How to Get More Followers and Develop Content

When we talk to business owners about their social media marketing strategy, one of the first things they ask is, “Well how do I get followers?” Short story, be consistent and post valuable content for your audience. However, that’s a little bit easier said than done. We’ve outlined a few tactics you can use to develop a larger, more engaged audience.

Cross-promote and create a dedicated hashtag. 

Let people know where they can find you on every single platform and vary the content. You don’t want to post the same thing on Instagram and Facebook or your customers won’t follow you in both places. Make sure you outline where else your customers can find you online and the benefit they will receive when they follow you there. For example, you might do Facebook Live videos every Thursday that you don’t do on Instagram. Communicate that by cross-promoting your pages.

To more easily and consistently cross-promote your brand, you may choose to use a dedicated hashtag that can be used across any social media platform to find your content. Promote it in-store, on all your posts, and maybe even integrate it with your packaging.

Participate in larger conversations and utilize popular hashtags. 

If you want to have engaged followers, then be engaging! I can guarantee right now there is a place on social media right now where a bunch of your target audience are having a conversation about a topic in which you are an expert. Participate in these conversations and establish yourself as an expert in your area, people will naturally engage with your brand moving forward for more information.

These conversations will likely be happening in popular hashtags related to your industry. Let’s say for example that you run a health and supplement store and you are looking for more engaged followers for your brand. Checking out popular hashtags that relate to supplements, specific health issues, or even the general health hashtag to see what your potential audience is talking about. This will allow you to engage with these conversations, but also see what your potential customers are talking about on a regular basis so that you can more custom tailor your content.

Don’t forget about the importance of story-telling. 

Tell your customers and your potential audience about the experience they can have with your product. Do you own a clothing brand? Show your audience pictures of people wearing your pieces to events. Still stuck at home? Host an online-only party on Zoom for customers who have bought something from you in the past 4-5 months.

Show your audience the experience they can have with your product and encourage them to share their experience. Encourage them to show how happy your product made them and this will be a compelling way to sell products and build your brand without needing to spend ages generating content.

Does influencer marketing work for your brand?

Social media is a little bit like high school. If you happen to be friends with someone popular, you in turn gain some popularity by proxy. This is basically how influencer marketing works.

This is a bit of a difficult thing to navigate for small businesses, because oftentimes smaller businesses don’t have excess stock that they can give away freely to someone for an Instagram post. Look to your customers first and ask them to tag your brand in their photos when they wear your products or if they happen to use them.

If this doesn’t create traction for your business, look to your local area and see if there is anyone local to you that may have a larger than average following. Reach out to them and maybe provide a discount, encourage them to post their honest reaction. Ask for the analytics from the post and watch your profile to see if there is a jump in engagement.

Get Local and Use Geotags.

Capitalize on building a local audience and start adding geotags to your posts. Tagging your location is a great way to be seen by those who may not be searching hashtags, but are still interested in your content. Focus on tagging landmarks, the overall city, the county/region, and your store in your geotags. It doesn’t matter if that’s where the photo was taken, that’s the audience that you want to reach.

Most importantly, develop a strategy and stay consistent.

The worst thing you can do to create a lasting Instagram presence is to enact any of these strategies and then abandon them right after. Nothing in social media works if you don’t stay consistent and develop a strategy. You may not see it paying off right away, but consistency always creates progress. Stay the course!

But how do I create meaningful content?

Now that is a good question.

At Grizzly Marketing, we work off a content development strategy that was created by GaryVee. He has a whole whitepaper available for download that outlines their complete content development strategy. Now keep in mind, he runs a PR and Marketing firm that develops content for famous clients. He has a whole team at his disposal that do nothing but create and repurpose content for social media.

I’m guessing you likely don’t have the same team available to you. 

But, the concept is actually a great way to create meaningful content that drives visitors back to your website and different social media pages.

It all starts with one piece of Keystone Content. An example of Keystone Content could be a blog that you wrote to educate your customers about what your products are, or a promo video for a new line that is coming out this season. This piece of content should be posted somewhere on your website, so that all of your effort is being put into driving potential customers to somewhere they can make a purchasing decision. We think that you should post new Keystone Content at least once a month.

From this piece of Keystone Content, you will create small pieces of what Gary calls Microcontent. This Microcontent is based entirely on this piece of Keystone Content and should always include a link back to the website. Microcontent can be short clips from a longer video, quotes pulled from a blog, tweets that relate to blog content, screenshots of the Tweets shared to stories, memes made based on the main content, videos relating back to the Keystone Content… The list goes on.

Each of these pieces of Microcontent should be automated and go out on each profile at least five times a week. See what your engagement is like for each post and adjust post times each week. See what piece of Microcontent work best based on your website or social media analytics and then do more of that!