So, you created a new social media account for your brand. Congratulations! You’re on your way to promoting your products or services online while being discovered by new customers.
But where do you start? What type of content should you create? How do you get that content in front of more people? How do you begin to build a following for your page?
These are questions that you’ll likely be asking yourself at some point as you begin your journey into social media. So today, we’ll cover some general guidelines you can follow to start gaining a larger presence on social media.
Find Your "Why"
Before getting too carried away with your social media page, you must establish a game plan for your content and overall purpose for your social account.
This idea can be summarized with “Finding Your Why”. Why did we create a social media page? What am I trying to achieve with a presence on social media? Why would users be incentivized to follow our page? These types of questions will help you guide your content strategy and give you a blueprint of what content you create for your page.
For brands selling products and trying to drive e-commerce sales, you may want to focus on highlighting your product features or promoting a new sale. For nonprofits supporting a cause, you could focus on informative content aimed at educating people about current events that your organization is trying to help impact.
Finding your Why will give you a guideline for your social media strategy and help you stay on course to your end goal.
Follow Your Existing Audience
Once you know what purpose your content is serving, we need to start to cultivate a following to get traction with our posts. No one’s going to see your content if no one knows your page exists!
A great place to start is with customers who are already aware of you and your brand. Giving your current customers, members, or subscribers a follow will let them know about your presence on the platform and will likely return the favor! This gives you a great starting point as these users will be more engaged with your brand and interact with your posts.
Be Active
It’s important that you consistently post updates to your social accounts to keep your brand top of mind for your audience. The frequency of your posts will depend on the social platform, the type of information you’re posting about and how much time you can allocate to collecting and posting relevant content.
But as a rule of thumb if you are new to posting on social media in general, posting 3-5 times per month is a good starting point. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and better understand the level of effort needed to curate social content, you can define a social cadence that better fits your schedule and satisfies your audiences’ appetite for social content.
Be Engaged
Social media is all about connecting and engaging with people! So, your brand needs to be a part of the engagement – Answering questions, responding to reviews, and having conversations with your followers. When users see a brand being engaging and responding to customers, it incentivizes them to join the conversation. That added social engagement will then in turn promote your content to more people, which creates a cycle of engagement for your content.
Review the Numbers
Once you have a few months of content under your belt, it’s always a good idea to review the metrics and gauge what your performance looks like.
Which posts got the most engagement? Which posts got the most impressions? What type of content are users engaging with more? Using metrics to fill in these gaps helps you uncover what’s working, what’s not working, and what your future content should look like.
The "Quick Fix"
Building your social following organically takes a large amount of time, energy, and effort to get started. It’s a slow and steady process that happens over time, and it can take even longer for a brand-new company with no existing user base.
That being said, there is a quicker option to get page fans if you’re willing to put some ad dollars behind it. There is an Ad Campaign objective on Facebook and Instagram called ‘Page Likes’ which promotes your page to new users and encourages them to like and follow your page. This can pick up the pace of gaining new fans and followers and can be a valid option if you have the money to spend.
Final Thoughts
The key to building a social following is consistency. There isn’t a magic formula that will net you a highly engaged follower base overnight. But following the practices we covered today and creating a routine for your social pages will help you build a follower base that promotes and advocate for your brand.
Looking for help building a social media following for your business? Send us a message and lets talk about your project!
