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INTRODUCTION:
Social Media has become a global phenomenon which has made millions and millions of people worldwide to be engrossed in its use, but for a social media page to be a booming success especially in the world of entrepreneurship; one has to exhaust all the efforts to attract loyal followers. Here are some of the most valuable recommendations on how to make this possible:
Market Yourself
Obviously, the very first thing to do is to encourage and persuade people to follow you and what best way to do this is simply to "ask them to follow you". This could be effectively done by making your page available in social media pages so social media aficionados will no longer take too much time to look for your profile. This can be done in ways such as:
· Provide the links in your profile that will lead directly to your website's homepage.
· Express your sincere intent to connect with your subscribers in social media by sending them relevant emails.
· Integrate your social media profile links with your email signature.
· When you distribute business card, make sure that you incorporate the social media profile usernames
Appropriate Setting up of Profiles
It is important to mull over about a lot of things when you are initially setting up your profiles for the purpose of increasing the number of social media followers; here are some important details to consider:
· THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES TO BE USED. People are currently on the craze of joining the bandwagon and try to be in almost all social networking sites because they want to generate a huge number of online followers. This is not actually advised because monitoring and maintaining the number of followers would be quite daunting. CHOOSE FEW BUT POWERFUL SOCIAL MEDIA SITES that is more suitable for your business. Some of the most dominant sites are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram; whichever ever way you want to promote your brand, there are appropriate social media sites to be of use.
· ESTABLISH YOUR PROFILE NAME. When you use different profile names for each of the social media sites you are into, it would be difficult to gather followers because they would be confused. Even if people would like to follow your profile in other social media platforms, they will eventually give up if your profile is very difficult to find.
· USE ONE UNIQUE AVATAR. The avatar you use in your profile is what defines your page and sets you apart from the others. They will be part of your identity and it is strongly advised that you use the one avatar for each of your profile on the different social media platforms. Since the avatar is your identity, DO NOT LEAVE THE AVATAR EMPTY.
· PROVIDE A DETAILED BUT CONCISE DESCRIPTION. Provide people with what you want to convey about your business. Express in detail what your business can do for them and why they should follow your page, this way they will be compelled to click your website link and learn more about your brand and what benefits you will be able to offer them.
Social Media Page Automation
Fact is, social media is not at all totally automated, and you really have to log in every time you want to make new posts or upload files and photos. But, there are fail-safe ways to automate your social media page; one can make use of services like the HOOTSUITE and BUFFER to have a scheduled posting of images, text posts and links based on your preferred date and time. WordPress plugins may also be installed so that it could automatically send blog post links.
Automation greatly helps in establishing a powerful social media presence because through automated posts makes your brand reach more people even when you are not logged in 24/7. But make sure that you also have time to log in and share some of the posts and content from other people in the social media sites who also share your posts. Take time for some online conversations as well.
Follower Engagement.
Personal presence on social media sites does not really have to be done by the business owner, but having a team to do the posting and communicate with the followers would be more effective in generating more social media followers. People get more interested when there are real live people they can converse with rather than just generated automated messages appearing regularly on their pages. This is basically why they call it social media because people should socialize with real people. Remember that in the business world, you do not just sell your brand; you also sell yourself and your company. Adding personal touch to engage with the potential clients is far more effective than 100% automation. It is very important to customers that if they have some queries or complaints, there are real people they can communicate with. Customers would feel that they are valued by your business, when they receive acknowledgements for their comments by giving them credit through you page or by posting a personalized blog about them. Make them feel your genuine presence and people to will be interested to follow your site.
Acknowledge Other People's Content by Sharing and Liking them
Spend at least 15 minutes or a little more to read other people's posts and comment or like the valuable and relevant social media content they post because this can encourage follower engagement and eventually generate more followers due to the following reasons:
· People always prefer a symbiotic relationship; when they feel and know that you took time to comment and share their posts, it means that you spent some time for them. When this happens, most likely they would return the favor and share your content with their own audiences, making your brand reach more people.
· People and followers of those posts that you shared and commented to will be able to see your name on their pages regularly and when people constantly see you, they would most likely follow your page in the coming days.
· Sharing and liking other people's content will keep you abreast about what's new and what are the latest trends in the industry that you are into. It could help you innovate and develop better posts that could really encourage more people to follow your social media profile.
Cite Other Companies
If you want your business or brand to be more noticed in social media sites, appropriately link to other company's profile when you mention them on your posts. And in turn these companies that you have made mention of and linked to will even share the comments to their own sites making you more exposed to their own audiences; this will then escalate the number of you followers dramatically. This works the same way when people reciprocate to your acknowledgements, companies do too.
Producing Relevant Content on a Regular Basis
People will be more interested to follow your page and share your posts when you have valuable and relevant content posted regularly. It's better to formulate a regular posting scheme with highly-optimized content. One of the best ways for people to remain in the minds of your followers is through constant presence through regular continuous content posting. People should see regular activities in your page otherwise they would lose interest in following you. The things you choose to post on your site would make a significant difference; make sure that when you post some advice, your followers would get what they have signed up for and make sure that all your posts would boost your brand or your business. Unrelated posts would not be too useful and it will only cause your followers to lose interest and would not promote your page anymore. Boost your business with an exceptionally powerful content.
Pay for Exposure
Having more exposure in social media by increasing the number of likes would be great for your business, but sometimes you would need to spend a little more to boost it a little more to broaden your horizons and widen your reach. The more people see your page, the more possibilities of having more followers and having more followers would lead to more sales and ultimately more gains. Paying to place ads will also further boost up your business and there is a plethora of opportunities to get your ads posted on pages you never knew that has ever existed.
Separate the Personal from the Professional Entity
We have mentioned to give your page a personal touch, but this is an entirely different thing. You shouldn't get too personal and put in too much of your personal views, preferences and opinions; because this would sometimes vex or bore your potential customers and even you existing clients; and personal posts should be done on a separate social media account. Adhere to the topics that pertain to your business because this is what people follow you for.
Perform some Analytics to Measure your Success in Social Media
Every business has to track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns even in social media. Measuring the success or downfall of the social media marketing strategy will be useful in developing new tactics for increasing the number of followers, although it doesn't just have to depend on the quantity but of the quality of the followers; it would be much better if there are well-targeted audience. The people who decide to follow your page will make a good addition to your email marketing list because they have initially shown interest in you brand or business. Monitor and track how many of these followers have actually visited your website through the links you have integrated in your posts; this is more valuable in determining the success of your social media campaigns.
Evoke Emotions
We sometime need to involve emotions particularly a stroke of a little humor; your posts would be more interesting when a dash of humor is incorporated and it will encourage more followers to share your content thereby making your profile available for more potential followers.
Know what your Audience Wants and What they are interested in
Do not just post what you think people would want to see and read because most of the time the things you think about may not be interesting to most people. Look into some analytics and try to search for things that most social media aficionados are interested in. Take a look at what's been trending and what types of posts get the most comments, shares or likes. Try to generate contents of the same type, but also take into consideration what your business is all about.
Post Blogs on Popular Sites with the same or related niche as your business
Contributing relevant and highly-optimized blog posts on popular niche sites and connecting them or linking them on your social media network profile will get more people interested to follow your page because it sends them a clear message that you do not just sell your brand, but you can share valuable information to all your followers. Having popular sites have your content posted on their site would establish business and brand credibility. More people clicking through the links in your blog post would mean more followers and this would really be good to your business as you are getting more people interested in your brand.
Generate network-specific landing pages
Creating a landing page on your business site for people who visit your social media page and linking the pages to your other social; media bios would be one of the best steps making more people aware about your brand. Although it would generate only marginal number of followers, it would help in driving more traffic on your business website and would definitely augment conversions.
Entice people with incentives
One of the best ways to attract the attention of most web visitors is by offering them with incentives if they follow your social media profile, like and share your posts. People are in the craze of what discounts, freebies and coupons they could get when they follow your page. This is a surefire way to encourage more people to follow you, but don't make the offers scammy and be true to all your offers. Make claiming of these incentives and offers easy otherwise people would lose interest and they would think that the offer is only a scam to get them to follow your page.
There are probably a hundred more ways to increase the number of followers for a business' social media page, but these are the proven effective ways that have been used by most successful businesses all over the world. Social media platforms are truly very popular venues to establish brand credibility and presence; and the dramatic increase in the number of reach would open up a pool of possibilities for sale and thereby revving up the business' revenue.
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