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Trying to organically grow social media followers can be a tricky task, but buying followers isn't the answer! Buying followers is a fruitless endeavour as they are most likely inactive users or bots who won't engage with your posts. Your posts won't show up on Explore pages or your real customer's newsfeeds, skewing your metrics and limiting your engagement.
Instead, keep your money in your pocket and read our easy 10 step guide on increasing social media followers without buying them.
No. 1 Optimise Your Instagram Account
How you present yourself on social media is as crucial as structuring your website. You'll gain more social media followers if your account looks professional and is optimised to be user friendly. Luckily for you, we're already written a step by step guide to optimising your Instagram bio.
No. 2 Consistent Content
You may have batted off your wannabe influencer friends who claim 'Wednesday at 11 am' is the prime time to post, but for all their narcissism, they're actually onto something! The data tells us that:
- The prime time to post is Wednesday at 11 am!
- If you're looking for the highest engagement, Tuesdays are your friend
- Monday-Friday between 10 am and 3 pm is where you'll get the most consistent engagement
No. 3 Plan Your Content
Using a content planning tool like Buffer is a great way to get your content organised and boxed off, leaving you more time for other pressing business issues.
Planning your content has three significant benefits:
- It is much more efficient to plan your content. You can use the time saved on planning your content out in advance to better your business in other ways.
- It looks more professional. It looks super unprofessional when ad hoc content comes out on different social channels on different days or weeks, or months. This lack of organisation will lead customers will assume you are untrustworthy and affect your reputation.
- It allows the whole team to be informed and on the same page. No more "no one told me" or team members feeling confused, you know what's happening next month, and you can all get prepared towards a clear and consistent goal.
No. 4 Use Your Allies
Reach out to customers and brand advocates and ask them to post on your behalf. This will:
- Introduce your brand to a new potential customer base. You'll reach your follower's audience, who are likely to be interested in similar things!
- Build your reputation. It embeds a sense of trust in customers minds when they see people/companies posting organically rather than a sponsored post.
No. 5 Run Competitions
Hosting competitions is an excellent way to increase your reach and introduce new customers to your brand. It may be helpful to look up some competition FAQs.
No. 6 Add Your Social Buttons
Linking your social accounts to your website (and vice versa) is a must for all businesses. Linking your accounts improves the user experience and the chances of making a conversion.
For new business owners who lack web dev experience, here is a guide on how to add this on WordPress and Shopify.
No. 7 Interact with Your Customers
When customers feel valued by a company, they are more likely to make a purchase and invest in your brand. Building up brand loyalty is important because:
- It spreads positive word of mouth brand awareness.
- Leads to repeat custom.
- Forms a willingness to try new products.
What are good ways to interact with your customers?
- Polls
- Live Videos
- Q&As
- Giveaways
- User-Generated Content
No. 8 The Right Hashtags
Using hashtags is a great way to help new customers discover your brand - but it's essential to use the right ones.
Avoid using hashtags that are overpopulated. If lots of people are using the same hashtag daily, your post will likely get lost in the crowd, especially if you're a small business.
Instead, try to find unique hashtags that your target audience will check. It's better to be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around.
No. 9 Define Your Target Audience
Who are you looking to attract?
If you don't know the answer to this question, you're never going to achieve your goals! Finding the correct answer can be difficult. You may think you want to attract a specific demographic, but in reality, your brand may be suitable for a wide range of audiences, and you could be isolating them.
How do I find my target audience?
- Look at your current follows. What type of profiles currently follow you?
- Look at who is following your competitors.
- Define who your audience isn't.
Create some personas. If you have a broad customer base and are unsure how to reach different segments, this is an exercise to work out how best to reach them with your content.
No. 10 Learn from Your Analytics
Check the analytics available to you!
Instagram Insights: business accounts can attain a host of data. Discover who you're reaching and what content is getting good engagement and push your future content in that direction. Finding out this information is more helpful than having the most social media followers.
Meta Business Suite for Facebook: allows businesses to see what content is hitting and underperforming. Having the most followers on Facebook doesn't mean anything if they aren't interacting with your content. Once you know what content is gaining traction, you can replicate this in the future and use it to increase your social media followers.
Important: Keep revising this! Just because something is performing well one month doesn't necessarily mean that that type of content will be seeing the same results in three months.
Also, it's crucial to retain the social media followers you already have, rather than just focusing on growth. After all, these are free social followers, and they deserve your investment.
Hopefully, this guide will help grow your brand without needing to buy social media followers! If you'd like to hear more about how DMT assist your business with web development or any of our other digital marketing services, get in touch.
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