Whether you are starting with no followers or your follower base lacks your standards, follow these tips to grow your business following online. The idea is to grow your following with quality followers. A “quality” follower is someone who buys what you’re selling, can buy what you’re selling, or has bought it and is a happy customer.
If you do not have a product, service, or business, these may not apply to you. This is geared towards small to medium-sized companies. Alas, if you want to increase your following with quality followers and increase the value of your business, continue reading.
I will list these below at first, then get more in-depth as we go:
Local Press
Shoutout for shoutout
Posting on/Tweeting other pages
Reverse engineering foot traffic
The ideal follower is your target market
You’ve likely already determined your target market. It is who you want to sell to and who buys your product/service, whether it is once, repeatedly, or in the future. Your followers are like an audience on demand, so why not fill them with people who are your market? Simple, right? Your audience is local.
So is your press. No, I’m not telling you to run an ad in the newspaper! The local media is active online. If you can, reach out and ask for a review, and ask to be featured online when you have events. Unlike in the newspaper, there is no penalty for having too much information where there is limited space. You could not even have a page on social media and benefit from having your event posted or restaurant reviewed on one of these pages.
If you have social media, the effect is compounded because now you are leading your target market to your page and your event/business.
You want to pack the room
Whether you’re selling food at a restaurant or tickets to an event at your location, you want people talking about it and buying it. If only you had a list of all the people who could show up! Fortunately, these lists have already been compiled for you. The same people hosting events and serving dining guests in your town have gone through the trouble of compiling this list for years by gaining followers. These followers are in their target market. They are also in your target market! Please take advantage of this by
interacting with them.
If possible, see if they will agree to a shoutout for a shoutout. This means exchanging a good word from you on your page about them; they will do the same. This is especially useful when starting up because the trade is not equal but in your favor. Your less than 100 followers compared to their 1k, 2k, or even 10k+ followers. If they disagree, that is okay; there is more than one ethical way that you can engage with your competition’s audience, gaining them as your followers too in the process.
Make the competition work for you
They have already done the work. Now let’s cash in on their followers. You can do this simply by engaging with their page. If they post something, write a reply, and start a conversation. You can even tweet them directly if you like. This is essentially the same thing as a shoutout for a shoutout but without a standard agreement. You will gain followers simply through interaction. Their followers will see the exchange and will engage. Be aware that as you gain followers, you will also be exposing your audience to the other party. However, starting, the more followers the other party has, the better. Keep it professional, and you will not have to worry about any problems.
Leverage your customers. . .into more customers
You can use your customers and patrons and turn them into followers. The “how” on this will differ from business to business, but you will generally want to entice your customers who are already in your shop into engaging with you online. By doing so, their followers will see them engaging with you online, entertain them as well, and they will also follow you. You may run a special in your restaurant saying 10% off if you tweet us online. Or, run all your customer support through Twitter. Take delivery requests online. These are just a few ideas, and there is a multitude of ways.
Once your customer follows you, they will not miss out the next time you have an event. This will make them a repeat customer, and their friends will see their engagement making them into new customers. Let’s take the next step from this with a bonus tip.
Leverage your followers. . .into, WELL, more followers
Don’t forget that people who are on one social media are also on others. However, if they are following you, it is likely on only one forum. Make sure to give yourself a shoutout on your pages every now and then to remind people to like your other pages. If you are doing well on one form of media, give those followers an incentive to go like your other page, or at least remind them every so often it exists. These beginner-level tips I have listed above should help you get started or expand on what you have already started.
Do not forget to post, post, post. Post frequently, post a variety and broadcast to your audience. Keep at it, and your efforts will be rewarded. Feel free to ask directly for any questions you have regarding this resource or anything social media-related at all. Any feedback at all is welcome, including constructive criticism. Thank you for reading this, and I hope this helps you!