How to Build a Social Media Growth Strategy That Works [2024]
How do brands grow their own social presence to reach that ever-increasing audience base? We’ve got 10 strategic tips (and 3 tools) for optimum social growth in 2024.
Bonus: Get a free social media strategy template to quickly and easily plan your own strategy. Also use it to track results and present the plan to your boss, teammates, and clients.
What is social media growth?
Social media growth is an umbrella term that includes many different types of social success. How you define social media growth depends on the most important goals and metrics for your particular organization. Some of the most common ways to measure social media growth include:
* Social media follower growth: How many new followers you gain in a set period of time.
* Engagement rate: How many people engage with your content vs. how many people see it.
* Web traffic from social accounts: How many visits to your website are referred from social posts or your social profiles.
* Conversions referred from social accounts: How many people who come to your website from a social link follow through to make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or any other conversion you want to measure.
* Social commerce sales: How much revenue you bring in from social commerce activities across your social accounts.
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10 effective social media growth strategies
1. Be active on your target audience’s favorite platforms
You can create as many (or as few) social accounts as you like. But your audience will only connect with you on the social networks they’re already actively using. You need to put your brand where they can find you easily, rather than expecting them to seek you out.
There are two components to this strategy:
* Your target audience
* The most popular social media platforms within that user base
For effective organic social media growth, you need to understand both.
If you don’t already know exactly who your target audience is, this is where you need to start. Fortunately, we’ve got a whole blog post on finding your target market that can point you in the right direction.
Once you understand your target audience, you can get even more detailed by creating audience personas.
Now that you understand who you want to connect with on social, you can figure out where to find them. Our blog post on the demographics of the major social platforms is a good place to start your research. You should also do some testing to confirm any assumptions.
Keep in mind that different segments of your audience may be active on different social media sites. Or, people might follow you on multiple platforms but expect a different relationship on each. That means you need to optimize your content for each platform.
For example, look at how differently the Washington Post approached this news story on Twitter and TikTok:
Plans for a Northern Virginia sports arena that could move the Washington Capitals and Wizards out of D.C. have drawn questions from residents and officials from how it might affect the District’s struggling downtown to how much taxpayers may have to pay.
https://t.co/UtINbfcTzH— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 15, 2023
@washingtonpost
Monumental Sports & Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) announce deal to move Caps, Wizards to Virginia #NHL #Hockey #WashingtonCapitals #WashingtonCapitals #DC #DistrictOfColumbia #Ovechkin #hockeytalk ♬ original sound – We are a newspaper.
2. Create a consistent posting schedule
Humans are creatures of habit. When you post social content on a consistent schedule, your audience knows what to expect. They understand how often to expect new content, and when to anticipate your posts in their social feeds.
This consistency makes it feel less burdensome for new people who find your content through a search or suggestion to click the follow button. Conversely, it encourages fans to seek out your new content on your profile if the algorithm doesn’t serve it up in their feed.
Just like deciding where to post based on your audience’s preferences, you need to let their social activity guide your plan for when to post too.
Posting when your audience is most likely to be on the platform increases your chances for early engagement, which is a key value signal to virtually all social algorithms.
Hootsuite can show you exactly when your audience is online with customized heatmaps for each platform. You can also find recommended times to post in Hootsuite Analytics based on your specific growth goals.
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3. Post short video
Short social video – think Reels and TikToks – has become a crucial component of social growth. Creating this type of content is the easiest way to achieve social media follower growth. Why? Because it’s the content that’s most likely to reach people who don’t already follow you.
Instagram specifically says that for Reels, “the majority of what you see is from accounts you don’t follow.” Likewise, Facebook describes Reels as, “content you may be interested in from creators you may not follow.” And TikTok is designed to surface content a user will find interesting, not just content from accounts they follow.
Your short video content needs to align with your overall social strategy and your brand voice. But, it’s a completely different kind of content than you’re creating for feed posts or even Stories.
To get started, check out our guide to making effective short-form videos.
For platform-specific strategies, take a look at :
* How to use Instagram Reels for business
* How to use Facebook Reels for social media growth
* How to create a TikTok marketing strategy
4. Embrace social SEO
We’ve mentioned algorithms a few times already. But when you’re focused on social media follower growth, social search engine optimization may be even more important.
Social SEO is all about optimizing your content using SEO tactics like keyword research, captions, and effective alt text to help the search features built into each social platform understand what your content is about.
That means people who are actively searching for content like yours are more likely to find you
And there’s a bonus: TikTok search results are indexed by search engines, so you can drive new eyeballs to your social content from people who are starting their search outside of social social.
5. Engage with your audience
Remember that social media is not a simple broadcast platform. Your audience wants to see your content, sure. But they also want to interact with you, the brand (or creator) behind the content.
If you want to grow your social media presence, you need to be diligent about responding to comments, tags, messages and mentions. This isn’t optional, folks! Neglected audiences don’t stick around, so leaving your comments and messages unanswered works directly against your efforts for social media growth.
The easiest way to stay on top of your social engagement is to manage all your incoming messages and comments from a centralized social inbox, like the one built into Hootsuite.
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