Jimmy Rodela
© Rawpixel / Dollar Photo Club
When 56% of Americans have profiles on social networking sites, it should be a telltale sign for businesses to set up their very own profiles on social networking sites as well. After all, the saying “where your customers are, is where you should also be” is valid on all points, right?
While I can imagine all of us agreeing on that matter, there is a roadblock that most businesses encounter which prevents them from truly experiencing the benefits of having a social media profile for their businesses. And that is, their inability to grow their followers.
If you yourself are struggling with the exact issue, then allow me to share with you these 5 incredibly simple yet effective tips to grow your social media followers.
1) Interview online influencers.
“Using influencer marketing can be your single most effective tool when it comes to doubling your sales, generating more leads, or growing your social media followers” – Kevin J. Roach
You don’t always have to build your social media followers from scratch. You can capitalize on the existing follower count of the influencers in your industry.
All you have to do is connect with the influencers, then ask them if you can feature or do an interview with them on your blog. If they say “yes”, then there’s not much left for you to do but simply interview them and add a clear call-to-action at the end of your posts asking the listeners / viewers to add you in social media.
Of course, the listeners or viewers are going to be the existing social media followers of the influencer. At this point, some of them will surely add you after listening to or reading your content.
2) Add a clear call-to-action on your blog posts.
We all use different CTAs (call-to-actions) on our blog posts. While the most common CTA we use is to ask the readers to share the content if they find it valuable, why not change it up from time to time with asking them to add you in their social media connections instead?
I mean, think about it. If the blog post you’ve written has proven to be of great value to them, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t want to hear from you again. The chances are good that they want to be updated when your next post goes live. Thus, the social media platforms are good avenues for that.
Important tip. Instead of just asking them straight-up to add you, be sure to share an incentive for them doing so. Some example incentives you can share can be as simple as promo codes for your products, a chance to sample your future products for free, contests, etc.
3) Run a contest with your email list.
This strategy is quite cut and dry. All you have to do is email your list telling them that you’ll be running a contest. You’ll then say that for them to join, as a requirement, they have to add you first on social media.
Provided that the prize you prepared for your contest is enticing enough, you’ll surely see a number of people in your email list adding you just so they can join the contest.
I’d like to stress out how while there are several things that can cause this strategy to succeed (or fail), I have found that these things play a crucial role in deciding whether or not your campaign becomes successful or not.
- Is your prize enticing enough?
- Are the steps for them to join simple enough? Giving them 1 – 2 requirements to join should be good enough. Giving them 3 or more requirements will tend to turn them off because of the sheer hassle of it.
- Is the contest’s mechanics simple enough?
- Is your email message clear, concise, and well articulated enough?
If you’ll take the time to reflect on the 4 points that I shared above, and re-engineer them so you can integrate them seamlessly to your business, you’re bound to get really good results with this strategy.
4) Create a job post. Require them to add you first before they can apply.
A question that you need to ask yourself before using this strategy is whether or not the quality of social media invites you will be getting are worth it.
Because the nature of this strategy centers on you creating a job post, it means that the people you’ll be meeting are people that are job seekers. Now that in itself might be a broad audience since there are different types of jobs that people can apply for. However, it is still quite limiting.
How, you might ask?
A good example would be if your target audience are business owners. At this point, a job isn’t an enticing “bait” to the business owners since they own a business and are looking for opportunities to grow it – not finding a job.
Another one would be stay at home moms. While some stay at home moms would in fact love to have a job, a good number of them are interested on kitchen life hacks or anything that would help them become more efficient with their housework – not getting a job.
At this point, if you’ll get TONS of social media followers that are job seekers, yet your target audience are really business owners, then it just means that the quality of your followers isn’t a good fit for your business (maybe even useless).
5) Add content lockers
If you’re new to online marketing and are quite oblivious about what content lockers are, allow me to share with you the gist of how they operate.
Better yet, allow me to share with you a sample of how a locked content looks like. I’ve written an article about How Spending 1 Hour Per Day In Linkedin Got me 3 Clients in Less Than a Month where I “locked” my most effective welcome template.
After having gone through the post, you’ll find that the only way for you to unlock it and to see the actual template, is to click one of the social sharing or like buttons.
If you and your team can produce a compelling content that provides real value to your readers, then all you need to do is insert a content locker in the most important section of the content, then wait for it to do its magic.
Conclusion
The simple yet highly effective marketing steps that I shared above are proven and tested to work. If you’re looking for strategies to help grow your social media followers, then you can simply re-engineer and use the strategies that we’ve discussed.
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