Social media presence became one of the most important aspects of marketing quite some time ago. Aside from enabling people to connect with their old high school friends or relatives living in foreign countries, these platforms have revolutionized the way we perceive online content, regardless of whether it is news or entertainment.
Thousands of people have jumped on the social media bandwagon in an attempt to get rich and famous quickly. This gave rise to a whole new set of professions, such as Instagram influencers, YouTubers, or Twitch streamers. While it’s certainly possible to make it online nowadays, the road to social media success is more often than not paved with incredibly difficult obstacles.
As platforms such as Facebook and Instagram continued to take up more and more of our collective free time, businesses, small and large, have found themselves at an impasse. A well-established presence on these sites has turned into a necessity, and yet not many of the aging CEOs were adequately well-versed in the ins and outs of the Internet to avoid embarrassment and poorly carried out campaigns.
This demand for attractive, professionally-managed social media profiles of corporations, celebrities, and smaller businesses has led to the rise of digital marketing agencies, such as Edge Online or 2Heads. They take over their clients’ pages and work their magic in order to increase their views, follower counts, and come up with creative content that resonates with the younger generations.
You don’t need to hire an agency if you simply want to grow your business and expand into the social media sphere. The best place to start building a solid base of followers is Facebook – keep reading to get to know some basic ways in which you can organically grow your reach on this platform.
Interact with Your Followers
Often overlooked by the larger corporations (who don’t really need to care about building their reach from the ground up), this aspect of managing a business or influencer Facebook profile can truly define the way all of your future online activity is perceived.
There are countless ways in which you can interact with those who have already followed your page. One of the surefire methods that can turn a lot of people sympathetic towards your cause is answering comments (especially the mean ones) in a witty, humorous way. The best example of this is the American fast-food chain Wendy’s, whose Twitter profile has pretty much achieved legendary status amongst other companies that desperately try to replicate their success. This approach provides a friendly, human personality to a soulless corporate entity, warming people up to the brand, and therefore, inevitably, the product itself.
Outside of a good commenting strategy, you should also pay special attention to your posts. If a person clicks on your profile and all they can see are product-related, ad-like publications and promotional materials, chances are they are not going to come back to your page anytime soon. This is why it is absolutely necessary for you to come up with a posting strategy that entails publishing creative and engaging content that will capture people’s attention and leave them wanting more. Such tactics are incredibly effective at getting others to share your brand’s posts and, therefore, organically expanding your reach.
Hit up the Big Guns
Various online businesses, whether they dabble in retail, creative solutions, or any other field of expertise, have embraced the social media strategy of commenting on and interacting with the activity of companies that are much larger and more successful than they are. It requires a lot of wits and a good sense of humor, or a particularly skilled eye for details – the main goal of such interactions is getting the bigger company to reply to your comment in order to increase its visibility and generate interest around the profile that has posted it.
Getting in quirky, sarcastic arguments with competitors online works best once you’ve already established a basic presence and exert some influence online. Ideally, before getting to this stage, you’d have already gotten the blue checkmark – the sign of having been verified as a legitimate, well-known entity within your industry.
Of course, Facebook doesn’t just give away these verifications to anyone who requests them, so you might have to put some work in before attempting to get verified. This includes being very active and responsive with your account as well as making an effort to gain recognition via some of the more traditional means of exposure, such as giving interviews to newspapers, television stations, and making appearances at events pertaining to your area of expertise.
The Bottom Line
Establishing a steady fanbase and growing Facebook reach organically takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Thankfully, it is one of those things that, if done correctly, are almost impossible to fail, given that you actually know what you’re doing. The road to success is quite straightforward, especially if you have a vigorous, creative social media team that can provide your business with the image and personality that resonates with your target audience.
