Every business would like more loyal followers, more retweets, more shares and clicks on social media. Indeed, these are the fundamental measures of some level of social media success.
Yet, social media has evolved to a place where if your company is not formally active, opportunities to build the brand, increase sales, and drive web traffic is missed and your company appears to not be keeping up with the digital age.
At this point, growing your social media reach is much more than just growing your social following count.
And many people that use social media will tell you the solution to growing your social media reach is to simply give your audience all of the great content it wants.
Easier said than done, right?
It is, of course, critical to write compelling, entertaining, informative content that delights and informs your audience. But there are also other areas to focus on that are instrumental to achieving your overall social media growth goals.
Here are the six key strategies for growing your brand’s social media reach that may not be at the forefront of your mind.
1. Study what moves your audience: Audiences on social media tend to react fairly predictably to the things they read and experience on social media. They share certain types of content frequently, get inspired and energized to comment on certain types of content, and seek to initiate passionate dialogue in response to specific types of content.
Because social media is so open and accessible, you have the ability to surreptitiously observe what types of content motivate and inspire your audience to be at its most active and engaged, and then to create tailored content around those preferences. Similarly, this helps attract the audience you want following your brand and knowing about your product or services.
2. Mimic trending styles and sensibilities: You shouldn’t be pushing out content on social media in a vacuum. You must be paying close attention to what your audience is talking about, and to what hashtags and ideas are trending with your audience at the moment. Sometimes your audience is in a more serious mood; other times, it will be in a more sarcastic or flippant mood or even an excited and eager mood.
You must be responsive and sensitive to these swings in your audience’s tastes and sensibilities; this is critical to optimizing how your audience will receive and interpret your own social media interactions with them.
3. Foster audience engagement: On social media, it’s critical to build rapport with your audience by letting them shape the dialogue and the discussion. Your audience wants to feel their opinions and values are not only being carefully considered but also celebrated and promoted by your business. When you do this, your posts and interactions are more likely to be shared and viewed by an increasingly wider audience.
4. Proactively respond to posts by others: Every time you can add something thoughtful or interesting or entertaining to a social media discussion, you’re creating an additional (positive!) impression that is likely to be seen by someone you hadn’t previously reached. Over time, you’ll get to know the influential people who post in your social media community, and they will get to know and trust you – and thus be more likely to endorse and share your content.
5. Spend more time writing your headlines and teaser material: Many social media writers labor over getting a piece of content to sound just right, but then tucker out when it’s time to write (and rewrite) a headline and teaser material. When you don’t spend the extra few minutes necessary to knock your headlines out of the park, much of your hard work goes to waste, because it’s not optimized for attracting eyeballs.
Remember that a great headline is a work of art; it’s eye-catching, unique and conveys a very simple, brief, essential message.
6. Encourage employees outside marketing to be active on social: A great way to grow organic social reach and brand online is encouraging your company’s workforce to engage on social media. Previously, this idea seemed scary and concerning, but that mindset has been shifting.
The concept is called employee advocacy and provides a way for employees to share company content, industry content, and more on their company’s behalf. With algorithm changes and that close to half the world’s population (3.03 billion people) are on some type of social media, employees become the most credible source of info and boosting social reach.
Final Thoughts
Growing your company’s social media reach starts with writing great content and even more compelling headlines, but there are other key strategies to deploy to round out your efforts.
When you observe and analyze your audience’s interactions and sensibilities on social media when you proactively engage and interact with your audience, you’re doing the things that every social savvy business knows is key to continue expanding its social media reach.
By taking the tips above and encouraging employees outside of marketing to get involved in social, your brand can quickly build a substantial social reach.