Just marking your presence in various social media platforms isn’t enough, one has to gain a following too. The whole purpose behind maintaining the social media presence is to generate more leads. One has to have a good fan base or following in facebook, twitter, linkedin, instagram etc. A larger group of people following you ensures a bigger reach. It can be really confusing to figure out the best technique or way amongst so many ideas all over the internet. Though, in reality it isn’t so. There are some easy and effective ways to increase your visibility:
- Figure Out Your Target Audience – It is definitely important to be active in the various social media platforms but simultaneously one should also be aware of the fact the platforms where your target buyers are spending time. One should create profiles for top social networks. Whatever be the size of the company, big or small, whichever industry or target market, people are either talking or would want to talk about you on various social media platforms. The least that you can provide them with is means to get in touch with you on the choice of their preferred social medium.
- Optimising Your Social Profiles – Even if you have profiles or would create them, one has to optimise the social profiles. You can have an easy to recognize username, photo, and to the point and clear description about the website. That also includes a link that can be easily tracked. Since social media updates too come under the search results, one should optimise posts on facebook, tweets and updates on Linkedin.
- Promote Yourself Everywhere – You can do that on your blogs, signage, website, print ads, email marketing messages and business cards. Most of the social media sites, these days have an official ‘Follow’ button included in their websites and blogs. One can post links to other social accounts in a normal post, adding a link to another social site in the bio or description section of a different one or pay for sponsored updates pointing people to other social networks. You can also try the Snapcodes available in Snapchat. These are all different ways for cross channel promotion.
- Focus on the Quality of Content– Along with promoting and sharing oneself through content, one has to keep in mind that to mark your presence your content should be something that is worth sharing. This is how more and more people will start following you. The posts and tweets on various social media platforms should be different, interesting, engaging and useful. Try and avoid more of self promotional content. Though if you really feel you should then make sure it is a small part and not entirely about promoting your product or service. There should be variety and newness in your content and adding visuals will be icing on the cake.
- Start Sharing Your Content – Now that you are into promoting your social presence in most of the platforms, you should make sure that the site visitors and email subscribers share the content with their personal networks as easily as possible. With more people sharing it, the content will automatically reach a larger audience group apart from your direct fans and followers. Social sharing buttons can be added to blogs, landing pages for ebook, email messages, articles etc.
- Keep Interacting With Your Audience – The reason why we are writing, sharing and promoting is to make new connections and keep maintaining the older ones. Just as you keep sharing useful and interesting content, one should definitely monitor one’s presence and interact with fans and followers. This way you can build a loyal fan base. You can post updates, questions and have discussions too. Keep a tab on the mentions of your company name, user name and a unique hash tag every day. Not to forget, one should also reply when people mention you on any of the platforms. Even if not every day, at least whenever it is possible. You can thank them for appreciating, reply back to their queries and even to any negative comment, do give an answer.
- Form Contacts with Stalwarts – Through social media, one can follow leaders and experts from your industry. It can be a brand or a person who comes up with excellent and engaging content and has plenty of knowledge. This will help you a lot in exploring and you will get to know a lot of things that you were unaware of. You can find them easily through facebook, twitter, linkedin etc.
- Use Hashtags- We all have come across crammed words together after a pound sign. Hashtags are an easily searchable tag which gives it a unique identity and makes it easy to search. This makes your posts more visible. For e.g. you want to know about fashion trends, you can search it by related hashtags to know more about it.
- Hire a Good Social Media Manager – There is no rule book that once and for all can teach you the nuances of social media. It keeps changing with time and there is some or the other new trends that comes in. Hence, you would need a social media manager who is an expert in the field. He/she can manage your accounts, update about latest trends, post interesting content and experiment with something new.
