Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube have billions of active users. For businesses and brands, social media presents a major opportunity to connect with current and potential customers. However, simply creating social media accounts is not enough – you need an effective strategy to grow your following and engagement over time. Here are some key tactics to include in your social media growth campaigns.
Produce Valuable Content Consistently
The foundation of any good social media growth strategy is consistently publishing valuable, relevant content. This content should entertain or educate your target audience. Types of content to consider include:
- Blog articles and news covering topics related to your industry
- Infographics, photos, videos, and other visual content
- Polls, quizzes, and surveys to engage your audience
- User-generated content like customer photos and testimonials
- Behind-the-scenes footage showing your product development and team
Post frequently, such as once per day, so your audience knows what to expect. Maintaining a content calendar can help organize your content pipeline (Rouse, 2022).
Leverage Influencers and Brand Ambassadors
Influencer marketing is growing in importance. Influencers are people with an established social media following in your niche. Partnering with relevant influencers provides several benefits:
- Increases awareness of your brand amongst the influencer’s followers
- Provides social proof and credibility
- Taps into the influencer’s creativity for content
Likewise, identify real customers who love your brand to become brand ambassadors. They can organically mention your products on social media (Hootsuite, 2022).
Run Contests and Sweepstakes
Contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes incentivize social media users to follow your brand. They also encourage shares, likes, and comments – helping you expand your reach. Examples include:
- Photo contests asking users to post images related to your brand
- Caption contests where users come up with creative captions for your photos
- Quiz contests testing audience knowledge about your products
- Hashtag contests where users post with a custom hashtag
Offer prizes like your products, gift cards, or discounts. Tools like Rafflecopter make it easy to manage contest logistics (Rafflecopter, 2022).
Advertise Strategically
Social media advertising through platforms like Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Google Ads enables you to target specific demographics and optimize your spending. Consider these tips:
- Retarget people who have visited your website with ads
- Create lookalike audiences mirroring your current followers
- A/B test different audiences, placements and ad creatives
- Use video ads which tend to perform well on social
- Monitor performance and optimize based on data like CPC and CTR
Advertising and organic efforts work together to expand your reach (Sprout Social, 2022).
Engage With Your Audience
Social media is inherently social – it’s important to directly interact with your followers. Respond to comments, questions, and feedback. Share user-generated content. This engagement shows you care and helps foster brand loyalty.
Tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social make it easier to schedule, publish, and engage with social content across networks from one dashboard. Analytics help you identify your best-performing content (Hootsuite, 2022).
Track Performance and Optimize
Review social media performance regularly using built-in analytics from each platform. Key metrics to monitor include:
- Follower growth rate over time
- Engagement rate per post (likes, shares, comments)
- Click-through rate on links
- Website traffic from social channels
- Sales influenced by social platforms
Look for trends to identify your best content formats, posting schedule, target audiences and platforms. Double down on what works and reconsider what doesn’t (Sprout Social, 2022). Continually testing and optimizing your social strategy leads to ongoing growth.
Conclusion
With billions of active users, social media offers immense potential to connect with customers and grow your business. But achieving social media growth requires commitment to a comprehensive strategy. Consistently publishing valuable content, leveraging influencers, running contests, advertising strategically, engaging your audience, and optimizing based on data are impactful tactics. Put these into practice and you will see your social media followers and engagement steadily expand.
References
Hootsuite. (2022). 33 Tips to Create an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy in 2022. https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-marketing-strategy/
Rafflecopter. (2022). 10 Types of Social Media Contests to Boost Engagement. https://rafflecopter.com/blog/types-social-media-contests-boost-engagement
Rouse, M. (2022). content calendar. TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/content-calendar
Sprout Social. (2022). How to Create a Social Media Strategy (Free Template). https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-strategy/