Veronica Green-Gott — June 10, 2019 — June 10, 2019
Social media for SaaS providers is an excellent strategy to build brand awareness and trust between customers and providers. It can even guide buyers through the funnel if you’re posting strategic and targeted content on social channels to encourage buying decisions without overloading your followers. But to be rewarded with any of these benefits, your social channels must have a certain number of followers.
Without followers, your channels could remain stagnant, with low impressions, reach, engagement rates, and a low ROI. Maintaining your social channels takes effort, strategy, and time. To go through all of that for a low return on your investment is not worth it. So, how can you grow your followers as fast as possible? Keep reading to find out.
Relevant Interactions
When someone comments on your Instagram or Facebook photo or shares a LinkedIn post, do you interact with them? Or do you just move on with your day?
It’s important to never forget that the entire premise of social media is to foster digital connection. Each platform has its own way of going about it, but at heart, all platforms require human-to-human interaction. Every time someone shares, comments, or reacts to a post, it’s your job to engage with them. Even something as simple as liking a shared post acknowledges the efforts of the user.
If you’re uncomfortable building a relationship with random followers, think of social media as transactional. When someone shares your posts, they’re boosting your engagement rate and impressions. By liking their post you’re returning the favor by making their content visible to your followers. Don’t underestimate the power of a single share, like, or comment.
When you reward users for engaging with your content, they’re more likely to follow your company and engage with you again. The more they interact with your posts, the more their followers see your content. The more their followers see your content, the more likely they are to follow you as well.
Paid Campaign
Organic reach on most social platforms is dishearteningly low. Data has shown that the average account reaches only two percent of its followers through organic content. And if you have no followers? You’re very unlikely to reach anyone. Paid campaigns can be key for social media for SaaS providers.
Paid social media campaigns allow you to extend your reach by a huge amount. If you’re unhappy with who you’re reaching and how many people you’re reaching, a paid campaign can fix that. If you have zero followers, a paid “follow me” campaign can help to boost your numbers. The key to actually gaining followers from a paid campaign is to create relevant content that is highly engaging. You’ll also need high-quality organic content to back up your paid campaign should a potential follower click-through to your profile.
Targeted Hashtag Use
Don’t underestimate the power of a single great hashtag. For example, the #dogsofinstagram has 149 million posts on Instagram at the moment this blog was written. Users will follow that hashtag to fawn over cute puppies. It’s a hashtag where they can be sure there will be fun content consisting of exactly what they’re looking for.
Clearly, when it comes to social media for SaaS, you probably shouldn’t be tagging #dogsofinstagram in your posts.
However, use popular hashtags (that are relevant!) whenever possible. For example, make use of Twitter’s popular #WednesdayWisdom to post helpful tips for software optimization every Wednesday. You’ll see a big spike in your reach on those days. And anyone who clicks on that hashtag will be more likely to see your content and click-through to your profile, possibly resulting in a follow.
Build Relationships with Influencers
Do you know who the SaaS influencers in your industry are? You should. If you don’t, a quick Google search can help you find out. Once you discover who the influencers are for social media for SaaS, make it part of your mission to build a relationship with them. It may seem strange at first to focus so intently on one person, but you won’t be the only one.
When you share, react, or comment on an influencer’s content, you’re making yourself visible to their thousands of followers. While the holy mecca of influencer relationship-building is to have the influencer share one of your posts, don’t hold your breath. You’re interacting with influencer-content to lend credibility to your brand and make yourself visible to their followers.
By interacting with influencers and increasing your visibility, you’re hoping to grab some of the influencer’s followers. However, the key to this is commenting with insightful content. You’ll come across plenty of bots that post emojis or spam generic comments. You need to stand out from those by asking insightful questions, generating more conversation, or adding value to the original content. By doing this, you’re helping out the influencer as well by boosting their engagement and impressions.
Optimize Your Social Media Buttons
Look at your website, personal social profiles, business cards, and various forms of marketing materials. On how many of these platforms can you find buttons linking to company social profiles? If it’s not too many, then you have some work to do.
Picture this: a potential customer comes to your website. They click around for a while and decide they want to learn more about your culture and values. One of the best ways to do that is to view a social profile. They click the Facebook icon and are taken directly there. If they can’t easily access your profile, they most likely won’t access it at all. Then you’re missing out on one of the many benefits of social media for SaaS: building trust with customers.
The more places you brand your social profiles, the more potential followers will see it.
Growing your social profiles can be complicated and time-consuming, but if you want a high ROI, it’s necessary. You know that there are millions of potential customers on social media – but how can you speak to them if you’ve never met? Download this whitepaper to continue learning about how you can get a high ROI from your social media for SaaS profiles.
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