12 Hacks to Get a Better Following on Social Media

Social Media has become an essential digital marketing channel for most businesses. However, far too often, people overlook the hard work and dedication behind strong profiles and stick to believe in the “overnight success” story. Unfortunately, social networks don’t work like that.

This post will reveal 12 hacks and strategies to grow a better following on social media.

1. Mention Influencers and High Profile Bloggers

Whenever you produce a piece of content that mentions other bloggers, websites or influencers, ensure to notify them via e-mail or private message. If they find your piece particularly valuable for their audience, it will get shared across their networks.

2. Make use of Scheduling Tools

There are plenty of tasks that have to be carried out prior to and during a social media campaign, which can be time-consuming. These include content research & creation, planning, execution, promotion, posting and so forth.

Reputable brands have dedicated social media teams who create and overlook all social activity. That said, small businesses have a way to manage the social workload. There are a number of cross-posting tools, such as Hootsuite and Buffer that allow scheduling posts across different social platforms, which ultimately, can save a lot of time.

3. Post relevant, engaging, quality and unique content

A bit too much to ask for, isn’t it? No. Similarly to content marketing & blogging, social media users only consume quality content that is relevant to their interest.

Hence, in order to develop an impressive social media following, the content you produce has to be original and of top-notch quality.

4. Consistency is the key to success

Like any other digital marketing channel, social media takes time to bring ROI. There is no real sense in posting for 2-3 weeks and then refusing to believe that it will ever work.

If your strategy is to develop a base of loyal subscribers and get noticed, you should consider posting consistently.

5. Want it shared? Make it easy to share!

One of the biggest mistakes that web owners make is not providing an easy way to share the content on the site. If you wish your web content to get discovered on the social arena, you should implement an option to share your posts easily.

If your site is running on WordPress, there are social sharing plugins like Monarch and Sumome that can help you with this task.

6. Don’t over-promote

The vast majority of social media users have built up an “immunity” against obvious self-promotions. Excessive self-promotions can put your brand’s reputation at risk.

Instead of sharing promotions and product deals, try to provide a stream of useful, engaging and original content.

7. Engage in conversations and answer questions

A good way to get noticed on social media is to join conversations, expressing your opinion and thoughts. Twitter is a great platform to do this, simply mention a person in a tweet.

Speaking of Twitter, a lot of customers engage with brands by asking questions on Twitter. Therefore, ensure that you are being proactive by responding to queries and questions, even if they are negative.

8. Hashtags are there for a reason

Hashtags make it easier for users to search for the content that is relevant to their interest. Several platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr support hashtags. Thus, there is almost no reason not to make use of them.

Moreover, hashtags can help your posts to pop-up on top of relevant feeds.

9. Follow Influencers in your field

A tool like Followerwonk allows searching for influencers on Twitter who have similar interest to yours. By scanning through their bios and feeds, you will see whether they share similar content to yours.

This strategy would allow you to get your foot closer to people who have a serious reputation and large following. Some of them may follow you back and/or share your update.

10. Don’t just share your own content

Sharing solely your own content would look something of a self-promotion.

If there is a quality piece of content produced by your competitors – share it! That’s not a crime nor a reputation damage. Your users appreciate the quality, and only quality, no matter where it comes from. In fact, there are several benefits to why you should share other people’s work.

11. Run Giveaways

Contests are a great way to reach a broad audience and encourage people to share and comment on your post. Giving away a couple of samples would not cost your businesses a fortune, but can be an effective strategy to get your product seen by thousands of people and gain more followers.

12. Guest Post & Contribute

Guest Posting can be powerful for many aspects of the business, such as content discovery, traffic, website authority, brand awareness and recognition.

If you happen to have the opportunity to guest blog for other sites, ensure to add social media links in your profile description snippet.

There are many more ways to improve your social following and build awareness. But, with these 12 tips, you will be able to build a solid foundation, which will get you going in the right direction.

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