Earn Attention (Not Just Followers)

Amassing a large follower base is not the secret to success on social media. Anyone can get 10,000 real live human specimen followers in record time by using a cheap follow-back techniques.

Using follower audience size as your only KPI is like using body count as a measurement for winning a battle – it just doesn’t lead to success by itself. Winning the hearts and minds of a population is more meaningful in both social media and foreign policy.

Here’s how to do it:

Earn Attention From Your Market

Earning attention from the right social media users with consistency is what really drives results. Follower growth can be an indicator of success, however brands must also consider engagement metrics like shares, retweets, mentions and referral traffic. These metrics are strong indicators of winning the hearts and minds on social networks. Earning genuine market attention is how brands grow meaningful reach in social media.

Deliver Value-Add Content

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that nobody is going to listen to your brand if you don’t have anything valuable or interesting to say. The next step in that thought process for most brands’ tends to be “So how do we make ourselves interesting?” more often than “So how do we add value?”. This is how you get the embarrassing, thoughtless and utterly time-wasting Brooklyn Shake videos. Alternatively, a brand can deliver valuable content at the low cost of a few clicks of a mouse and the target audience on social media will find this irresistible.

Build Through Consistency

The brands that are the most well-known among their target audience on social networks are those which deliver timely and value-add content that users have become accustomed to consuming. Consistency is a keystone to the value-based social media strategy. Missing just one day of delivering value starts the eroding brand reach. Consistent value-add content is the same way that news organizations build audiences – could you imagine CNN taking the day off?!

Curate More Than You Create

Delivering content on a regular basis doesn’t always mean that you always have to create it yourself! In fact, curating content from a variety of resources develops more trust as a thought leader in your industry on social networks. These unbiased nuggets of value are what captures the attention of your market in the most consistent manner. Posts with value-add curated content are the singles and doubles that win championships.

Consider value over ornament when faced with the challenge of making your brand more interesting to your target market. Your brand will be rewarded with the loyal attention of your target audience on social networks.