Investors and prospects interact with brands through an ever-growing number of touchpoints, including websites, social networks, video and advertisements. Social media is a key component of a company’s brand image, and is a useful tool for engaging with your target audience online.

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”
Erik Qualman

Social media is also an important factor when it comes to your Google page one. People rarely scroll past the first page of Google’s search results, and if you can control these results by having your website, digital adverts and social media channels appear here, it is hugely beneficial for your brand identity.

You might be wondering: How do I do this?

This article will explore how you can increase your social media following with 10 Essential Steps. Now is the time to tune up your social media marketing.

1. Create your own content

It is crucial that you create your own content to post across your social media platforms. People will want to follow you because your insights and thought leadership are unique, and add value to their feed. In social media, engaging content really is king.

It is crucial that you create your own content to post across your social media platforms.

Hosting content on your website, and promoting it on social media is also a great way of driving traffic to your site and boosting the SEO of your social media platforms and your website.

2. Visuals

Your content needs to be supported by eye catching visuals such as gifs, videos and banners. Most people scroll through their feeds very quickly and unless your content has a visual element, it will most likely be overlooked, and you will lose out on followers.

Most people scroll through their feeds very quickly and unless your content has a visual element, it will most likely be overlooked

The visuals on your social media platforms should be consistent with your website, so that your brand’s image is reinforced. Our analytics show that videos and gifs are the best way of engaging your audience.

3. Handles and hashtags

By using hashtags, you put your content in front of a wider audience and bring more people to your profile page and website. Just don’t go overboard and include 15 hashtags that become increasingly less relevant, as people tend to find that off-putting.

If you include the handles of accounts you want to engage with in posts relevant to the person, you will show up in their notifications, greatly increasing the chance that they will follow you.

4. Social media icons

Put social media icons on your website that link to your social media platforms. This is a great way to build an organic following of potential clients. It’s also a good idea to put social media icons in your email signatures and newsletters.

Don’t forget to put the URL of your website in your social media profiles, as this also works in reverse, and is another great way to drive traffic to your site.

5. Be consistent

Consistency is key. To keep followers interested and gain new followers, they need to see that you are posting content regularly. Putting the time and effort in everyday will yield good results.

To keep followers interested and gain new followers, they need to see that you are posting content regularly.

You also want to make sure that your content is consistent across all your social media platforms and your website, so that wherever someone comes across your content the same brand message is supported.

6. Community building

Community building is one of the most important aspects of building a following. Every day you should dedicate some time to identifying relevant accounts and connecting with those accounts. This is a great way of growing your audience organically. This is another case in which consistency is extremely valuable.

7. Paid for campaigns

Alongside your organic community building, it’s a good idea to take advantage of the numerous paid for campaigns you can run on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

These campaigns can rapidly increase your following, put your content in front of your target audience, as well drive engagement, video views and click throughs to your website.

8. Engage

Engage with your audience by liking, sharing and replying to your followers and potential follower’s messages and posts. Social media is not just a way to push your content out, it’s also a way to interact with clients and potential clients and listen to what they want.

Social media is not just a way to push your content out, it’s also a way to interact with clients and potential clients and listen to what they want.

This is the best way to keep your followers and the more you engage with other people’s posts, the more you will show up in their notifications, and the greater the chance that they will follow you.

9. Influencers

The most important people to engage with are influencers (individuals that have influence over potential clients). By commenting on their posts, sharing their tweets, and engaging them in conversation online, they are bound to see your content, and if they see you enough they may follow you and share your content back, which means you will have gained huge exposure.

In one instance, an influencer retweeted one of our client’s Twitter posts, which was promoting a YouTube video. This simple retweet led to a gain of over 160,000 views (and counting).

10. Analytics

Be sure to carefully track the performance of various posts and campaigns, as this will enable to you learn which of your efforts on social media are most effective. You can then improve your strategy and focus on activities that help you achieve your social media goals.

Tools like Hubspot and Hootsuite are very useful in this respect, but if you don’t want to go as in depth as that, social media platforms have their own analytics tools you can use.

Conclusion

Peregrine are experts at implementing this fully integrated approach.

Peregrine are experts at implementing this fully integrated approach, and offer a bespoke service called Peregrine Social. Our comms team can write you excellent content, our design team can create everything from gifs to animations to support your content, and our in-house social media experts will do the rest.

On a day to day basis Peregrine will manage your community building, posting and campaigns to ensure your company’s image is consistent and memorable across all your digital channels.