|
7 Ways to Get More Fans and Followers
Repost: Original article by: www.infusionblog.com
Social media is essential to many small businesses because they know it can result in more leads, more customer engagements and more buzz for their brand. You probably have established your social media presence for your business and then have been faced with the challenge of getting Fans and Followers. I wanted to help you out and share seven solid suggestions to grow your audience across social media.
Facebook Likes, Fans and Twitter Followers all amount roughly to the same thing. These people listen to you when you publish something. Be it on Facebook, Twitter, Blog or other social media destinations, it’s all about earning the trust and interest from others. But where do you begin?
Don’t fret if you don’t have a huge audience across Facebook and Twitter. I have a number of tips that I’ve learned with our own brand as well have witnessed across the industry to help you grow your audience as well as your business.
1. Provide exclusive, shareable content.
Which came first – an audience or compelling content? I’d argue content comes first because it attracts the fans to act. Sit down and plan some fresh content for your prospective fans want. With a little creativity, you can use premium content as a means of getting fans to Like you on Facebook. (This process is known as a ‘Reveal Tab’ or ‘Fangating’.) This works if the content and the brand are cohesive and relate to each other, but this comes at the price of people tuning out later if you don’t send related or relevant updates to why they initially Liked you.
2. Promote your social media assets.
I am actually a bit surprised some businesses don’t promote their social media presences offline. It doesn’t mean you need to list all of them out, but pick two or three of them and recommend your customers and prospects like/fan/follow them. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to get more fans … just ask them. A quick and easy solution to this is to include it in your email marketing campaigns as well has a permanent fixture to your email templates.
3. Host and/or participate in interactive sessions through social media.
Admittedly, this takes considerably more effort than other tactics, but the payoff is good. Consider hosting a session where your audience interacts and asks you questions while you answer them. It’s a great way to boost engagement with your fans as well as get some great ideas for publishing content. Likewise, it’s a good format to network with others and discover what they bring to the table to move your ideas forward. You can do this easily through either live video (UStream) or through status updates (Tweetchats).
A good example of this is at live events on Twitter. There’s usually a hashtag (#likethisone) that many events have where attendees and participants share feedback, ask questions and exchange healthy dialog. If you host an event, consider offering the opportunity to take questions from the audience on Twitter. Little things like this will add up to being active and worthy of more followers and engagement.
4. Build value through social media.
Exclusivity is a great way to build value in your social media presence. Discounts are one way to do it – but I’m not a huge fan of that because people become a fan of your discounts, not what you provide. Exclusivity might mean you provide more detailed insights about your products and services. It could also be in the form of different types of media shared – photos from the office, the team, etc. Little things like this add value to your audience in social media.
This doesn’t have to be too difficult. For us, we do this by posting news and breaking information on our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Then we follow that up with a press release or including that in our monthly newsletter. This process is effective at building value in your social media assets so people trust they are getting the latest information when you publish there.
5. Demonstrate discipline, consistency and patience.
These skills are critical to growing your social media audience successfully and sustainably. With exception to one tactic, there is no way to instantly amass thousands of people. Having patience and a little faith that you’re providing value to your fans will net you some great results later. Be consistent and share at least a couple daily updates to interact and promote healthy discussion about your brand, products and service.
6. Buy Likes/Fans/Followers.
How do I recommend this without feeling dirty? I can’t, but it is possible to run a social media campaign to buy your way to fans. This has obvious benefits and concerns. Targeting your ideal customers and prospects is good to keep it relevant. However, if you just get fans for the sake of getting fans you’ll have see that you have amassed a very odd bunch that don’t really have any stake or interest in your business or brand. If you are going through a brand-building effort and wish to advertise, it’s not a bad idea for people to stay connected and learn more about you.
(On Facebook, you can use Facebook Advertising in conjunction with your Fan Page; for Twitter, they have a higher bar to jump over, but they are accepting applicants to advertise.)
7. Leverage a contest for Fan/Follower interactions.
People love contests, but your mileage will vary with these. There is no slam-dunk contest theme that results in exactly what you want, but cumulatively, contests with your fans can add more engagement than simply reading, liking, re-tweeting and sharing status updates. Some contests to think about are done simply by raffle, others by entry or through additional interactions. These can be very helpful for a brand who wants to grow their audience quickly and for those people to be plugged-in to the brand for relevant updates. A few solutions to look at for this would be Wildfire, OfferPop or Bulbstorm for bigger and better social media campaigns.
But it’s not always about fans and followers. You can run a contest simply give your audience a purpose in sharing their creativity with you. We previously held a contest, Biggest Fan of Infusionsoft, and it resulted in having our fans solely through social media tell us why they love us. From there, we leveraged what they said and told others about it.
Let’s not forget why fans and followers matter. These people are interested in reading your messages. It’s completely permission-based so they’re always in control of whether or not they continue to read your messages. In addition, some prospects who size up your brand may look at how many people are fans or followers you have. Having too few people can be a sign that causes them to flee.
The goal is not to be sinister with your audience in social media. It’s to help educate, inform and inspire them to learn more about your business, brand and services. It’s not a game of numbers – it’s an art of providing useful information in the way that best helps them with what they need.
What tips do you have to get more fans? I may have missed some good ones … share it in the comments below!
» Read the Original and Complete Article
|
Leave a Reply