how to organically grow your social media following
Writing social media posts and publishing them is one thing… but growing your social media accounts with targeted followers is another! Although writing great content that resonates with your audience absolutely leads to building your community, it’s not the only thing that should be considered. The idea “build it and they will come” is no longer relevant--meaning, you can create fantastic content, but if you’re not going out and actively engaging with your audience, your following isn’t going to grow in the way that you want it to.
Social media is meant to be social after all, so let’s make it that way! Follow these tips for organically and authentically growing your following on Facebook and Instagram.
INVITE RELEVANT FRIENDS TO LIKE YOUR PAGE
One of Facebook’s awesome features is being able to invite relevant Facebook friends to like your business page so that they can follow along with your content from there. Note that we included the keyword “relevant,” though. Your Facebook friends list most likely consists of family members and friends, and chances are your family members and friends aren’t your target market. Although it feels great to have your aunt comment on your posts and your mom share your posts, that doesn’t exactly mean that you’re going to be reaching the right group of people.
Instead of inviting anyone and everyone to like the page, scroll through your list and ask yourself who would fall under your ideal client or customer persona. If they fit the bill, send them an invite to like the page.
ENGAGE IN FACEBOOK GROUPS
If you’re one of the lucky individuals who has access to the feature that Facebook is still rolling out of letting business pages join Facebook groups rather than join as a personal account, use it! When you join a Facebook group as your business page, you have the opportunity to like and comment on posts as your page and post in the group as your page.
A huge benefit of this is members will see your page as you’re interacting and most likely click through to learn more about your business--which will certainly lead to a few new page likes. When you post in a group as your business page, you can actually invite every person who likes your post to then like your page, allowing you to dramatically increase your page likes with individuals who are truly interested in your content.
COLLABORATE WITH LIKE-MINDED PROFESSIONALS
Do you know someone who shares the same target market as you? Find a way that you both can collaborate on Facebook, tap into each other’s audiences, and grow your pages simultaneously. A prime example of this is hosting a joint Facebook Live / webinar. Not only will their audience attend the webinar, allowing you to get seen in front of them, but it’ll also happen with your current audience.
When both of you present on a great topic that provides a lot of value, these viewers will become interested in you and what you have to offer, therefore hopping over to your business page to learn more. Through these collaborations, you’re building the know / like / trust factor with the viewers--and people do business with people that they know / like / trust.
ENGAGE WITH YOUR IDEAL CLIENTS OR CUSTOMERS
Engaging… the one thing that everyone knows that they need to do but don’t know how to do (or want to do!). And you may be wondering… what do you mean by “engaging?”
Engaging stands for any type of interaction with another user. When you find an account who seems like a total dream client or customer to you, the best approach to take with engaging involves liking their 3-5 most recent Instagram posts and leaving a meaningful comment on one of those posts. Following them and replying to the Instagram stories they post helps a lot, too. The key here is making sure that you’re not just liking their posts but rather igniting a conversation that will make them want to follow you back and browse through your content.
Although it’s best to spend at least 30 minutes per day engaging with your target market, those 30 minutes certainly don’t need to be spent all at once. You can engage for a few minutes while you’re in the passenger seat of the car, doing cardio at the gym, getting through commercial breaks during your favorite TV show, etc. The most important thing is that these minutes add up, so the more time you’re able to dedicate to engaging, the better off you’ll be!
You can find your ideal clients and customers in two major ways:
Looking at who follows your competitors
Browsing through relevant hashtag sets and seeing who posts to those feeds
Through these methods, you’ll be able to identify loads of accounts to interact and start building relationships with.
USE THE RIGHT HASHTAGS
The hashtags you use play a big role in who sees your content and engages with it. By not using hashtags, you’re limiting the visibility of your posts to only your immediate followers. However, by using hashtags, you have the opportunity to get your posts seen by hundreds, thousands, and even millions of users.
How do you find the right hashtags, though? It’s a little bit of a “plug and chug” game--testing different hashtags and analyzing which ones give you the best results. You can find the right hashtags through the following strategies:
Looking at the hashtags that your competitors use
Typing in different hashtag suggestions in Instagram’s search feature and selecting one of their autofill suggestions
Using the hashtags that you brainstorm that align with your content
Don’t be afraid to try many different hashtag combinations to see which ones work the best for you.
DIVE INTO INSTAGRAM STORIES AND REELS
Instagram Stories and Reels are easily two of the best features of Instagram. Stories are great for being able to show more of the “behind-the-scenes” of your business and who you are. Whether you give a peek into how you work with your clients, demonstrate how your products are made, talk about what you like to do on the weekend or outside of work, this is a great way to build a relationship with your audience through that know / like / trust factor because they’re getting to know you as a person and not just a business owner. Plus, Instagram stories make it super easy to have 1:1, valuable conversations.
Instagram Reels, on the other hand, are awesome for creating relatable, humorous, valuable content. The ultimate goal with any Reel that you create is to make your audience agree with what you have to say, laugh at what you have to say, or feel like they learned something by watching your Reel. All of these components lead to the shareability factor of your Reel. Ideally, you want to make your Reels shareable so that people feel compared to share it to their stories or with friends after watching it, therefore increasing the amount of people who are seeing your content as well as the number of accounts who are following you.
Although it may take some time to put in these tips to grow your social media accounts, your efforts will end up paying off, and you’ll find yourself with a community who absolutely loves what you have to say. After all, what’s the point of publishing great content if you’re not actively finding ways to get it seen in front of the people who could really benefit from consuming it most?
put it into action:
Share in the slack group one thing from above that you’re going to try out this week!