Social media marketing is an effective digital marketing strategy for businesses to build brand awareness and gain new market exposure. Social media platforms are cost-effective channels for businesses to expand their follower base, acquire new prospects, and nurture existing customers. Let’s discuss creative social media strategies to market to your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and win more followers.
Top 15 Social Media Marketing Strategies on How to Increase Social Media Followers
#1. Participate in Community Conversations on Social Media
Actively participate in online groups by finding communities relevant to your business segment on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. Offer valuable insights by keeping constructive communication going with members. Give helpful and genuine responses to support the communities. These are excellent opportunities to gain leads and referrals while expanding market reach.
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#2. Offer Exclusive Social Media Marketing Promotions
Incentivize your social media followers with exclusive discounts and promotions. Even if your business is not product-based, there are perks to offer followers as part of an ongoing social media marketing campaign. Take advantage of analytics data such as Facebook Insights to better strategize social media promotions based on your follower demographics, trends, and preferences.
Examples of Exclusive Social Media Marketing Promotions
- Follow us on social media and be the first to know about our 40% off summer sale.
- Get a $10 off coupon by following us on social media.
- Follow us on social media to claim your free 30-day trial.
#3. Run Cross-Platform Social Media Marketing Promotions
Run the same promotion across all social media platforms or tailor different campaigns for each social network. Take it one step further by cross-promoting content on different social media accounts.
Example of Cross-Platform Social Media Marketing Promotions
For example, Share a Facebook post on Instagram and ask your Instagram followers to like your Facebook page.
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Use Advanced Social Media Tools to Manage Cross-Platform Promotions
Use advanced social media management tools like Hootsuite to plan, schedule, and push social posts simultaneously across multiple platforms. Hootsuite provides Google Analytics integration, comprehensive trend data, and detailed social media visitor engagement reports. Take advantage of these insights and save time by tackling social media marketing as one effortless operation.
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#4. Host Social Media Marketing Contest with Prizes
Running a contest is a great way to gain followers through incentive offerings. With contests, there is the added value of improved visitor engagement and brand awareness. You also have the opportunity to ask participants to share their user experience and provide feedback on products or services as part of the contest criteria. Hosting a contest is a quick win-win strategy to receive more traction on social media and promote brand loyalty by giving back to the customer base.
#5. Take Advantage of Social Media Marketing Holiday Promotions
Holiday promotions boost sales and attract new followers on social media. They are great opportunities for businesses to be creative with content and expand into new markets. Make every holiday sale a conversation starter on social media. Tag the relevant event or holiday to receive extra exposure. Keep the social campaigns relatable to the core audience.
Learn more about social media advertising strategy to drive lead generation.
#6. Promote Website Content on Social Media
Content is the core of social media marketing because engaging content creates conversation. The success of a social media post is measured by its ability to capture interest and turn it into a lead or a sales conversion. Bring the social media post engagement traffic back to the website by linking relevant and informative content, which helps visitors better understand the product, service, and brand value.
Learn more about how to optimize content for better website conversion.
#7. Share Trending Topics on Social Media
Specific topics generate more engagement on social media based on your unique business segment. Use tools like Google Trends and Hootsuite to identify trending topics that work well within your niche. Turn on notifications for trends gaining momentum in Hootsuite and be the first to share the news.
Social media tools also provide advanced analytics to improve market research and gain visitor insights that enhance social media engagement results. As your business gains more visibility and authority, the shared content will receive more engagement.
#8. Share Peer Content on Social Media
Sharing peer content is another effective technique to gain more social media followers. Sharing insightful posts from other authoritative leaders in your industry benefits your followers by giving them a fresh take on a topic.
Include constructive opinions and sentiments when reposting and referencing someone else’s content, and give full credit to the author. Observe a higher chance of receiving shares and follows when you genuinely interact with other industry leaders on social media.
#9. Include Memorable Visuals on Social Media Marketing Posts
According to Hubspot, social media posts with visuals are the most widely used content that increases visitor engagement. Creative visuals, such as photos and videos, are more effective in getting your message across to an audience than text-only content. Unique visuals enhance user experience. Visitors are more likely to resonate and share the content that catches their attention.
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#10. Add Charts and Infographics in Social Media Marketing Content
Charts and infographics are compelling visual aids to present a topic on social media expressively. Convert any text or data content into visual presentations with tools like Adobe Illustrator. Infographics and charts work exceptionally well on Pinterest and LinkedIn to improve social media visitor engagement.
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#11. Share Short Videos in Social Media Marketing Posts
Videos have become digital marketers’ ideal choice for product and service demos as they effectively deliver show-and-tell content. According to Adobe, 51.9% of marketing professionals worldwide believe videos are the content with the best ROI (Return on Investment). Retailers also observe a 40% increase in purchases as a result of having videos. Instagram is an example of social media success with short video content.
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#12. Create Call-to-Actions on Social Media
Call-to-actions make conversion happen. The action ranges from making a purchase, subscribing to newsletters, taking a survey, or visiting a specific landing page. The call-to-action itself can be in the form of text links, buttons, or URL-embedded images. One of the best strategies to get more followers with call-to-action is to make the website content sharable on social media with one click.
Free apps like Social Snap can be easily plugged into any CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, which toggles social media icons on every webpage, allowing content sharing to social media platforms with a single click.
#13. Update the Cover Page on Social Media Profiles
Social media profile’s often neglected cover page image is an excellent space to improve branding. It is usually the first visual visitors see when they land on a social media page.
According to Xerox, color improves brand recognition and gains leadership by up to 80%, making an impression 39% more memorable. So, use colorful and captivating visuals as the cover page image that represents your brand. Use this space to showcase the latest promotions, as it is the perfect top-position marketing real estate to build brand awareness.
#14. Promote Social Media Following Through Email Campaigns
Promoting social media profiles through email campaigns is another effective way to encourage existing customers to follow your brand on social media.
Examples of Different Types of Email Communication to Promote Social Media Following
- Weekly campaign emails
- Thank you emails
- Auto response emails
Example of an Incentivizing Email Campaign to Drive Social Media Following
Make it even more enticing for customers to follow your brand on social media by throwing in an incentive. For example, create an email campaign with an exclusive promotion of “10% off when you follow us on Instagram!”
#15. Identify the Best Time to Post on Social Media
Is Friday better than Wednesday to post on social media? Should you post at 8 am or 8 pm? The answer is different for every business and industry. Predicting the best post timing that creates the most engagement depends on the analytics data.
Timing your social media posts opens up more opportunities to gain followers. Use in-app analytics like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics to identify the peak hours with the most active visitors on your website and social media pages. Consider combining the data with Hootsuite Insight and the post scheduling function to push out new content during the peak activity hours.
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