Let’s get philosophical for a second: If a tree falls in the forest, but no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? By the same logic… if you’re creating great content but no one’s reading it, was it worth creating at all?
You need the right people to find, read, and engage with your content for your efforts to pay off. Your follower count is much more than just a vanity metric – without the right followers, you simply can’t spread your message. That’s why we’ve put together a quick guide to increasing your following with the right kind of audience on the five major online platforms.Follow these steps to save your content from obscurity:
1. Twitter
- Follow brands, groups, events, individuals and forums who attract a large following amongst your target audience. Following these accounts often results in them following you back. A follow-back will make you more visible to their audience, so that their followers also become your followers! Just avoid following direct competitors.
- Tag (@) accounts in posts that are relevant to your target audience and product/service. For example, if you attend a sponsored event, tag the sponsor in your post about the event, or tag the speaker in your post about their presentation. This, together with reposting, improves your visibility to their followers, who again, might just become your followers.
- Respond to questions and post comments on accounts that already attract your target audience. When you interact with an account in a well-written and intelligent way, their followers will see it, benefit from it, and probably choose to follow you.
- Drive people to interact with you on Twitter by including your Twitter handle on the last slide of presentations, and giving it out when you participate in interviews, publish guest articles, etc. Wherever you go, your handle goes.
2. Instagram
- Follow Instagram accounts that attract a large audience resembling your business’ target audience. Following accounts can result in them following you back. Following also gives you an opportunity to like and comment on posts that come up in your feed, further increasing your visibility to an account’s followers.
- Create feature posts of clients, business partners, consultants and employees who have a large following of the same target audience. By tagging them, they’ll see your post, and usually like or comment on it. This makes you visible to their audience, too.
- Create feature posts of products, services or technology that your business uses, and that your target audience might be interested in. Tag (@) these brands to increase exposure of your own brand amongst the right people.
- Instagram allows users to follow a hashtag (#). So make frequent use of the hashtags that are most popular amongst your target audience. This will make your brand show up more often in searches and attract more followers. If you’re a local service business, tagging your area or city can also attract a local following.
3. LinkedIn
- Drive your existing audience and contacts to your LinkedIn page by adding a follow button to your website, email signature, and other social media accounts. Similarly, add your LinkedIn URL to business cards and other stationery.
- Participate in LinkedIn groups or start your own LinkedIn group. LinkedIn provides access to groups that are created by people respected in their industry. These forums can be broad or highly specialised, but should always add value to the relevant professional communities. By providing a valuable forum with quality online content through a LinkedIn group, you add credibility to your brand and become more visible to potential followers.
- Use “Follower Ads”. These ads appear throughout LinkedIn and can be targeted to members in specific industries, companies, and regions. When a member follows your page, their network is notified, which makes you visible to all their contacts.
4. Facebook
- As with Twitter and Instagram, start by befriending businesses and people with a similar target audience (while avoiding competitors).
- Update your email signature and company website to include a link to your Facebook Business page. Place your Facebook link in a prominent location so it’s hard to miss.
- Organize a competition through your Facebook page. Make following your page a condition for entering. Choose prizes that your potential followers would find attractive and promote the contest on all your channels.
- Use the Facebook Advertising features to create an ad that draws attention to your page. You can determine demographics, such as gender, age, etc. You can also set whether the advert should display to your current followers, or only friends of your followers to increase your reach.
You wouldn’t want to advertise blogs and social media accounts that you’re not proud of. The first step to growing an engaged online following is creating content that they’ll value and share. Need some help creating high quality online content? BEAN content has you covered.
