The purpose of posting consistently on social media, is to help reach customers who will be interested in purchasing your products or services. There are many aspects to managing social media channels effectively, which include the quality of your content, blogs, graphics and entertaining videos, that help keep your audience interested. Crowd sourcing more customers, means growing your social media followers, to enhance your ability to convert more sales and revenue.
It is important to remember that consumers have millions of businesses, who are vying for their attention on social media. Small business owners who want to grow their audience, must be prepared to allocate even a small amount of budget monthly for pay-per-click advertising, to help grow their ‘likes’ or subscribers on Facebook, and other channels. In this article, we’ll explain several routes and pitfalls to avoid, when growing your online audience.
Social Networks That Are ‘Follow Friendly’
The services we provide in two of our flat-fee business bundles, allows for organic qualified following of potential customers in your area, or niche. For instance, if you operate a medical practice in a small town, our team will use LinkedIn and Twitter to actively follow other businesses and consumers, within a ten-mile radius of your business.
Organic following is hand selecting people one at a time, to learn more about your business, by inviting them to follow you on one or more social network. Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as Instagram are ‘follow friendly’ networks that allow us to invite consumers on mass, to learn about your business. As long as we are posting regularly in these networks, there are few limitations, and this is how we work to organically grow your audience weekly.
Facebook is a social network that unfortunately, does not allow for following for marketing purposes. Your Facebook business page cannot indiscriminately follow someone, even if they have liked your post. We can encourage people through creative promotions and contests, to subscribe to your page (and remain connected) by offering incentives and engaging content.
Some Businesses Buy Followers
Have you ever taken a closer look at competitors, who have a huge social media following on Facebook or Twitter? Sometimes it can seem like they gained hundreds of thousands of followers, virtually overnight, and it doesn’t quite make sense.
There are many international services that sell followers. For a nominal amount of money, you can add up to 5,000 followers or more to your Facebook page. On the surface, that sounds like an easy and affordable way to make your business look bigger, in terms of audience and success on social. It’s a trap that a lot of small business owners fall into, that creates other problems in the future.
Why Buying Followers is a Bad Idea
The short route is not always the best options, for small businesses. You are counting on growing your online audience to boost sales, foot traffic and e-commerce. If you are marketing to people who will never buy your product, or visit your store, it’s not an investment; it’s a waste of time.
First, it is against the terms of service (TOS) for Facebook and any other social media network, to purchase followers. Social media networks want their engagement to be real people, sharing and communicating, and not a bunch of ‘fake accounts’. A social network can ban your page, if they suspect that you are violating the TOS pertaining to bought followers. Not only do you lose your page name, but also any organic followers that you gained through natural promotion.
The second issue is value. Many fake accounts and bought followers are from countries like India, Thailand, the Philippines and middle eastern countries. While some of the accounts may be linked to a real person, what economic benefit does your local business or service offer someone, who lives overseas? Accounts that have illegally purchased off-shore followers, are also inundated with spam comments (in multiple languages) that deter and even discourage local consumers from engaging or commenting on posts.
Taking a Quality Organic Approach to Growing Followers
The more followers you have on social media, the better you build an effective audience, who can share your content and information about your products and services. Getting followers on each social media channel is an important part of digital marketing, but with some creativity, and advertising budget, it can be done in a way that is true to your brand. A method that will help you convert sales and revenue.
Our tips and methods for growing organic followers includes:
- Promotions, special coupons and incentives.
- Contests and give-away’s involving products or merchandise.
- Pay-per-click targeted advertising, to customers in your local area.
Our small and big business bundles, include expert consultation and tools, to help you grow your online audience. You will work with one of our certified marketing managers, to help express your brand, and engage your customers, with creative promotional ideas, social media applications, contests and other proven methods.
Working with the Social Me Multimedia creative marketing team, is like having the benefit of a full-time digital marketing manager on staff, without the expense of a full-time salary. Get the competitive advantage of growing your small or medium sized business through online marketing, and let us help you realize your brand objectives through professional, outsourced community management, social media and content marketing.
