Tips for growing your social media following
Most importantly, follower numbers aren’t everything. You could have millions of followers, but if they are not engaged with your content, they are unlikely to support you through making a donation, purchasing a product or using a service.
If you’re starting from scratch, those first few followers are critical. Whether your subsequent growth comes organically or through paid advertising, your first followers will have a big impact on who comes next.
Target Audience
Have a clear idea in your mind about who your target audience/s are. What are their demographics? What might their lifestyle be like?
Finding your first few followers
The key to starting your following - and to growing it - is to be in the places where your target audiences are. This could be on social media, but you can also grow your social media following through speaking at events that your audience are participating in, gaining PR coverage in the publications they read or having branded information in the places they are likely to visit. Make sure you are mentioning that you’re on social media all the time.
A word on the follow/follow back strategy. Particularly on Instagram and Twitter, there is a lot of advice about following relevant people so that they follow you back. While this can be effective at picking up followers, you have to think about their motivation. They followed you because you followed them, not because they heard about what you do and were so motivated by it that they wanted to find out more. This makes them less likely to be really engaged in the long run.
And finally on first followers: unless your friends and family fit into your target audience - politely ask them to unfollow.
On Facebook, you will probably be able to find a number of groups where your target audience is hanging out. Join them as your business page and participate in conversations, mentioning what your organisation does when it’s relevant to the conversation.
Once you have a small following, it’s worth setting aside some budget to run a page likes campaign on Facebook. You can very accurately target your audience for a relatively low cost per page like.
Facebook page likes campaign: CASE STUDY
In autumn 2019 we ran a Facebook ads campaign with a goal of ‘page likes’ to grow awareness and followers for start-up weather app Weather Flare. Before running the campaign, the page had 66 likes and this grew to 2,775 at a cost of £0.22 per page like. (cost per page like can vary significantly depending on who you are targeting)
Weather Flare is a smart weather app. Teach the app how the weather affects you and get a real-time, personalised weather forecast. Weather Flare can predict your ‘good’, ‘bearable’ or ‘bad’ days up to 5 days in advance - that’s the smart bit. It’s a game-changer for people with flare conditions like asthma or arthritis that can be triggered by the weather.
The campaign targeted one cold audience who matched the audience demographics, behaviours and interests. It also re-targeted a second audience who had been Facebook, Instagram or website visitors.
For the creative, I used animated videos that had already been commissioned by Weather Flare, testing a longer and shorter version. The shorter version outperformed the longer version.
The caption talked about the connection between the weather and chronic conditions, introduced the Weather Flare app and asked people to be part of the community or even become a beta tester/support the crowdfunding campaign.
One of the best ways to grow your Twitter following is to spend time joining relevant conversations, such as Twitter chats. There are hundreds of regular chats taking place all the time - do some research to see if there is a chat you could join. You could even consider launching your own.
Competitions and giveaways can be a nice way to boost follower numbers on Instagram. Choose a prize that is really relevant to your target audience and try to collaborate with the company or individual who has created the prize. If you’re a charity or business for good, being associated with you is a positive for brands. Be sure to ask entrants to like the post, follow you and tag a friend to spread the word about the competition and your Instagram account organically. You’ll need to create some terms and conditions for the competition.
The best way to make your LinkedIn business page more visible is to have people in your team share your content via their personal pages. However, they will need to make time for connecting with people in your target audience first. LinkedIn is most effective for organisations that are working business to business as those contacts are easier to find and connect with.
Growing well
It is possible to grow your following using a combination of organic and paid techniques, but keeping new followers engaged with your content and the work of your organisation is vital. Think really carefully about how you will gather those first few followers so that you can be sure that their networks are the right audience.
