How to Turn Your Business’s Social Media Presence Into Social Media Influence

“Influencer” is a word that gets tossed around quite a bit in the world of social media marketing. With audiences flocking in mass daily to different social networks in order to stay on top of not only the activities of their friends and family, but brands and personalities as well, a business has to prove their worth in order to break through the noise.

The goal for any social media user should be to garner a following and become a respected authority on the type of content they produce. This is what influential social media users do; they set and speak to the trends in their industry with engaging content, which gets disseminated to followers and eventually trickles down to the general public.

Look At Your Competitors

The first step in becoming a strong presence on social media requires analyzing what works for other companies, brands, or people who are in similar industries or have similar goals. Keep in mind that not every platform is always applicable to the goals of every business/brand. Make sure to have a strong understanding of the exact audiences you’re trying to reach and types of information to be disseminated in order to narrow in on the networks that’ll make sense for you.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have search functions that allow you to easily find, identify, and follow popular users/pages. Facebook in particular provides an Insights feature called Pages to Watch, which allows a brand to track content produced by similar pages and compare performance in relation to their own page. Spend time analyzing what content has been successful for these users and try to imitate their online behaviors, while staying authentic to your own brand

Facebook

For Facebook, a brand or person should post fairly simple content that promotes their image in a direct way by clearly stating what they do or what they are knowledgeable about. Linking to relevant articles or blogs from trusted sources is a good way to inform an audience about your area of expertise and makes you a legitimate source of information. Within posts, tag sources or other brands/businesses you may be working with in order to form connections and open the door for opportunities to share your content with the audiences of other pages.

Twitter

Posting relevant links to trusted sources of information is still a good idea for Twitter and can be easily done by retweeting. However, there should be an emphasis placed on making original content that is interesting and scannable.

Organizing your timeline and tracking conversations you might want to become a part of can easily be done by creating Twitter lists. Find Twitter Chats relevant to your industry and regularly participate to position your brand/business/personality as a trusted source. Building a following on Twitter is all about consistency.

Relevancy is also key, as major news tends to take off on Twitter faster than anywhere else. It’s important to constantly monitor local and nationally trending topics, and then use the corresponding hashtags found on the left sidebar of the homepage. These trending hashtags will direct anyone who uses these hashtags to your Tweet and can greatly extend the reach of your content.

Be Active

Remember, sometimes in order to get the love, you need to give the love. Direct messaging, chatting, replying, retweeting, tagging other users, etc. allows you to immediately gain attention and demonstrate the potential for mutually beneficial relationships. A share for a share. Don’t ignore mentions or tags, instead reply and collaborate in situations where it makes sense.
We’ve barely even scratched the surface when it comes to influencer marketing and while the road to clout may seem long, it doesn’t have to be difficult. Contact Social Media Beast today – we’ll always get you moving down the right path!