You're just getting started in social media. You've set up your Facebook and Twitter profile, but now what do you do? Unfortunately, you can't just build your social media pages and hope people will start following you. It doesn't work that way.
While the best way to build your social media following is to regularly generate educational content that is valuable to your audience, there are some other basic steps you can take to build an initial fan base:
Let People Know You Have Social Media Pages:
- Add links to your social media account to your email signature
- Announce your new social media pages in your newsletter
- Add your social media page links to your website
- Add your social media links to your printed communication (with vanity URLs this is easy!)
Start Following and Liking People & Organizations:
Think about the types of people and organizations you would like to follow you and then start following or liking them. Now, I'm not saying to go out and follow thousands of irrelevant people just to get a certain quantity of fans.
I'm talking about sourcing out those who are relevant and important to your industry and company, and follow them. These are people who you likely want to listen to anyways in order to stay on top of client and industry trends. So who should you think about following?
- Your customers
- Industry publications and magazines
- Industry associations
- Relevant bloggers and journalists
- Industry experts
- Ideal prospects
There are a number of ways to source these individuals and organizations:
- Twitter search: http://search.twitter.com
- Google search - and then find links to their social media pages on their websites
- Facebook search
- Blog search: blogs.google.ca or tecnorati.com
- Look at who your competitors are following
- Your company contact database
Ideas for Facebook:
- Create a Facebook Ad that links to a Tab on your page. Have that tab on your page require visitors to "Like" your page in order to download a valuable piece of content, such as a whitepaper, webinar or eBook. Facebook ads are highly targeted, and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
- "Like" other organizations by logging in to your profile or page, viewing your page (make sure you are "using Facebook on your page" - you can choose this using the drop down arrow at the top right of your page), and then searching for those organizations in the search bar, and then clicking "Like" on their pages
- Join and contribute to Facebook groups
- Make helpful or relevant comments on Facebook pages of your industry organizations
Ideas for Twitter:
- Use the Advanced Search on search.twitter.com to sort by location or company
- Search for relevant hashtags (the # symbol) for your industry. For example, if you are an insurance firm in Vancouver, try #insurance #vancouver. This will bring up any posts where people used these hash tags. Note that you can also simply search for "insurance vancouver" without the hashtags
- If you use a social media management program like Hootsuite, you can set up a search stream using terms that are relevant to your industry. Every time someone posts using those terms, their tweet will appear in your search stream
- If you can't find a company using Twitter Search, search from them on Google and then find the link to their Twitter profile.
These are just some quick and easy ways to start building your following on Facebook and Twitter. Remember, it is essential that you use social media as part of your Total Online Presence and start with a strategy and content plan. Using social media to amplify your educational content and blog posts is the best way to grow a relevant and targeted following.
