Shortcuts

1. Make your brand worth following

2. Seek out other brands and influencers

3. Make it easy to find your content

4. Post consistently, but don't spam

5. Analyze your data

6. Find your tribe

7. Engage with your audience

8. Use advertising

Nowadays, small businesses need to be online with a website and on social media with several accounts.

Why?

Because that’s where your audience is and therefore where your customers and clients are.

Why do you need to increase social media followers?

The more followers you have, the more people see your incredible business.

If people follow you, it’s because they like what you do or what you offer. Converting sales is so much easier when your audience is already eager to find out more.

So let’s go through 8 proven small business tips to get more social media followers:

1. Make your brand worth following

This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people think just being ‘out there’ is enough to attract followers.

Tease your audience with content that makes them want to click through

Think of the brands you follow and why. Your brand account has to have content that catches a potential follower’s eye and have a lot of things to like and share.

• Make sure your profile is filled out to give you substance and legitimacy.

• Give your brand a story and make it personal. Put your photo in a prominent position.

• Tease your audience with content that makes them want to click through.

2. Seek out other brands and influencers that align with yours and follow them

Don’t do it hoping to get follows back from them. Do it because their followers might follow you as well. You want your brand to be authentic so engage positively with the people and brands that reflect yours.

Like posts that resonate with you, share content that you think your followers will value, and comment where you can. People will be curious about you and go on to follow you.

3. Make it easy for people to find your content

Some people are Instagram addicts, others live on Facebook, some scroll Twitter on their breaks, and some focus on LinkedIn during the week.

So cross-post your content.

Someone may catch you on Facebook and then find you on Instagram because they liked your photos, or they’ll see your business profile on LinkedIn and decide to follow your Twitter handle.

Cast your net wide and post across all platforms, making sure you’ve placed your social media profiles on each platform. It will give you the best chance to get in front of new followers.

4. Post consistently but don’t resort to spam

If you only post once in a while, you quickly become irrelevant and followers don’t need much of a reason to unfollow you when there’s so much choice.

There is no hard-and-fast rule but follow the natural flow of each platform, so for instance Twitter and Instagram turn over content quickly, whereas Facebook and LinkedIn are a little slower and posts can hang around for a while.

Scheduling is a great way to keep your social channels active, so you should definitely try it out!

Some social media management tools have automatic reminders that help you to post consistently. Read more about how to stay active on social media when you are short on time.

In addition to scheduling, you can set up a recurring posts system, which is a massive time saver. You can set certain static posts, such as events or happy hours, to be automatically repeated so that you don't need to think about scheduling or posting them separately for months or even the rest of the year.

Post consistently but don’t resort to spam.

But don’t post poor content, just to try and stay in feeds. It will turn your followers off and tarnish your brand.

5. Analyze your data

This isn’t as technical as it sounds. All you’re looking for is trends.

Find out where your followers are coming from, which posts are trending, and what time your posts are being seen.

Find out where your followers are coming from, which posts are trending, and what time your posts are being seen.

Then you can use your time wisely.

Start posting content that’s similar to your most popular posts, spend more time focusing on the platform where most of your followers are, and schedule posts to be front-and-center at the right time.

6. Find your tribe

Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter (tweet chats) have groups which are basically like-minded brands coming together for support and sharing ideas.

Join a group and become an active member. If you share content, your insights, and expertise enthusiastically, you’ll get other members following you and your brand.

If you share content, your insights, and expertise enthusiastically, you’ll get other members following you and your brand.

7. Engage with your audience

Remember when having direct access to a global superstar through Twitter was exciting and revolutionary? It was thrilling to be able to send them a message or hear what some Hollywood star had to say directly.

People love to connect to the person behind a brand. They want to know what you have to say and sharing yourself with your followers builds trust.

People love to connect to the person behind a brand.

So, respond to comments people leave, react to mentions you’ve had, and answer questions people post. That’s the joy of social media, isn’t it?

8. Use advertising

Advertising is a great way to achieve lots of followers for most of the small businesses. Especially, when you're starting up your business you shouldn't be afraid of using ads to acquire followers.

However, advertising doesn't bring results cost efficiently unless you target them properly. For a local businesses easiest way is to target ads locally.

For example, as a start it would be important for a novice restaurant in Vancouver to acquire lots of followers (advertising locally in Vancouver) to create a loyal customer base quickly. After that, they are able to market completely free for customers in the future.

Most of the social platforms have well guided and predefined "get followers" campaigns. Do not hesitate to dedicate a small budget to build your follower base as it will pay off later for sure!

If you’ve been neglecting your social media then put these proven tips into action today and start growing your followers and your brand!

Wanna make your workflow more efficient and get even more followers? Use free scheduler tool like Hookle to automate your social publishings.