep your brand values, mission, and vision in mind when managing your social presence.
Inconsistency can lead your audience to distrust your messaging or even your brand.
What’s worse, it can signal social media algorithms that your content isn’t to be trusted, resulting in loss of reach.
But how can you achieve consistency across all of these verticals?
- Lead with strategy: Having a robust social media strategy will give you a guide-map for your content. Your strategy should always start with your audience and prioritize cohesiveness across your brand.
- Create high-quality content: Every piece of content you create, from blog posts to Instagram photos, should say something positive and true about your brand. If you don’t have anything great to post, don’t post anything at all.
- Maintain frequency: It’s important to post regularly on any channel you are active on. Using a social scheduling service, such as Later, Hootsuite, or Sprout can help you plan your content in advance so you never miss a beat.
Give people a reason to follow you
Your social media channels should provide immediate value to consumers who stumble across them.
This can look like aesthetic content, inspirational or motivational posts, giveaways, contests, and more.
This also ties into your consistency. If you aren’t providing ongoing value, why would people stay engaged?
It’s crucial that you use every platform independently in order to stay relevant.
In a very basic sense, Twitter likes words, Facebook likes links, Instagram likes visual content, and LinkedIn likes all of the above.
Don’t post the same content across every channel. If you do, what incentive does your customer have to follow you across the web?
Likewise, recycled content shows your users you don’t care and that’s an easy way to lose your following.
Prioritize community management and outreach
Your social presence is an incredibly important part of your networking journey.
On social, you have the opportunity to communicate with your customers, your competitors, and your wider network in a distinctly human way.
Likewise, your followers are looking at your brand as an individual.
If they talk to you, talk back.
If they ask you questions, answer them.
Go beyond that and find new customers, new clients, and new brand alliances.
Remember, your social accounts are an extension of your brand values.
Use community management and outreach techniques to further communicate your vision and mission.
Responding to negative feedback is an important part of the customer service process. Take any negative responses as an opportunity to win back your customers.
Likewise, positive responses should be seen as a chance to build deeper relationships with your audience.
Adapt quickly to new social features
The social sphere is constantly changing. Updates to Facebook algorithms, Twitter topics, and increased tracking restrictions can impact the way you run your online business.
Likewise, features such as LinkedIn Stories, social selling, and e-commerce integrations offer new and exciting ways to connect with your audiences.
In order to stay relevant, you need to be ahead of all new trends and features.
To do this, monitor your audience and see what they are talking about. In-depth consumer research can be done through channels such as Quora or Reddit, where you can see exactly what your customers are talking about and what they want next.
Your ability to adapt to new social changes shows your customers that you care about their needs.
It also ensures your business stays known and relevant in an increasingly competitive digital environment.
Humanize your brand
Your consumers are no longer interested in corporate messaging.
They want to feel seen, heard, and prioritized by the brands they support.
They expect brands to have social competence and compassion for their customers.
More than anything, they want to feel they are being spoken to by other human beings.
Fostering human connection in your brand starts with understanding your customers. The more you listen and respond to their needs, the more your human side will shine.
Here are a few ways to humanize your social media messaging:
- Show the people behind your brand in staff features or as brand ambassadors
- Be outspoken on current events or social issues
- Post relatable or humourous content
- Personalize your community management-- don’t use stock responses
- Use your copywriting skills to showcase your brand’s personality
Most of all, think and act like a real person. Don’t just focus on sales, focus on growing your community. Go beyond simply products and services and think about how your brand impacts people’s lived experiences.
Stay active, stay relevant, stay online
Ultimately, growing your social media presence means understanding your audience’s needs and tailoring your messaging to meet them.
Along with that, you’ll need a strong social strategy and consistent, high-quality content to keep your audience engaged and excited about your brand.
Truth be told, you may not have the resources to do this on your own.
If you feel like you’ve tried everything and you still aren’t seeing the results you want, reach out to us. Our social media experts are ready to help you get the most of your social media marketing.
