Key strategies for Social Media Growth

One of the most common questions I get in regards to online marketing is:

“What are the best strategies for Social Media Growth?”

If you’ve googled this question in the past few weeks, you’re far from alone. In this article, I’ll go over the main things you need to know in order to grow online.

First things first: Define your brand & Audience.

Growing with the world as your audience is easy. Anyone can get 1000 followers of random people around the world. What can be difficult is to reach the correct audience that will help your business grow alongside your follower list.

In order to do this, we need to start at the beginning of any marketing strategy: Who is your target audience, and what are they looking for from you?

We do this by creating a persona of your typical audience (often called “Buyer Persona” or “Ideal Customer Profile”, ICP). Check out my other blog for more details on how to do this.

Post Consistently and at Optimal Times

We often hear that consistency is key, but it doesn’t apply only to posting several times per week - but rather focusing on quality over quantity. Your content needs to align with your brand. This does not necessarily mean that you need to use your brand-colors, logos or other branding on each post, but rather that when you post a video or carousel post, keep in mind the audience persona you worked on in the first step. Create consistently high-quality content that aligns with what your audience is looking for. If doing this means you only have the capacity to post once a week, that is better than posting average or low-quality content 5 times per week.

Optimal times

The optimal times for posting on Instagram and Facebook will depend on when your audience is active, and each industry will have differing optimal times. Ideally, you’d look at the engagement times for your posts to determine when the best time is. If you’re just starting out, it could be good to use the “official” optimal times presented by the two platforms, which are:

Instagram:

Monday-Friday

7am-9am

11am-1pm

6pm-8pm

Facebook:

Wednesday, Thursday & Friday

9am-11am

1pm-3pm

Engagement Breeds Engagement

One of the best ways to invite your audience to engage with your content, and build a “loyal following” is to first engage with content yourself. Find accounts that match your business and your audience, and engage with the posts you see. Make comments and share relatable posts to your story and tag the original creator. This will make people more likely to then go into your account to engage with your content - and will help it get pushed up in the “recommended” algorithm feeds for people of similar interest. It’s important to note that this is not a “go viral quickly” recipe, but rather one that will allow your following to grow steadily with the engagement on your posts keeping up with the amount of followers you have.

Live Sessions can help with Social Media Growth

This is one of the best ways to engage with your followers - it allows your followers to have real-time interactions with you, and will make them feel that your brand is authentic and that they have a connection with your person. One key tip for when doing live sessions is to write out a loose agenda on what you’re looking to say during the session. That way, if you don’t get any questions or people engaging directly, you can still keep it going. Typically, people will try to do a Q&A, where they have a few pre-written questions that they answer, and then allow for follow-ups from their audience. Make sure your live is long enough that people will be able to join in as it goes on. 

I’d love to work with you to create a personalized brand-strategy that sets your business up for success. Fill out our contact form and let’s connect and grow your business online!