Do you know you can grow your social media followers organically? Perhaps you are struggling with social media. You have been trying your best but you just cannot seem to gain followers or grow engagement. You have posted multiple times a day, participated in groups, bought followers, and more; but in the long run, you have not seen the results you have wanted. Social media marketing isn’t just about pushing out content and keeping the lights on. Your company must go above and beyond to showcase your brand in an authentic and engaging way. And while “engagement” is a word that’s constantly thrown around, many brands do not know how to achieve it organically especially in the face of algorithm changes that affect organic reach.
It’s no secret that paid advertising is taking over social media. Scroll for 60 seconds on any social media platform, and you’ll likely come across an ad. Paid advertising is what helps brands get on the map and make initial sales. That said, 68% of customers will drop off after the first sale. It’s 70% cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. That’s why organic growth won’t happen overnight. Change isn’t as simple as a post going viral it takes time. But when you use that time effectively, you can create some of the most loyal customers your B2B brand has ever seen.
Here are FIVE proven ways to effectively find, engage and grow your audience/followers organically on social media.
POST RELEVANT AND EXCITING CONTENT
One of the first rules for social media or any form of digital marketing is to provide the target audience with content that adds value to their lives. This could be in the form of educational content (like e-books, blog posts, how-to videos), entertaining content (amusing memes or GIFs, video stories or clips, behind the scenes), or shareable content (emotional videos, social or community awareness, anything that has viral potential).
Content must be impactful, in one way or another, for customers to take notice of it on social media and interact with it. This has a ripple effect that can lead to organic growth .A “positive experience” doesn’t necessarily have to be a direct interaction with a customer service rep or a 50% discounted bargain. It can also be watching a hilarious video, reading an article that made a strong impression, or seeing how a brand is supporting a local cause.
Start by following customer interactions on social media in the relevant niche, including competitors’ social media pages. What kind of content does the target audience get excited about? How can it address the customers’ pain points? Creating value-added content that sets a brand apart as an authority or friend is not an easy task, but it is vital to getting the shares and interactions that will lead to organic growth.
DESIGNATE CONTENT FOR EACH CHANNEL
Each social media channel has its own kind of messaging. Twitter is great for sharing real-time content quickly and getting news updates. But you wouldn’t necessarily share everything you’re tweeting on LinkedIn. Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow when deciding what to publish on which channels:
Twitter: Blog content, guest-contributed articles, industry news, stats, and updates, product and software launches, guides, company outings, and culture events.
Facebook: You can definitely share your blog content, guides, and special promos here, but people-focused content tends to do the best. Use Facebook to showcase your team and company culture, including special events and get-togethers.
LinkedIn: Given that this is a professional social media platform, stick to industry-related content here. You can get creative with infographics and images, but you’ll want to mostly share educational content, job postings, product promos, guides, and gated content.
Instagram: This platform is all about the visual. Post your most creative content here, and photos from around the office and your team members. Try getting creative by putting together images for your written content so you can share it on Instagram in a way that makes sense for the platform.
STAY CONSISTENT
You need to provide content. However, don’t publish daily at the expense of content quality. It’s more important to post very high-quality material a couple of times a week than it is to post semi-quality content daily. If you are really short on content – it’s OK to find a balance of the two. Just don’t make a habit of compromising quality for quantity if you want to grow your numbers. Social media platforms share what they think people want to see with more people.
Here is also why this matters:
There is evidence of social media accounts having “authority”. These are top content producers that can generate a significant amount of engagement and perform exceptionally well time and time again. These accounts have their content shown to more people than others. However, to get to this point, you need consistently good content that keeps performing well. By posting “so-so” content for the sake of simply posting. I have personally noticed that Facebook is a bit more forgiving on photo quality than Instagram. Twitter is the most forgiving of all three. By most “forgiving”, I simply mean that photos will perform well despite their quality.
BE ACTIVE & ENGAGED
Did you know that 83% of your Facebook fans, and 71% of your Twitter followers, now expect a response from you on the same day that they pose a question on each respective platform? In fact, 32% of Twitter users now expect a response within just 30 minutes. Give your followers a fantastic user experience on social by being exceptionally responsive. Listen to their needs, and respond accordingly.
Engaging with the audience, answers them in the comments section. Find relatable content & content which includes current affairs, share them with some political, social, economical changes. Social media users are tired of link feeds. Commenting on and sharing the posts of others quickly demonstrates that you’re not a bot, and that you are present on the network. Whenever possible, don’t just share someone else’s post, but add a remark as to why you’re sharing it, and tag the original poster. Keep on posting on social media frequently. Share some trendy content such as reels on Instagram. Play some informative games to your users. Try to engage with them.
When you make your online community feel heard and acknowledged, they’re more likely to become raving fans, and your most loyal social media ambassadors.
FOLLOW LEGITIMATE, RELEVANT ACCOUNTS
In some cases just doing this will get you followed back by some of these users, especially if your profile is completely filled out and your feed is full of valuable and relevant posts.
But more importantly, following good, active accounts in your business vertical will give you a base of people with whom to interact, which as we will see below has value in several different ways for follower growth.
Tools exist to help you find such accounts (for example: Follower wonk, Manage Flitter, and Audience, but they tend to be Twitter-centric, because that network has more open data than most others. But you can do your own hunting, and often that turns up the best people to follow anyway.
Some ways to hunt good accounts to follow:
Look at who influencers follow. The profiles of key influencers in my vertical are one of my favorite places to mine followers. Do this only if they have a positive follow-to-following ratio; that is, they are followed by many but only follow relatively few. That way you know they are selective about whom they follow, and the people they follow are more likely to be high quality.
Check out Twitter lists. On Twitter, check to see if key people you are following has any public lists. A Twitter list is a curated group of Twitter users. If you find a good list, you can subscribe to it (in which case you’ll get tweets from people in the list in your feed without following them), or follow people from the list.
Groups and communities. Join groups and communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networks that have them, and watch for those who consistently make valuable contributions. Follow them, and they will probably lead you to other good people to follow.
CONCLUSION
The secret to organic social media reach is the same as the secret to ranking well on search engines. It’s all about optimization, user experience, and high-quality content. If you start thinking about your social media efforts in the same way you think about your SEO work, you’ll see the pieces fall into place.
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