There are two things that happen when you incorporate social media into your marketing strategy. The first is that you try to get as many followers as possible. The second is that the followers you get do not have a vested interest in your brand.
Why get 100 new followers when 97 of them aren’t the right followers? If you want to grow your business and drive actual sales, you should prioritise attracting the 'right' followers for you and your business.
Followers and Engagement
It's hard to ignore the follower count when it's so prominent on your social media pages. And, while the natural instinct is that the larger the number the better, that's not always the case.
In the early days of social media, users were much more active, but the concept of ‘following’ has changed. The reality is that these days, only a small number of your followers will be engaged and active.
While it would be nice to create a Facebook or Instagram page and attract people interested in your products or services right away, it doesn't usually work that way.
Below, we explore some practical and effective ways you can grow you social followings - and more importantly, the right kind of following.
Monitor the Competition
At its best, social media builds customer advocacy, drives traffic, and converts sales. And one way to ensure that this actually happens to you is by tapping into a follower base that is already established. The followers of your competitors.
Leading companies succeed because they are good networkers. They take advantage of the fact that the followers of their competitors are also their target audience. So, on Instagram you can use hashtags to find conversations that are taking place with potential customers and swoop in at an opportune time. On Facebook, engage in group conversations and pitch your products or service - particularly when someone is chasing a recommendation.
Create and join groups or forums
By creating or joining a group relevant to your market, you can participate in discussions.
You can also provide helpful advice to members.
But, the main reason is to get to the right followers. By ensuring that you are sharing valuable insights, you gain credibility. This will get your name out there and attract potential customers to your own social pages.
Run polls and surveys
Most social audiences are very vocal and happy to provide their opinion when they see an opportunity.
Conducting polls and surveys is a great way for you to get a better understanding of your potential customers motivation and show that you are genuinely interested in their opinions. By finding ways to give others a voice, you will gain more followers.
Use hashtags
Hashtags make it easy for potential customers to find you based on their areas of interest - and they are heavily used on both Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.
Do some research into the hashtags that best represent what you offer. If you are using unrelated hashtags, you run the risk of attracting those unengaged followers and missing out on those genuinely interested in what you're selling.
Instagram puts a 30 hashtag cap on each post, but if you have 30 genuine hashtags you want to use, go for it. The more (relevant) hashtags you use, the higher the chance you have of being discovered by the 'right' followers.
Choose the right social platforms
Often, the instinct is to get on as many social platforms as possible. If you have team of to run your socials for you, this might be ok, but the reality is managing multiple channels takes a lot of time if you want to do it well.
Think about who your target customer is, which channels they are most likely to be spending their time on and focus your energies there.
Executing really well on 2 or 3 platforms will lead to much better results than trying to spread your time and energy over too many platforms.
Turning social media users into customers
It is important to understand that users in different social networks often have different reasons for being there.
That’s why sometimes followers won’t be compelled to buy on Pinterest but will on Facebook.
There is no one rule for all when it comes to driving sales, so keep an eye on your social insights and track results so you can decide what social content works best on which social platform.
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