If you’re thinking about building up your audience on social media, this guide is your sign to do just that!
Social media gives you the opportunity to show off your industry knowledge, optimize your brand, and give prospects a reason to do business with you.
With these benefits, do yourself a favor and don’t put off working on your social media presence any longer!
To help you on your journey, we put together the ultimate guide to drive likes, views, follows, and more business.
First Things First: Be Yourself
If you’re looking to build up your social base, the last thing you want to do is copy the style and voice of your favorite influencers.
Your audience will pick up on the imitation, you’ll come across as phony, and they will leave en masse because there’s nothing worse than being a generic copy of someone else.
Your mom always told you that there’s no one in the world just like you, and that sentiment is absolutely true when it comes to social media.
So with everything you do online (from posts to engagement) be true to yourself because people follow people.
Who Should You Write To?
We have a saying at Seamless: Pick a niche and get rich.
This means that if you want to sell like crazy, instead of putting out generic pitches and trying to catch everyone’s attention, pick a specific industry and a specific persona with pain points and goals that you can tailor your messaging to.
The more narrow you can make your niche, the more irresistible your marketing will be for your prospects.
An example of picking a niche on social media would be targeting salespeople at startup SaaS companies (perfectly niched down), instead of trying to attract all salespeople (way too broad).
So as you’re working on your online presence, take the time to draw out an outline of your ideal follower:
- What industry do they work in?
- What is their position?
- What’s their experience level?
- What keeps them up at night?
- In the long run, what’s the one thing they want the most out of life?
Once you figure out what your ideal follower is like, create content geared towards the biggest pains and dreams of that persona.
What Content Should You Write on Social Media?
Everybody wants to have a huge following social media; however, what holds most people back is they have no idea where to begin and what to write about, so they never get started.
One of the biggest ways you can make content production easier is by following the advice in the previous section and picking a niche to target.
Once you do your research on your niche, you’ll know their biggest pains and dreams and automatically have countless topics to write about.
After you've sketched out some of the different topics you want to tackle (and the different niche obstacles and goals) carve out objectives for yourself.
Set goals as far as the growth you want for your page:
- How often should you post? Think about a posting frequency that would be competitive and drive engagement. Typically, bigger pages on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. post every day.
- How many likes are you aiming for with each post?
- How many follows do you want to earn every day?
- How many comments are you shooting for with each post?
It’s important to have these goals in place because they will give you a sense of direction. Without goals, you’re just going to post random content that’s hit-or-miss.
So figure out these goals and stick to them. If you continuously work on your goals, it won’t be long before you start building up a significant audience.
Although everything you post should be value-driven and helpful to your niche, don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach with every platform. In other words, make a point to adjust things like tone and format to the platform.
So for LinkedIn, showcase your knowledge. Draft long-form content that’s jam-packed with strategies and tips people in your industry can leverage to optimize their efforts.
Facebook is a great space for showcasing client success stories.
And use Twitter to show how well-versed you are on the current state of your profession by discussing the latest industry-related news.
Related: What is the 'unhinged' trend for social media and why are brand using it
How to Boost Social Media Engagement
One of the greatest misconceptions about building an online presence is that it’s all about the number of followers you have.
But if you have a following of over 10,000 followers, and on average, your posts only get 20 likes or 5 comments (yes this is a very real scenario that you see often on social media), then that’s a problem.
Followers alone don’t mean you’re a hit on social media.
Here are some tips for boosting engagement:
Pay attention to the data!
- The only way to fully optimize your content is to constantly look at the data (the likes, the follows, the shares, the views, etc.)
- Become obsessed with the data because it will show you what your followers like and what they don’t like
- Pay attention to your high-performing posts and replicate
- If you notice that casual, to-the-point posts that bluntly present strategy perform better than your more thoughtful posts, keep replicating the casual posts
Focus on optimizing the prime real estate of the post
- The average attention span is only 8.25 seconds… this means you have to grab people’s attention ASAP before they move on to something else
- You want to become obsessed with making the first 3 lines of your post (including the headline, if it applies) as relevant and attention-grabbing as possible
- Write a buzzy headline and hook
- Target a real pain your niche persona might be going through
- If it’s relevant, include industry buzzwords in the headline and opener that draw on industry hot topics, debates, etc. (as long as it’s applicable to the post– don’t troll)
- Test out different headlines and openers, keep data on what gets more traffic, and replicate your most popular content
Engage with your audience
- At the end of every post, always include some kind of call to action for your followers where they are encouraged to like your post and leave a comment (i.e. Like this post and comment down below…)
- And make a point every day after you post to carve out 30 minutes to an hour (depending on how big your following is) to read your comments and leave thoughtful responses, not generic replies like: Thank You!
- Doing this will set you apart from other pages and help you better understand your followers
Incorporate visuals into posts
- According to Hubspot, content on social media that includes some kind of imagery on average get 94% more views than content without imagery
- So add visuals to your posts (images, graphics, etc.)
Change up your medium with videos
- Consider changing up your medium from time-to-time with video because social media posts that include video are viewed 48% more than posts with no video
- And the sky's the limit as far as what you can do with video…
- Share tips
- Record yourself at networking events
- Interview clients about their success story
- Etc.
Leverage paid social
- There’s a lot you can do on your own to optimize your page, but growing your following often also includes budgeting for ad spend
- Ad spend is money that you budget for paid social advertisements that help you get your brand in front of new people. Paid social ads are great for expanding your audience and increasing conversions
- There are many options out there for ad spend, but if you pay for advertising on Facebook, you can install Facebook Pixel (completely free) which will gather data on your ads (conversions, etc.) so you can optimize future campaigns and build targeted, warm audiences
Social Media Conduct
As a reminder, conducting yourself professionally at all times on social media goes a long way as far as boosting your reputation and your brand.
Focus on building people up instead of tearing them down. Don’t forget, everything you do on the internet is forever.
To Wrap Things Up…
Lastly, if you want to grow your platform and become the next Brandon Bornancin or Grant Cardone, the greatest advice we can give you is to Just. Get. Started! Stop overthinking a master plan to jump-start your page to 10,000 followers overnight. The best thing you can do for yourself is to just get started with posting.
And consistency is key. If you decide to post daily, then stick to it, and post every day at the same time so your followers know when to expect a post from you.
RECAP:
- Be true to yourself
- Niche down to quickly build an audience and come up with content to post
- Boost engagement by maximizing the opening of the post, testing, constantly looking at the data, optimizing, and iterating, regularly engaging with your followers, incorporating visuals, and leveraging paid social
- Always be positive
- Just get started TODAY!
Never forget that every great page on social media started where you are right now. Don’t be discouraged if it seems like it’s taking forever for your page to get any traffic. Patience is crucial to building an audience. So exhale, and keep posting.
