Regardless of whether you’re building a personal profile or a business profile, social media accounts aren’t designed to work in isolation. The clue is in the name, after all. Social media is social; it’s driven by the desire – and need – to connect, to learn, to educate, to inspire… but an account can’t achieve this without having a following.
Organic vs Paid Social
You can grow your social media following in one of two distinct ways. Paid social is the obvious solution, with most platforms offering promotional services in exchange for a fee.
These packages guarantee visibility across the site, expanding reach and boosting follower numbers. However, these paid opportunities don’t come cheap, and right now
especially, neither entrepreneurs nor brands are keen to be spending in a vulnerable economy with an uncertain future. Even prior to the pandemic, it had been reported by Gartner that marketing budgets were beginning to show signs of dropping slightly.
The more cost effective option is organic growth, but this does require greater effort. And that’s true now more than ever. The Digital Around the World report by HootSuite and We are Social published in April 2020 shows that Facebook’s organic reach is 5.2%.
It’s not a fantastically optimistic figure. However, organic growth is vital for those working to a strict budget. It’s not always easy… but with these 5 simple tips, it is possible to grow your social media following organically, without resorting to paid solutions.
1. Engage in Cross Channel Promotion
The first thing that’s important to remember is that it will be impossible to grow your following if your audience doesn’t know that you’re there. It’s as simple as that. Boosting visibility and awareness is the first step to growing your follower base, and to do this it’s necessary to branch out beyond the confines of the social platform itself. For example, you may already have good traffic to your website, so consider promoting your social profile here and redirecting these existing audiences to your social space.
2. Get involved in the Community
Despite the importance of cross channel promotion, you can’t afford to overlook the role of promotion across the platform itself. This can improve visibility of your profile directly with those who use the same social media channels as yourself. Some, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, offer on-site communities where you can get involved, and raise your profile amongst relevant groups. LinkedIn’s ‘Groups’, for example, defines itself as ‘a place for professionals in the same industry to share their insights and experiences’.
3. Be Consistent
If you’ve been seeing success with website traffic, but not with social media following rates, consider whether there could be a disconnect between the message that you’re presenting across the two. Social media users naturally look for familiarity; they look to connect with accounts that they have some form of prior relationship with. By tailoring your social media profile to portray the same sort of branding – and communicate the same sort of message – as your other online presences, you can see followers grow.
4. Research & Optimise
The ‘spray and pray’ approach was once a common social media tactic. However, with more content being published than ever before, news feeds are becoming increasingly competitive. Rather than trying to flood the news feed and hope one post ‘sticks’, it can be more beneficial from an organic growth perspective to instead research preferences and optimise the approach to publish fewer yet more highly targeted posts. After all, the best way to gain followers is simply to be follow-worthy.
5. Tap Into Existing Audience Pools
Looking to your competitors – or those sharing a similar message to you – is a great way to grow your social media following organically. These accounts will hold a pre-established pool of followers who may be looking to absorb content from similar profiles. Sharing content created by these accounts – ensuring appropriate tagging – gets you in front of these eyes, giving users an opportunity to check you out and start following your account. It’s a long game, but it can generate impressive results.
The Benefits of Organic Growth
Paid social works. But it’s a short-term fix; it’s a plaster on a wound. Organic growth is more challenging, it’s more time consuming, and it requires more effort, but it provides the foundations you need for long term success. Growing your social media following organically enables you to interact with your followers, learn about them, and generate long lasting loyalty; all aspects that you don’t get when going down the paid route.
Organic growth can be a tricky area to navigate, but these 5 tips can make it easier to adopt the right approaches and draw high value followers in through improved promotion, targeted content, and boosting awareness and visibility of your profile.
