7 Simple Ways to Grow an Organic Following Online
One of the biggest questions anyone running a social account for their business asks is, “how do I get more followers?”.
Growing an organic following, at a core, is about connecting your target audience with your authentic identity. You need to clearly and interestingly depict what value you are providing and why anyone should care. It is the key to building a relationship with your community and is the perfect way to authentically showcase your value and brand.
If you want to grow your organic following, producing random content, “like for liking people”, or relying on free bots won’t get you far. You want to strategize and provide real, relevant value in order to find your community and attract organic followers who will genuinely be interested in what you’re offering.
These tips from social media experts have a proven track record. While these strategies aren’t going to grow your numbers overnight- when implemented consistently and thoughtfully – they will grow your following over time.
7 simple ways to grow your organic following:
1. Establish your target audience
You can have the best product or service on the market, but if you aren’t targeting the right people who are going to find that value relevant, then you aren’t going to grow your following or engagement.
- Who do you want to attract into your community and why do you want them there?
- What kind of value are you offering, and why do they care?
2. Content hubs: provide people more value
- Establish an active presence. You can share good, relevant content to build even a small following. An active presence can just be 6-9 photos on instagram or 10-20 tweets on Twitter.
- Think about who is in your space that is sharing good content. Social media expert Sunny Lenarduzzi discusses “the 6 degrees of separation”, which is about sharing content related to your industry, even if it’s not completely relevant to your particular business. Expand your value and share tips on things various people would find relevant in your space. A simple way to do this is to share other people’s content, such as quotes and images
3. Warm leads: friends & family
To help your socials’ algorithms, find family and friends or people who want to support you. Their engagement with your platforms with help you to show up more often.
- When you email new prospects, find their socials and follow them. Chances are, they will follow you back.
- Before attending conferences, formulate a list of people attending and/or speaking and follow them. That way, when you meet people you are furthering your relationships online.
- Pro tip: Make sure your business cards have your company socials
4. Make & share good content
- Make your own unique content. This positions you as an expert and helps you to become a thought leader and relevant in your space.
- Is your content visually stimulating? Making your audience think? If you’re putting out high-quality value to the right people, your community will find you.
5. Find where your community lives: #hastags
- Find hashtags in your industry that perform well. A good way to do this is to look for influencers, bloggers, websites, magazines, etc. and pay attention to what hashtags they are using and what is most popular on their posts. This is a good clue as to where your community lives. Once you find them, start following people.
- Make a curated list of interesting things happening in your space and keep a note of them.
- Create search streams in HootSuite and twitter in order to track conversations so you can become apart of them.
- DM people and offer your service or start a conversation about how you can help them.
6. Start documenting instead of creating
Documenting what you do (as long as its valuable) is a simple and easy way to create content.
- Think about what do you want to be known for, and try to break patterns that typically happen in your business
- Record videos, audio (podcasts), write & post on sites like Medium – do whatever you are best at
- Blog inside of Facebook and Instagram through captions and posts – an easy way to boost thought leadership on social
7. Be a point of differentiation
Advice from Gary Vaynerchuk: make your content pop by using the “magic you have inside”. Everything else is noise, but your real personality and your nuance is the only currency you can trade on that isn’t replicable.
“Be yourself and be authentic because it’s the only shot you have.”
