As a Your Social Media Expert, I am often asked the question “how do I get more followers?” Individuals and businesses alike want more followers on Instagram and Twitter, Likes to their Facebook page, and connections on LinkedIn. And, unfortunately, we live in a numbers driven society where the number of anything is superficially an indication of expertise.
Given the competive nature of digital advertising, it is critical to have people following your accounts. So here are my best tips to getting more authentic followers:
- Do not ever pay for followers. Yes, it is true, there are plenty of services that will sell you followers, you can even find them on ebay. You give them a fee and within an hour an additional 10,000 followers appear on your Instagram or Twitter account or they have liked your Facebook page. The problem is these accounts are bot services and the social media platforms are onto the scam. They will eventually be removed from your account or your account may be suspended since you used the service. Also, you are paying to look good but these bot accounts are never going to actually engage with your content so you will look silly. Lastly, these bot accounts will do nothing for your business.
- Look for accounts for engagement, followers, and regular posting. When you first start to build any social media profile you will need to hunt and peck around to find individuals to follow. You might think it is a good idea to follow accounts with a large following. But, are they ever going to engage with you? Look for accounts that will probably engage with you – these are smaller accounts that are reguarly posting and are following others.
- Look for your ideal clients. I often try to follow small business owners and professional services (attorneys and accountants). I follow the larger accounts of celebrities and brands I am interested in, but most of my connecting is to accounts of ideal clients and others in my spaces of business.
- Make sure your social media profiles are well positioned and correctly linked on your website, your email signature, other social media accounts and in any bios you have out on the internet.
- Share great content. This is sort of a no-brainer, right? Sharing great content gets more engagement and is then shown to larger audiences.
- The importance of hashtags can not be understated – you want to put in no more than 10 hashtags to a post and include hashtags that relate to the content. Do not just focus on branded and/or popular hashtags. It takes research and testing to really understand the best hashtags to use for your particular posts. Note: do not just use the same hashtags over and over again.
Getting followers should be a goal of your social media plan but really a byproduct of a fantastic strategy. Need help? I am happy to answer your questions.
