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Today, 58.4% of the population uses social networks. Social media has become a fundamental aspect of modern life for so many people and brands, it can be difficult to stand out in such a crowded landscape. But you can do it—with the right social media strategy. Here’s how to build a social media following for your brand.
Posting content regularly and consistently
If you’re looking to grow your brand on social media, you need to start posting content: regularly, in an organized way, and without taking lengthy breaks. It’s about being visible to your audience whenever they check in to their social channels.
Social media profiles that are richly populated draw followers because they continually have something to offer. Profiles that are sparsely populated and irregularly updated give no reason to follow them. If you’re not active, you’re not visible.
Some days, it may feel as though there’s little to say to your target audience, so it might feel counterintuitive to post. It’s certainly a bad idea to post irrelevant content just to put something out there, because poor-quality content will drive away potential followers. But there’s always something useful to post about your brand if you’ve made a plan.
Research your audience so you invest in the right channels, develop a content calendar, and create content in line with your business’s activities and your audience’s interests. Squarespace offers lots of tools to ease the process of social sharing. For example, try the Unfold app to easily edit video content for different social platforms. If you’re struggling to find things to post, limit your social media channels and focus on the most successful ones so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by having to post to them all. You can also use the Squarespace Image Resizer to reformat the same image for multiple posts and stories at once – saving time and doing more with less.
Engaging your target audience
It’s important to be engaging to your target audience on all of your social channels. An engaged social media audience interacts with you: They leave reactions and comments, and they share your posts. They send direct messages to ask questions. And they come back to your social platforms time and again.
By engaging your audience on your social channels, you’ll turn them into repeat customers who are fanatical about your brand. So fanatical that they’ll want other people to know all about you, too. This is what it means to have real social media presence.
"Be engaging” might seem like a tough ask, but it’s achievable if you take the time to make a plan.
Consider including content like:
Product development journeys
Product launches
Events you plan to attend or host
Hints and tips on how to use aspects of your products or services
Celebrating the people who work for you
Showing how your brand solves problems for your audience
Highlighting how you take part in important events on your audience’s calendar (e.g., Black History Month, Pride, International Women’s Day, etc.)
When you plan out a calendar to cover all the different expressions of your brand values, you won’t struggle with what to post on a given day. Squarespace even offers an Instagram Feed Planner in its Unfold app. Plus, bloggers on Squarespace can schedule their blog posts to publish at optimal times.
Paying attention to your followers and adapting to reactions
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer varying degrees of insights into how people are responding to you. Make sure you use them to get a broad overview of how your content is performing. Also, keep an eye on your website analytics to see which posts are driving traffic to your site.
When you have an understanding of which posts generate the best engagement, you’re in a stronger position to create more posts like them. You’ll also be able to find lots of valuable sentiment cues in the comments on your social posts and direct messages.
Finally, consider monitoring your audience’s perspectives on your brand by using a social listening tool, which logs mentions of your brand in the wider social media space. This will make it easier to adapt your social media strategy to help shape your reputation to match the way you want to be perceived.