In today’s social media space, you hear about a lot of businesses buying their likes and followers to try and increase their business’s validity and success. However, this is not an effective marketing tactic and won’t actually result in an increase in engagement and brand awareness, but rather the opposite. Being authentic to your brand and following these tips and tricks will help you organically grow your social media channels.

Personas

Personas represent segments of your ideal customer. This includes their demographics, psychographics, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Based on your product or service, market research can be extracted to arrive at such conclusions. When you understand who your customer is, you can execute the proper marketing efforts and ensure that you’re reaching them. A single brand, service, or product can have multiple personas that target your different customer segments. Below are two examples of personas that a high-end clothing store and an electronic store would be targeting, respectively. 

Professional Pam:

Pam is a 38-year-old woman who works at her corporate job from 8 am – 5 pm. She’s university-educated and makes between $100-$120K.  Pam scrolls her two favourite channels, Instagram and Facebook during her lunch hour (12-1 pm) and after supper (7-11 pm). She loves high-quality clothing and dressing nicely as her job requires her to do so. 

Tech Tom:

Tom is a 26-year-old programmer who works at a local start-up from 8 am-5 pm. He’s university-level educated and makes between $40K-$60K.  Tom is typically on his main social media channel LinkedIn, during his lunch break (12-1 pm) and throughout the afternoon (3-5 pm) as he likes to periodically take a work break and scroll. Tom is active and loves his tech-savvy gadgets.

By understanding who the personas are and how they engage with various social media channels, we can target them accordingly. Tech Tom and Professional Pam are both an example of the personas that businesses can create to effectively reach their various consumer segments.

Giveaways

Giveaways are a relatively simple and engaging way to increase your following. Partnering with another business to give away gift cards or services can be very effective.  Asking the business for a free gift card or service with the promise that they’ll be receiving free marketing and promotional efforts that will be viewed and engaged with by your followers is usually enough for businesses to agree. You can also give away a gift card or credit for your own product or service. You can run these giveaways on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. but it’s typically easier to stick to just one channel. Making followers jump through numerous hoops just for one entry can be disengaging. A couple of examples of effective giveaway entries are:

Restaurant Gift Card partnership Giveaway on Instagram: 

1. Follow our account
2. Like this photo
3. Tag two friends who you’d come enjoy lunch with!

Clothing store partners with local Spa to give away a gift card for the spa on Facebook:

1. Like our page and the spa’s page
2. Share this post
3. Comment what your favourite part of going to the spa is (facial, massage, pedicure)

Quality Content

Posting interesting and engaging content that relates to your target audience is a great way to grow your channel. Asking questions, and doing polls and giveaways are all great ways to ensure that your followers are interacting with your content. Posting new products or services, as well as any sales or promotions also garners attention. In addition, consumers like when businesses embody a human aspect, so featuring employees on your channels is also a great idea. It lets consumers understand not only who you are, but what kind of culture your business cultivates. 

Make a Plan

Using a content calendar is a great way to stay organized and on top of the content that you’re posting. Google calendar is a great tool. This allows you to plan out your content days and even weeks in advance. Knowing your audience comes in handy here. If you understand your target, personas, and when they are active on socials, you can strategically schedule Facebook, Instagram, etc. posts at the times that you know your targeted personas are active. Being able to visualize all of your social media channels – including what, when, and why you’re posting all in one place is a huge asset. This allows you to identify when you may be posting too many posts that are similar, and break it up with polls, giveaways, and simple daily posts. Ensuring a healthy mix of various forms of posts.