Right now, the leading advertising methods are all designed around social media platforms. Major brands, small and medium companies, organizations, and other institutions use social media daily to reach their audiences.
Lead generations and sales have also been enhanced through social media platforms. It just makes good business sense to be where people are, right?
We are the point in history where if your brand is not on social media platforms, consumers do not trust you. What started as a fun way to pass the time and play games has evolved to be a significant leading medium to reach vast numbers of people. Social media platforms officially reinvented how we now connect with our prospective clients.
Creating a social media page is not difficult, and most companies can take care of it without outside assistance. Growing your reach, however, is a different ball-game.
Merely having 2000 Facebook fans and 400 followers on Twitter is not what we consider a social media success setup.
On the other hand, having thousands of followers and fans that never see or care about your posts is not the answer either.
The key to getting the social media strategy right is first to build a community that highly engages with your content. You want to publish material that your community feels compelled to share with their networks. This is how you create brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors as a well-kept secret, because they are ‘working’ for you behind the scenes. Establishing a strong social media presence won’t happen overnight; however, when it does, it will pay off big time. In this article, we will share how you can grow your content reach and gain more fans and followers.
Not all of these methods will apply to your brand, but generally, the following are proven ways to grow your content reach.
1. Launch Contents
Launching various contests can be an excellent way to get people to follow your social media profiles. It is a great way to engage people when a new product is coming out as well. Here are some examples of social media contents you can considering launching:
Comment to win – People can comment or answer a question. You can make it super easy to have them thinking.
*Caution – Do not ask people to share it. People do not enjoy that aspect. Simply ask for a comment. A better alternative is to ask them to tag one friend who would enjoy their product.
Trivia contents – People can fill in the blanks or answer a question. When people comment on posts, even if they do not share them, their friends can sometimes see that someone they know commented on a particular post. This creates soft virality.
Photo contests – Pick a theme and ask your fans and followers to send a photo. For example, pick the theme ‘Hawaiian Party’ and ask them to send you a picture of them having a Hawaiian party. The best picture wins. People are looking for an excuse to party. Help them out!
Tips to Run a Successful Content
Cross-channel promotion
Give away prizes related to your brand whenever possible
Do not ask your followers to share (this has proven to be a major put-off for people)
Know the platform you are working with
If you can allocate a small paid promo budget for the contest
Always follow up with everyone who entered by thanking them one-by-one or by making an announcement
If you get consent, publish a picture of the winner and the prize to establish credibility
2. Use Visual Content
Use high quality, high resolution, professional visual material. Invest in buying stock images and do not rely on free-to-use-for-all photos online. Visual consistently performs much better than naked content. Keep in mind that content that is accompanied with a quality visual generally will perform 95% better than content with no images.
3. Use Video Content
Video outperforms all other types of content. However, the best idea is to mix it up. Don’t rely on just video, but make sure you include video. There is a plethora of video ideas and user-friendly software to help you add video in your strategy.
Consider videos that engage your audience, such as:
How-to videos
Highlight your product benefits and advantages videos
Entertainment videos
Trivia videos
Customer story videos
Behind the scene videos
Achieving many views will engage the audience, help in your brand exposure, and grow your fan base.
Think about what you do as a user, not a company. Aren’t you more likely to share video content more than any other type of content?
4. Engage With Your Audience Through Comments
Many companies set their social media on autopilot using social media publishing platforms and then forget all about it. They keep doing this month after month.
It looks awful to a prospect who is checking your brand out if they visit your page and see that there is zero engagement.
It is even worse when they notice that people are trying to engage with you, and they are being ignored.
Each comment is an excellent opportunity to get a client. If you are focusing on growing your reach, it is imperative that whoever is in charge of the social media account is wholly engaged with the audience.
Simple hacks to jump-start interactions include:
Posting a question to your fans and followers to ask their opinion
Welcoming new members by tagging them at the end of each month
Involving your brand in the comments section where users are having a conversation
5. Update Your Cover and Profile Pictures Often
Every time you update your cover and your profile picture, your followers and fans are notified. To demonstrate that the brand is dynamic and is alive, consider changing your cover and profile pictures monthly. Consider using a video for your Facebook cover and not a static picture.
6. Don’t Publish Just for Publishing
Simply pushing out content just to fill in the ‘void’ is not the best strategy. Have a reason and a goal behind all your published content. Only by setting goals, you can measure your success.
The most common goals include:
Entertain, in which case you want a lot of likes and reactions
Educate, in which case you want to see people sharing your content
Generate leads, in which case you want people to communicate with your brand
Generate sales, in which case you want people to click ‘buy now.’
Get more page ‘likes,’ in which case you want to see your fan base grow
7. Use Tagging
Encourage your fans and followers to tag their friends by offering incentives such as discounts, etc.
If you are not sharing product-related posts, and you are focusing on more inspiration or trivia type of content, ask your fans to tag a friend who would enjoy the particular post.
As mentioned above, at the end of each month, make it your policy to create a general welcome post and tag all the new members of your community. At the time, if you want them to begin thinking about trying your product or service, you can tag them and give them a unique code they can use for their first purchase.
When it comes to tagging, do not go overboard. Use it a couple of times per month at most.
8. Humor Goes a Long Way
Generally, when brands have a sense of humor and humanity, they tend to perform very well on all social media platforms.
9. Include Smart Paid Social Campaigns
To make the most of your social media profiles, especially when you are in the process of growing your fan base, you need to consider allocating a budget for paid ads.
Social media platforms come with ‘smart’ targeting tools on the ad platforms. You can use these tools to target people that have already been introduced to your products or services. These people are considered ‘warm leads,’ and they have a higher chance of a conversion.
10. Do Not Buy Fake Fan or Follower Profiles
Although it is not as common as it has been in the past, many brands used to buy fake or ‘robot’ profiles to show a high number of followers. However, people are now in a position to identify this type of ‘fake’ marketing. For example, if a brand shows 1 million followers, yet each post has two ‘likes,’ it is a red flag.
Social media platforms have become all that wiser as well, making an effort to eliminate ‘robot’ profiles and sometimes even penalizing various brands for this behavior.
Once you begin the process to grow your content reach through these various social media stories, you will be able to identify what works best for your audience.
If you need help with your content strategy, contact us.