Whether you have a business or are just a person with an active social media presence, it’s important to know how to grow your audience. While some people choose to focus on one platform (like Instagram), others prefer to spread their efforts across several different sites (like Facebook and Twitter).
- Know your target audience!
Once you know who your target audience is and why they should follow you instead of someone else, it will be much easier for you to interact and grow your social media audience. In this article we’ll show you a few tips how.
Social media isn’t an easy path to success. For every account that has millions of followers and tons of engagement, there are thousands of accounts that get little to no engagement despite the fact that they post regularly. And, if you have an account on any number of platforms, it can be hard to know where to start.
- You need a strategy that helps you stand out from the crowd and grow your audience one step at a time—and most importantly—your strategy needs to be something that makes sense for your business goals and budget constraints.
While we can’t guarantee you’ll have a million-plus followers by the end of this article, we can give you some solid tips that will help you grow your social media audience. While it’s possible to grow your social media audience overnight, most of us are looking at a long game here. You can’t expect immediate results. If you want to make real progress, the best course of action is to be patient and consistent.
- Posting regularly and consistently is key.
If you’re not posting on a regular basis (i.e., once or twice per week), then it will be much harder for people who aren’t already following you to discover your content. And while this might seem obvious—obviously if someone doesn’t see your posts when they come out, they can’t follow them! Once you’ve established some consistency with posting, now comes the tricky part:
- Being interesting and engaging enough that people want follow along with what you have to say everyday!
This means being authentic about who you are without coming off as “too much.” It also means knowing how much time each platform demands from its users—for example, Twitter followers don’t expect daily updates because tweets only go out once every few hours at best; however, Instagram followers can get antsy if they don’t see a post in half an hour or so because those photos disappear after 24 hours unless saved beforehand (which many people don’t do).
When it comes to growing your social media audience, the first step is figuring out why you want to do so in the first place. It’s a question that applies whether you’re trying to grow your audience from zero or from 10k (or more).
You need a goal or objective, but equally important is figuring out what type of account you want: personal? Business? Both? Know what makes sense for the purpose of your account and how much time and energy you want to put into it.
- Why am I sharing what I share on social media?
Let’s say my goal is “to get more followers.” That’s not really an objective—it doesn’t tell me anything about what kind of content I should be creating or how often I should post on various platforms. What if my goal was “to build an engaged community around my brand”? That tells me exactly what kind of content works best for building an engaged community around a brand—and that might even help inform what types of events or projects we choose to work on together!
To determine what kind of account you want, ask yourself these questions:
- What is the purpose of my account?
- Why am I sharing what I share?
- Who am I trying to reach?
Once you know who your target audience is and why they should follow you instead of someone else, it will be much easier for you to interact and grow your social media audience.
- Who are they?
- Why should I care?
Social media is a powerful tool and can be used to achieve many things. It may seem like a lot of work, but it’s worth it if you want to grow your audience and reach more people.
Still feeling unsure where to start? 1stPride Marketing is here to help!
About the Author: Daymon Capers
