Social Media has become a global phenomenon which has made
millions and millions of people worldwide to be engrossed in its use, but for a
social media page to be a booming success especially in the world of
entrepreneurship; one has to exhaust all the efforts to attract loyal
followers. Here are some of the most valuable recommendations on how to make
this possible:
- Market
Yourself
Obviously, the very first thing to do is to encourage and
persuade people to follow you and what best way to do this is simply to
"ask them to follow you". This could be effectively done by making
your page available in social media pages so social media aficionados will no
longer take too much time to look for your profile. This can be done in ways
such as:
· Provide the links in your profile that will lead directly
to your website's homepage.
· Express your sincere intent to connect with your
subscribers in social media by sending them relevant emails.
· Integrate your social media profile links with your email
signature.
· When you distribute business card, make sure that you
incorporate the social media profile usernames
- Appropriate
Setting up of Profiles
It is important to mull over about a lot of things when you
are initially setting up your profiles for the purpose of increasing the number
of social media followers; here are some important details to consider:
· THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES TO BE USED. People are
currently on the craze of joining the bandwagon and try to be in almost all
social networking sites because they want to generate a huge number of online
followers. This is not actually advised because monitoring and maintaining the
number of followers would be quite daunting. CHOOSE FEW BUT POWERFUL SOCIAL
MEDIA SITES that is more suitable for your business. Some of the most dominant
sites are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram; whichever ever way you
want to promote your brand, there are appropriate social media sites to be of
use.
· ESTABLISH YOUR PROFILE NAME. When you use different
profile names for each of the social media sites you are into, it would be
difficult to gather followers because they would be confused. Even if people would
like to follow your profile in other social media platforms, they will
eventually give up if your profile is very difficult to find.
· USE ONE UNIQUE AVATAR. The avatar you use in your profile
is what defines your page and sets you apart from the others. They will be part
of your identity and it is strongly advised that you use the one avatar for
each of your profile on the different social media platforms. Since the avatar
is your identity, DO NOT LEAVE THE AVATAR EMPTY.
· PROVIDE A DETAILED BUT CONCISE DESCRIPTION. Provide people
with what you want to convey about your business. Express in detail what your
business can do for them and why they should follow your page, this way they
will be compelled to click your website link and learn more about your brand
and what benefits you will be able to offer them.
- Social
Media Page Automation
Fact is, social media is not at all totally automated, and
you really have to log in every time you want to make new posts or upload files
and photos. But, there are fail-safe ways to automate your social media page;
one can make use of a service like HOOTSUITE to have a scheduled
posting of images, text posts and links based on your preferred date and time.
WordPress plugins may also be installed so that it could automatically send
blog post links.
Automation greatly helps in establishing a powerful social
media presence because through automated posts makes your brand reach more
people even when you are not logged in 24/7. But make sure that you also have
time to log in and share some of the posts and content from other people in the
social media sites who also share your posts. Take time for some online
conversations as well.
- Follower
Engagement.
Personal presence on social media sites does not really have
to be done by the business owner, but having a team to do the posting and
communicate with the followers would be more effective in generating more
social media followers. People get more interested when there are real live
people they can converse with rather than just generated automated messages
appearing regularly on their pages. This is basically why they call it social
media because people should socialise with real people. Remember that in the
business world, you do not just sell your brand; you also sell yourself and
your company. Adding personal touch to engage with the potential clients is far
more effective than 100% automation. It is very important to customers that if
they have some queries or complaints, there are real people they can communicate
with. Customers would feel that they are valued by your business, when they
receive acknowledgements for their comments by giving them credit through you
page or by posting a personalised blog about them. Make them feel your genuine
presence and people to will be interested to follow your site.
- Acknowledge
Other People's Content by Sharing and Liking them
Spend at least 15 minutes or a little more to read other
people's posts and comment or like the valuable and relevant social media
content they post because this can encourage follower engagement and eventually
generate more followers due to the following reasons:
· People always prefer a symbiotic relationship; when they
feel and know that you took time to comment and share their posts, it means
that you spent some time for them. When this happens, most likely they would
return the favour and share your content with their own audiences, making your
brand reach more people.
· People and followers of those posts that you shared and
commented to will be able to see your name on their pages regularly and when
people constantly see you, they would most likely follow your page in the
coming days.
· Sharing and liking other people's content will keep you
abreast about what's new and what are the latest trends in the industry that
you are into. It could help you innovate and develop better posts that could
really encourage more people to follow your social media profile.
- Cite
Other Companies
If you want your business or brand to be more noticed in
social media sites, appropriately link to other company's profile when you
mention them on your posts. And in turn these companies that you have made
mention of and linked to will even share the comments to their own sites making
you more exposed to their own audiences; this will then escalate the number of
you followers dramatically. This works the same way when people reciprocate to
your acknowledgements, companies do too.
- Producing
Relevant Content on a Regular Basis
People will be more interested to follow your page and share
your posts when you have valuable and relevant content posted regularly. It's
better to formulate a regular posting scheme with highly-optimised content. One
of the best ways for people to remain in the minds of your followers is through
constant presence through regular continuous content posting. People should see
regular activities in your page otherwise they would lose interest in following
you. The things you choose to post on your site would make a significant
difference; make sure that when you post some advice, your followers would get
what they have signed up for and make sure that all your posts would boost your
brand or your business. Unrelated posts would not be too useful and it will
only cause your followers to lose interest and would not promote your page
anymore. Boost your business with an exceptionally powerful content.
- Pay
for Exposure
Having more exposure in social media by increasing the
number of likes would be great for your business, but sometimes you would need
to spend a little more to boost it a little more to broaden your horizons and
widen your reach. The more people see your page, the more possibilities of
having more followers and having more followers would lead to more sales and
ultimately more gains. Paying to place ads will also further boost up your
business and there is a plethora of opportunities to get your ads posted on
pages you never knew that has ever existed.
- Separate the Personal from the
Professional Entity
We have mentioned to give your page a personal touch, but
this is an entirely different thing. You shouldn't get too personal and put in
too much of your personal views, preferences and opinions; because this would
sometimes vex or bore your potential customers and even you existing clients;
and personal posts should be done on a separate social media account. Adhere to
the topics that pertain to your business because this is what people follow you
for.
- Perform some Analytics to Measure your
Success in Social Media
Every business has to track the effectiveness of their
marketing campaigns even in social media. Measuring the success or downfall of
the social media marketing strategy will be useful in developing new tactics
for increasing the number of followers, although it doesn't just have to depend
on the quantity but of the quality of the followers; it would be much better if
there are well-targeted audience. The people who decide to follow your page
will make a good addition to your email marketing list because they
have initially shown interest in you brand or business. Monitor and track how
many of these followers have actually visited your website through the links
you have integrated in your posts; this is more valuable in determining the
success of your social media campaigns.
- Evoke Emotions
We sometime need to involve emotions particularly a stroke
of a little humour; your posts would be more interesting when a dash of humour
is incorporated and it will encourage more followers to share your content
thereby making your profile available for more potential followers.
- Know what your Audience Wants and What
they are interested in
Do not just post what you think people would want to see and
read because most of the time the things you think about may not be interesting
to most people. Look into some analytics and try to search for things that most
social media aficionados are interested in. Take a look at what's been trending
and what types of posts get the most comments, shares or likes. Try to generate
contents of the same type, but also take into consideration what your business
is all about.
- Post Blogs on Popular Sites with the
same or related niche as your business
Contributing relevant and highly-optimised blog posts on
popular niche sites and connecting them or linking them on your social media
network profile will get more people interested to follow your page because it
sends them a clear message that you do not just sell your brand, but you can
share valuable information to all your followers. Having popular sites have
your content posted on their site would establish business and brand
credibility. More people clicking through the links in your blog post would
mean more followers and this would really be good to your business as you are
getting more people interested in your brand.
- Generate network-specific landing pages
Creating a landing page on your business site for people who
visit your social media page and linking the pages to your other social; media
bios would be one of the best steps making more people aware about your brand.
Although it would generate only marginal number of followers, it would help in
driving more traffic on your business website and would definitely augment
conversions.
- Entice people with incentives
One of the best ways to attract the attention of most web
visitors is by offering them with incentives if they follow your social media
profile, like and share your posts. People are in the craze of what discounts,
freebies and coupons they could get when they follow your page. This is a sure fire
way to encourage more people to follow you, but don't make the offers ‘scammy’
and be true to all your offers. Make claiming of these incentives and offers
easy otherwise people would lose interest and they would think that the offer
is only a scam to get them to follow your page.
There are probably a hundred more ways to increase the
number of followers for a business' social media page, but these are the proven
effective ways that have been used by most successful businesses all over the
world. Social media platforms are truly very popular venues to establish brand
credibility and presence; and the dramatic increase in the number of reach
would open up a pool of possibilities for sale and thereby revving up the
business' revenue.
By Christina Tan - Article Source: EzineArticles.com/9009935
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