There are ways to avoid spending all day on social media while still making your online presence felt
Many entrepreneurs are curious of how social media megastars build up their following. After all, you probably want to be an influencer yourself.
Ultimately, an influencer with a strong social media following is someone who the fans and followers look toward for inspiration and knowledge in a certain subject area. They motivate and provide expertise.
In this article, I’ll provide five tactics that some of the top social media influencers use online to get massive followings.
Strap yourselves in because this post has tactics you will want to put into place right away.
Utilise tools and software
Most people with hundreds of thousands of followers didn’t amass such a following simply by spending hours after hours on different platforms.
Instead, they’ve researched and found tools and/or software that will help them grow their followings. There are two main areas of focus for tools in social media, and they both deal with automation or analytics.
Analytics are huge, as these platforms allow a user like you to get stats about different social media accounts. These are useful as they provide data on the best time to post, which posts get the most shares, and what kinds of posts elicit the most positive response from an audience.
A really great Instagram tool I recommend is Squarelovin. It allows people to dissect an Instagram account, showing what is working and what is not. One of the features that I find most useful is the ability to see which posts have received the most likes and comments.
Also Read: 3 main reasons why your social media ads failed (and how to fix them)
This information gives great insight into understanding what the audience engages with the most. This is important because its essential to give the audience the content that they want, not what you want.
The next tool that I want to share generates results immediately. When I used it, I increased engagement within minutes. The tool is IFTTT. It basically connects all the most popular apps like Facebook and Twitter.
There are literally hundreds of different ‘recipes’, as they are called, that connect apps to one another.
IFTTT connects my Instagram account to my LinkedIn account. Now everytime I post a new photo on Instagram, it will automatically post on LinkedIn. With my first post using IFTTT, I had likes and comments on LinkedIn in a matter of a few minutes. All of this was done automatically and increased my engagement instantly.
This tool comes highly recommended not only by myself, but other influencers, as well. This is a must have to become a social media megastar.
Network with influencers
One of the most effective ways to gain a massive social media following is to connect with influencers people follow and admire.
By commenting on their posts, sharing their tweets, and engaging them in conversation online, it’s inevitable that your own profile will get more eyeballs.
Think of it this way. In order to get noticed, its essential to network with the right people online. Pick three to five influencers, and engage with their content. Write comments, engage their community, and don’t be afraid to ask them questions.
By doing this you can put yourself and your profile on the radar of the influencer and their followers. This visibility will land a bigger following but also pave the way toward becoming an influencer.
Get noticed by blogging
Something that is often overlooked when it comes to building a social media following is blogging.
Everyone thinks entrepreneurs just need to put out awesome content and the followers will come. One way I’ve found to really kickstart this is through blogging on my own website, but also becoming a contributor on other platforms.
This allows my name and social accounts to be noticed around various websites online. By doing this, founders can start to gain a reputation within the industry, which is a must for growing a following.
If you aren’t blogging yet, I highly recommend it. Start small like once a week until you start getting a hang of writing consistently. Then bump it up to twice per week.
The more content you put out online, the more likely you are to gain a bigger social media following.
Create videos
What I want you to do now is go look at the profiles of the three to five influencers I mentioned in tactic number two. Go look at their accounts and tell me if you see them using videos.
My guess is that at least four out of the five people are utilizing video in some way.
Now, go look at Facebook. Count how many posts have videos compared to just pictures or written posts. Videos abound everywhere.
When it comes to following someone online, people like to put a face to a name. Influencers who utilize video are showing their followers that they are human and not some robot.
People like following other people. Even more, they like following people who are both real and familiar.
Facebook presents a massive opportunity to jump on the video sharing train.
Ask the audience what they would like learn. This will be a great way to get some ideas about what kinds of videos to record.
After a couple times, it becomes second nature to post videos more often.
I cannot stress enough, now is the time to start posting videos.
Be consistent
Clinton Senkow, Chief Operating Officer at rapidly growing startup influencive had this to say on the topic: “Growing a social media following is similar to becoming a professional athlete. You need to put in the time and effort everyday if you ever want the results you seek.”
Every tactic up until this point is useless unless implemented consistently. All the most iconic triumphs in life require consistency.
Whether that is becoming a professional athlete, studying to become a doctor, or building a business, practice and improve everyday to achieve the desired results.
Also Read: How social media is changing entrepreneurship
The same can be said for growing social media. Post consistently on the networks that mean the most to you.
Followers need to be able to count on you for their daily dose of inspiration, or guidance on a certain subject.
Now that you have five solid tactics to boost your social media following, it’s up to you to implement them. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Start implementing a couple of the tactics I mentioned above right now.
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This article was originally published on Entrepreneur.com.
Copyright: curvabezier / 123RF Stock Photo
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