Building greater influence on social media is more about giving back to your customers than promoting your product or service. It’s about building relationships and showing potential customers that you are providing them with more than just a product or service. You need to show them that you want to help.
Helping your potential clients does not always mean finding ways that your product or service can assist them. It can be as simple as sharing business, marketing, or online expertise that has nothing to do with what you sell or promote. It’s about building brand loyalty and trust between your customers and yourself. Doing this can put your brand at the top of their mind when they are looking for the types of products you sell or the services you provide. Telsec Business Centres rarely creates posts about its office space options or its virtual office products. Nevertheless, it has managed to strengthen its social influence in the online small business community by sharing its business expertise.
Tips for Building Social Media Influence
The influence of social media has exploded over the last decade, making it an excellent resource for businesses to increase their number of supporters. Social media influence is the ability to reach a large audience in your niche and influence their thinking on a subject. Anyone can build their media influence on social media. But it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication, experimentation, and hard work to increase the number of your social media followers and media influence.
The social media landscape changes every day. So, adapting to it is not an option: it’s a requirement. But trying to increase the number of your social media followers and media influence as a new business might be challenging at first. So, how to influence others on social media?
There’s no one way to increase your social media influence. Rather there are several strategies you can implement to help increase it. Below are a few tips to consider when developing your online presence:
Understand your audience
Knowing your audience is key for the success of any marketing campaign or strategy. The same logic applies to increasing the number of your social media followers. Knowing who they are, their demographics and psychographics, what platforms they regularly use, their needs, what they are passionate about, and the type of content they like to see will help you determine which social media platforms to use, when to post content, what type of content to produce, and how to relate to them on a personal level.
You can attract more followers by understanding what they want and need from you and then consistently meeting those needs. Get to know your audience. Conduct surveys, interact with them on their preferred social media platforms, or include a comments section on your website to learn more about them.
Choose the right social media platform
Where and how your potential clients consume news and interact or engage with information is also very important to consider. It is important for any brand or small business to meet their customers where they are getting media influence and engage meaningfully with them through the channels that they use. One of the first decisions you have to make is choosing which social media platform to use. Consider your target audience and which social media platforms draw their attention the most.
Different platforms have different capabilities in terms of posting features, advertising, and engagement opportunities. Choosing a platform that meets your audience’s preferences as well as your own needs is a great way to increase the number of your social media followers. The platform you choose (or do not choose) will affect your ability to reach the people you want to reach.
Posting Good Content
As discussed above, one of the most important things to do when trying to increase social media followers or gain media influence over others is to understand your audience and the type of content that appeals to them. Study the type of content on influential accounts in your niche that is already getting a lot of interaction to learn more about the things that matter to your followers and create content that aligns with what they value.
At the end of the day, your media influence and the number of social media followers you have depends on whether or not people want to view or read your content. Great content gets noticed, so be sure to make yours engaging. Start with what you know and establish yourself as an expert on it.
Choose the Right Content Type
Always remember that the format of your posts is just as important as their content. Different social media platforms specialize in different content types. As such there are a wide variety of formats to choose from including infographics, videos, blog posts, quotes, photos, diagrams, links, and more. The format you choose will depend on the content you produce, your skill level, and your audience, but you want to choose the format that is most appealing to your social media followers.
Follow Other Relevant Social Media Profiles
Consistently creating original, engaging, and authentic content is very difficult to do. An alternative to this is sharing amazing content from other relevant brands in your industry or niche.
Increasing the number of people you follow will make you seem more relatable, approachable, and trustworthy. Zero following on a social media profile reflects poorly on you. People are more willing to follow others if they are following someone they know. Moreover, following other social media accounts can help you establish relationships with other businesses that lead to new collaborations. They may follow you back and share your posts with their followers thereby extending your social media influence.
The goal is to find other brands with similar audiences you can engage with. Do your research and learn who and where the other influencers are, and get involved in those online groups and communities. Demonstrate within those places that you are not just there to promote your product or service, but that you want to be involved as well. Share these other brands’ posts and contribute to the ongoing conversations with meaningful comments of your own to increase your brand’s visibility and gain social media followers.
Discover the Optimal Times to Post Content
When you post your content is just as important as what you post. Posting content at the optimal time when your followers and target audience are most likely to see it ensures that you are reaching as much of your potential audience as you can.
When considering where you will gain more influence on social media, you have to think about where and when you will have the most influence on your target audience. Ask yourself: what’s the best time and day to publish posts? Do they consume social information when they are working at their office, at home, or even on the road? The answer will depend on your industry, the platform you are using, and your audience. Do your research to determine the ideal time to post content for your platform and specific niche. Target your social media interactions for when you are most likely to engage potential clients while getting your message to the specific people you want to reach.
For example, if you are trying to build your social media influence on other business owners, you are more likely to get their attention early in the day when they are doing their business’ social media. If your intended area of influence is geared towards consumer products or services, your postings should be later in the day or possibly in the evening.
Actively Engage with Followers Online
Besides just posting on your social media pages, you have to engage your potential audience in other ways. Actively engaging with your followers on social media is a great way to establish a personal connection with them and increase your influence. The more active you are on social media networks, the more influence you will gain.
Post great content. Share posts from other brands that you find inspiring. Like, comment, and reply to posts from other brands. Share posts that mention your brand directly to show your appreciation and respect to those who choose to support you. Answer your followers’ questions, comment on their posts, and ask them questions to show them that you are listening and value their opinions.
Be Consistent
Consistently posting good content on your social media will increase audience engagement, meaning you will be able to reach more people. However, the quality of the content still needs to be good. It’s a balancing act between consistency and value. If you consistently post good, helpful and actionable content, your followers will be more likely to engage with it. By contrast, if you post consistently, but your followers don’t find it helpful, inspiring, or actionable they won’t engage with it. So aim to be consistent by posting at least once a day, but no more than twice, for optimal engagement. And always remember to prioritize great content. It’s more about quality than quantity.
Use Paid Advertisements
Setting aside even a small budget to sponsor paid advertisements can help increase your business’ presence, reach a broader audience, and establish a following. Determine how much you are willing and able to spend towards different social media platforms. Then decide which of your posts you think is your best and pay to have them advertised on these platforms. Though it will cost you, these advertisements can help you gain more followers and, by extension, help your business grow. You may also consider hiring influencers to help promote your brand on social media.
There’s no single, right way to increase your social media influence. It all depends on you, the product or service you are promoting, your brand, and your audience. Every business will have a unique way to build their social media presence. It’s all about finding your own unique identity and building a social media presence around it. It will more than likely involve trial and error. But with determination, hard work, and a little experimentation, you can build your social media influence and increase your following.
Telsec is ultimately in the business of helping other small businesses. We want to be known as the place where small businesses can grow. We aim to be there to support small business owners every step of the way by sharing our expertise and industry knowledge as well as providing affordable office space rentals, meeting rooms, and virtual offices.