In recent years, social media has grown to become a powerful tool for individuals, brands, organizations, and institutions. With an engaging following, brands can effectively create awareness for new products and services, campaigns, and initiatives, which leads to direct sales. It also gives room for customer feedback as well as interactions necessary for customer retention, building brand loyalty, and content marketing. You can put in a lot of time and effort into creating quality content, but if you don’t reach enough people, the chances of the campaign’s success is very slim. That said, here are some key ways for individuals and brands to build a loyal and engaging social media audience.
1. Have a plan and strategize
Just like every business activity, the first step towards success is planning. This offers you a chance to outline who your target audience is and strategize how to reach them. This will save from the stress of publishing irrelevant content, which will yield little engagement. Figuring out who your audience is means you get to understand their interests and post to meet them. A successful social media strategy leads to even faster audience building and business growth.
2. Optimize your profile and banners
Your profile banners and photos are some elements of your social profile that attract the most attention and views. And, almost everyone who clicks the like or follow button will most likely check the profile before making that decision. Therefore, regularly updating your photo covers and banners is a way of generating interest and curiosity among social media users. Social media is visually driven, so use this to your advantage and showcase your work’s impact and the stories of those who benefit from your services. Also, make sure you include keywords related to your niche in your page bio as they are a great source of audience reach. With platforms like Twitter and Facebook, it is advised to consider changing your cover photo at least once a month. The cover photos should highlight your work, and don’t forget to add a suitable caption too.
3. Add visuals to every post if necessary
As stated earlier, social media is visually driven. Statistics have proven that content with images and videos have over 90% chance of views and engagements. Therefore, posts with relevant and quality images are more likely to be shared, thereby increasing the chances of becoming high-performing content. If it’s possible, create videos and add to text content to maximize your engagements.
4. Be engaging
On most social media platforms, users are notified when they are followed, and it is encouraged to follow accounts that have the audience you are trying to reach. You can follow hashtag trends related to your niche and engage them by liking and commenting on the post and videos. With this, you can follow as many as 5000 people. The moment they are notified, there is a greater chance they will reciprocate it. Use keywords to find people and engage with their posts. Try your best to be consistent, as this is more likely to prove your credibility and authenticity.