By now the benefits for start-ups in developing a strong social media follower count is widely acknowledged. The number of people following your business on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram directly reflects the scope of your message and can be seen to be proportionate to the volume you convert. Although there is no one magic way in which you can go from 0 to 100k followers, there are some simple things that any start-up should keep in mind to help boost your followers. The following 5 points are basic steps of developing a social media strategy which requires a commitment over time to building, maintaining and establishing a strong social media presence.
- Share frequently and stay active – Don’t end up going weeks without a word, without sending a tweet or posting. Followers will look to you to provide consistency, to make sure that you are someone worth listening to. A committed, regular schedule of content distribution is critical in meeting the needs of your trusted audience. On Twitter, it is common sense to suggest that the more you Tweet, the more followers you will have. Additionally, a unique and constant voice can help with the positioning of your brand in social media channels
- Post informative content – Through the content that you deliver you should demonstrate yourself to be an expert in your area. 80% of social media users post only about themselves while 20% are the influential lot who create information-sharing-ready content for the world. It is important to show yourself as knowing what’s hot and what’s relevant to your audience. Offering valuable and educational content in your particular niche area will give people a good reason to follow you
- Follow like-minded people – Following key influencers will help align your business with other information-sharers and help you get noticed. Developing a dialogue with influential people in the same same sector and those people who will value your brand is therefore an important step. Don’t just think about how many followers you want but instead think about how to attract the right followers for your particular business. The key is getting the people with the right connections that will readily engage with your brand. It is important to absolutely know who you are targeting and keep this in mind when creating and developing content
- Entertain and have fun – That your content should be entertaining goes without saying. Coming across as positive and upbeat will naturally attract more people to follow you than negative, cynical or aggressive posts. Tweeting like Kanye West will probably be damaging to your grand total of followers! At the same time no-one wants to waste their time scrolling through endless boring posts and tweets. Providing humour to humanise your brand will give your business some personality, helping you fully engage with your audience. Simply repeating the same mundane posts over and over again or merely posting from secondary sources is simply giving existing followers a reason to unfollow you
- Be responsive and engage with people – Reacting quickly to followers is invaluable in building your following. Reciprocation is key in order to engage and build a dialogue with those people interested in your brand. Never pass up the opportunity to take part in discussions with your followers. Interacting with followers in real-time will simply attract more people from your target audience to come and join the discussion
