5 Unique Ways to Shape Your Social Media

Are you struggling to get followers on your social media channels? Finding your Facebook and Twitter accounts empty and devoid of interaction? If you're serious about your social media then there are several different ways to go about improve your follower numbers and the interaction you get. Below are some of those ways, to get you started.

1. Aim for goals

What do you want to get out of your social media marketing? More followers? More click throughs? To become an influencer in your industry? Whatever you want from your campaign, make sure you set those goals out beforehand. How many followers you're looking to get by a certain date, what posts will help you get there and what advertising you'll need to do to boost that.

Often, when thinking about social media, many companies will throw up some posts without really thinking about it. If you're not looking to influence people using social media platforms, then that's a valid way to earn a few followers and increase your audience a little. However, if you want to utilise your social media channels to gain a larger group of followers, then planning ahead is the key strategy.

2. Learn more about your audience

If you know your business then you should know your audience. This works better for companies that have an audience that are likely to be using social media, but almost everyone is online these days and you need to understand who you're aiming your content at. It's important to make sure that what you're putting up is going to attract the right attention from the right people; i.e., your customer base.

Make sure you're participating in discussions on your posts, find out what people who follow you and engage with you really want to know. Are you putting up the right content? Are you giving enough information? Are you drawing people in with what you post? Are you using the right language? That's a key point to think about dependent on who your followers are. If your demographic is 50+ but you're using words such as "yolo", then you might be alienating some of your audience.

Check often and take a look. Some research into who's following you never hurts.

3. Share content from your followers

Everyone likes to feel noticed and special and social media is no different. Interacting with your followers is an extremely important tool, but it works both ways. Not only does it show that you're actively grateful and happy for the interest, but it also promotes your product or service. Testimonials and case studies are excellent tools to improve your website, but images and happy comments from customers work the same way.

People can only believe you so far. If you tell them that you're "the best" or the country's "leading", they won't necessarily understand that unless you show them the successful work and happy customers you have. Let your customers promote you themselves!

4. Don't constantly promote yourself

It's a little tricky not to promote yourself or your product/service constantly, but your followers will eventually get bored. Most of the time when they follow you they know what you do. They know your services and are fans of it, and if they aren't then they can easily look through your posts to see what you do, or visit your website, if they're curious. That isn't to say you shouldn't promote your products or services. Make sure you keep them relevant, for example frame them around an event that's taking place, or a current news story (but don't go too depressing or hardcore).

At the end of the day the way to keep your followers entertained is by giving them relevant pieces of news; this is doubly important on platforms such as Twitter where regular posting is key. Regular posting where you only promote yourself? Not so much. Make sure you're retweeting and tweeting information about what's happening in your industry, what's happening at your business. Are there any events going on? This ties in nicely with reblogging and retweeting what your followers say about you.

With social media, especially with Twitter, it's important to be updating regularly and if you're finding yourself struggling to fill the days, these are great ways to do so without bombarding your followers with the same messages over and over again.

5. Produce different content for different platforms

Depending on how in depth you want to go with your social media content, producing and uploading different content for different platforms is a key way to increase your follower interest and your engagement. This also depends on your target audience and what kind of message you want to put across. Of course, it's important that all of your social media content matches, in some form or another; whether this is the branding you use, or the tone you're using.

Using video for Facebook, for example, and images for Twitter or Instagram show that you are thinking about your audience for each platform. Utilising what a social media platform gives you is key to gaining more followers, more engagement and, in time, more traffic to your website. Social media takes time to build up a follower base, but knowing what your audience wants and how it changes dependent on what platform your using is key.

How will this inform my social media?

You can use these hints and tips any way you see how, whether you're looking to utilise all of them, or some, you need to make the choice when it comes to how you run your social media campaigns. It's important to look into advertising and boosting alongside these points as you want to make sure that you're targeting the right people at the right times with the right content.

One final note is to simply interact with your customers. That's what social media is for. While you might get some complaints or criticisms, there are ways to handle these correctly (as discussed in one of our previous articles: How to Respond Well to Online Reviews) and that will actually help boost your credibility. Look further than on site SEO and embrace social media; you'll see the benefits if you follow these five simple tips!