Top 4 tips to grow your social media followers organically

So you’ve set up social media accounts, you’ve set your profile picture and you’ve created a clever content plan. But who’s going to see any of it? There’s no point having great content if no-one’s going to see it, you need followers (fans, connections etc.) to make social media a useful marketing tool for your business. Check out our top 4 tips for increasing your social media followers organically.

1. Promote your social media presence. This means everywhere, on your website, in emails (perhaps your signature), on your business card, in printed marketing material, on the wall of your business, you get the picture. Make sure you’re social media icons aren’t hidden away somewhere in your website, make them visible so that people can easily find their way to your profiles. Also make sure you include links to them in the “Contact” section. If people are choosing to find out how to communicate with you, these are really easy ways for them to do so and another way for you to increase followers. Include your social media links in email marketing/e-newsletters, either as icons or occasionally directly encouraging your subscribers to follow you – don’t be too pushy and sales-like, but the odd push doesn’t hurt.
2. Use your accounts and interact with other people and businesses. Start by following other people and businesses, you’ll be surprised at how this prompts people to follow you (particularly on Twitter). Then start talking to them all, the more you interact with people and show that you have something relevant to bring, the more likely they’ll be to follow you. An easy way to do this on Twitter is by join in on particular hashtags which group conversations.
3. Get people sharing your content. If you create great shareable content then people will share it, this increases your organic reach across social media channels and increases awareness of your brand and social media pages. And make sure that you add social share buttons to everything – blog posts, emails, useful information! If people can easily share your content then that increases your reach again, and if people like the content that they see shared then they’re more likely to think about following you as well.
4. Offer incentives. If you’re keen to quickly increase your followers at the start then you could think about offering an incentive to new followers. This can be in the form of competitions, voucher codes, discounts, bonuses… Apparently 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive content from your business, so give it to them! It doesn’t have to be continuously, but maybe a competition once a month, a seasonal discount code. And to help your follower numbers, make sure that people have to like your page or follow you to qualify for the offer.

There’s no doubt that increasing your followers organically takes work. However, remember that it’s the quality of followers that matters rather than quantity. This is particularly true of Facebook because the more engaged your followers are with your content (i.e. sharing, liking, commenting and clicking through) then the better reach it gets with your network as Facebook is making it harder and harder for your content to be seen organically (as a business page).

*By followers we mean fans, connections, pinners etc. Each channel has their own way of describing these people, but we’ve used followers to keep it simple.