Strategies to Expand Your Reach on Social Media
What Strategies Will Expand Your Reach on Social?
What strategies should I use to expand my social media reach quickly? is there an easy way to gain a following on social? What strategies will help jumpstart my social media and make sure that my content is seen? How do I get more people to like my stuff? This post was inspired by my clients and that ask to increase their visibility, influence etc on social media. And don't get me wrong I love these questions and I love to share my knowledge with folks. The one thing that I warn you of is I am not going to provide you with a quick fix. I don't believe that one exists. You gotta hustle hard if you want to see results!
Some Basic Strategies
Yeah, I don't believe in quick fixes but here are a few strategies to optimize what you are doing on social…
1) Get your friends, family loved one and co-workers where appropriate to follow and share your profiles. Engage with them and provide the content that they want to see, its a start and if they share content it expands your reach.
2) Include your profiles everywhere you can with a message encouraging them to follow you along with the benefits of following you where space allows. Don't forget to include in email signatures, business pages, LinkedIn Profile, alignable profiles, on business cards and visible on the website above the fold.
3) Search important Hashtags within your niche and favorite interesting tweets.
4) Retweet, Repost, or share content you like and join conversations to engage new followers
5) Link to high-quality content on your site/blog
6) Provide useful and edutaining tips that relate to your field of work and provide useful and actionable info to your followers
7) Use a branded #hashtag
8) Get a wider reach by promoting events that you are attending using the appropriate hashtag combined with your profile name and or hashtag so posts show on event with a link back to your profiles. Its another way to engage others effectively.
9) Show followers a bit of the behind the scenes for some realness
10) Don't forget to promote your profiles and include them in content you create
11) Share your brand story as well as your story
12) Ask this important question to your followers on a fairly regular basis “How can I help you?” and when someone responds, help them. This si a major part of an effective engagement strategy.
13) Want some additional tips, tricks, and strategies I recommend to clients and followers? Check out this collection of social media tidbits!
An Important Note On Content:
Before exploring some strategies a bit more in depth, I want to be sure that I clarify the importance of content! Content is king, always will be and that is why you can't try to get around it the easy way. The two essentials for a successful social media strategy are ENGAGE FOLLOWERS AND PROVIDE GREAT CONTENT!
The content you create should be aimed at EDUTAINING your followers by being informational, educational and fun. Great content will always win so focus on creating that and let the rest fall into place. It takes time but you want to be a thought leader, a resource, and an innovative thinker content creation is the surefire way, Your followers may not need your services right now but if you are sharing winning content that educates and informs them they will think of you first when they need you!
The “Advanced” Strategies to Extend Your Reach
I say advanced but really these are all essential things that all businesses on social media should do in order to get the most out of what they are doing on social media!
1- Brand
Make sure your brand identity is fully developed, down to knowing what you would post and wouldn't post, and how you want followers to perceive your brand. Know Your Brand, Be Your Brand, Believe In Your Brand
2- Social Mission
Have a clearly defined mission and goals for social media as well as what success will look like for your brand. In this mission include if the goal is to sell on social, influence or educate. My recommendation is always to educate and engage by creating great content!
3- Audience
You can not create a content strategy until you know your audience. What type of person/business do you want to attract? Do you know their interests and needs? What problems do they have and how can you solve them? where do they get their information or what websites do they read daily? Understanding your audience is fundamental to creating content that they’ll find valuable.
4- Be a thought leader in your niche
Share content that highlights your innovative thoughts and ways of handling situations. You can also share content of other thought leaders and well-respected members within your niche.
5- Communicate and Engage
Promote two-way communication on your social media platforms by asking questions to your followers and encouraging them to share questions and ideas via comments on your social media. Then answer and engage those who share with you. Provide them useful information that they can see the value in. Don't only link to your website link to other respected people in the industry as well.
6- Social Service
Build brand ambassadors by providing stellar “social service” and encouraging followers to share experiences with your brand. Provide an incentive for followers sharing reviews both good and bad (seriously), ask for feedback regularly on social, and act upon the feedback you get.
7- Interaction
Interact with other profiles regularly and provide thoughtful and relevant comments when commenting. This will give your brand more exposure especially if you target very popular posts, where several people will receive a newsfeed update with your comment. But beware of wasting time posting on posts that are “too popular” this is a judgment call but if you are comment number 300 on a post people may not be paying attention anymore.
8- Collaboration
Message interesting pages that you think your target audience follows and propose doing a featured post about them or their site and ask if they will do the same. Or work together on an event, or do a photoshoot together. Collaboration is key to social media success. See my blog post on collaboration.
9- Quality not Quantity
Focus on quality not quantity in regards to both your blog posts and your followers. As long as you have a consistent posting schedule that features high-quality content you will be good. In regards to followers, I’d take 400 fans who engage with my content and generate business over 5,000 who are indifferent to my business any day!
10- Vary What You Post
Experiment with different types of posts and mix things up a bit. Ask questions, share a behind-the-scenes picture of your workspace, or take advantage of the social aspect to ask for ideas, feedback, and input. Get creative and keep things interesting for your followers.I’d always recommend seeking and sharing the best content with others too. As well as helping to build trust and relationships, this helps your channels become a destination for people looking to learn and be inspired. See 9 Posts Every Business Should Try on Social
11- 80/20
Remember the 80/20 Rule 80% of what you post should be educational, informative, useful or funny 20% should be promotional… Or, as author Gary Vaynerchuk puts it: give, give, give, then ask… see more Gary V. here…
12 Be yourself and it is okay to be funny
Keeping your audience in mind at all times but that does not mean hide who you are. Your personality is the key to
Social media is also a great place to share a little more of you, whether behind the scenes shots or sneak peeks of a new product you’re working on. Trust is a huge component of the buying process; letting people in a little help your readers feel like they’re trusted, which in turn helps them to trust you too.
13- Influencers to Influence Step 1
Find influencers in your niche to engage with because following them and engaging with their posts by liking, commenting and sharing (without overdoing it, of course) you put yourself on their radar and may well find that they’ll reciprocate later!
14- Use Images, Always
Use relevant high-quality images as images have a much higher engagement than just text or links,
15-DIALOGUE AND RESPECT
Think about paying it forward. As well as responding to messages, be proactive and start conversations. Congratulate people on their achievements, comment on and share relevant posts and offer your input when someone asks a question. Seek to add value and make meaningful connections. Doing this has not only helped my business, it’s helped me make new friends too!
16. Stop. Review. Revise. Restart
Regularly using the metrics and feedback from followers as your guide. While you are doing this also review what others are doing, get ideas and see how you can do something that works for your brand