03 Oct Social Media Strategies for Growing Your Audience
Brands and businesses use social media to market their products or services, grow and connect with their audience and drive conversions every day. But, in order to do so, brands need to build an audience that’s actively engaged – that’s the tricky part.
Too often businesses may have built a great following but their audience is inactive and disengaged. On the other hand, your audience might be engaged but your following is stagnant and not growing.
Luckily, we’re here to help you out with our top social media strategies and tips to grow your audience and build an engaged one too.
Understand Your Ideal Audience
Good social media strategies begin with understanding your audience, what content they want to consume, their pain points and which platforms they are using.
Ultimately, to grow your audience, you’ll need to create content that resonates with them and it has to show up on the platforms they’re using. Sounds simple.
A good starting point is to ask yourself these three questions:
1. What content is my ideal audience consuming? Get to know your audience’s interests, aspirations, wants and needs. This will help you tailor your content and ensure your content resonates with them.
2. What platforms is my audience using? If you’re a product-based business targeting a younger demographic, they are most likely using Instagram and TikTok, so there’s no point in focusing on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. On the other hand, if you’re a B2B service-based business, LinkedIn is a great platform to promote your content.
3. What are my audience’s pain points? Write a list of all the pain points your audience is facing and start creating content that addresses them. Plus, use social listening through direct messages, and comments and even use the question feature on platforms like Instagram stickers to directly ask them what they want to see.
It’s All About Video Content
Go Lo-Fi
As a brand or business, you’re probably looking to create more polished marketing videos on social media. But, social media is heading in a different direction, where people are increasingly craving a personalised and authentic insight into the people and personalities behind the brand.
This also means you have to spend less to get better results. You don’t need fancy camera equipment or amazing lighting, instead, all you need is your phone.
Use Trending Audios
When we’re talking about video content on socials we can’t forget to mention the importance of using trending audio. They are essential in boosting the reach and engagement of your content and platforms like TikTok are basically ruled by trending audio.
To find trending audio on TikTok, spend some time scrolling through the for-you page (FYP) and you’ll quickly notice a pattern of the same sounds being used over and over. But, make sure to jump on a trend fast before it moves on to the next one.
On Instagram, trending audio is easier to find. If you go into your Reels tab or explore page and scroll through Reels you’ll find an arrow icon next to the audio that is trending.
Our tip is to pick a trending audio on Instagram that doesn’t have an excessive amount of video using that sound otherwise your video can get lost in the sea of competition.
Find Trending Templates
Much like trending audio, trending templates are your secret weapon to growing your audience on social media. If you’ve scrolled on TikTok before and seen a video with the same format over and over again, that’s a template.
Luckily, TikTok makes it super easy to find and use trending templates without much effort as a result of their partnership with CapCut. Simply scroll on your FYP and find a video with the tag ‘Use CapCut template.’ Or download the CapCut app, navigate to the Templates tab and find one there.
Instagram has also recently launched a feature allowing you to browse Reels templates in a new template browser which is sorted by recommended, trending and templates or audios you’ve saved.
Here’s how to find it.
- Hit the Create button on the home page
- Select ‘REEL’
- Open your camera gallery
- Select ‘Templates’
Authenticity
2023 has seen a huge shift to authentic vs curated content and it’s not slowing down any time soon. Consumers are actively searching for brands and businesses that are authentic and transparent. Research from Stackla shows that 88% of consumers say authenticity is a major influence when deciding which brands to support.
So, how can you become more authentic on social media? After all, platforms like Instagram aren’t exactly the most transparent and trustworthy.
Engage with your audience
Engaging with your audience on social media is one of the best ways to build authentic relationships with your following. Engagement can include answering direct messages, posting questions and polls on your Stories and replying to comments.
Harness user-generated content (UGC)
UGC is one of the most powerful tools when growing your social media audience. And, consumers are craving real people interacting with brands and products more than ever. In a world where social media is bombarded with ads, people are suffering from ad fatigue and craving organic and real content more than ever before.
80% of people say that UGC influences their purchasing decisions because it acts as social proof. Plus, sharing a tonne of UGC on your socials doesn’t just humanise your brand but allows you to use features like the collaboration feature on Instagram. That means your post will automatically be shared with their followers and yours, meaning there are more eyes on your content.
Social SEO
The days of getting discovered through hashtags alone are gone. Social SEO is the next big thing and in case you’re not up to speed, it’s the practice of optimising your social media profiles to boost reach and ensure your content reaches your target audience.
Why does social SEO matter? More and more people are going to social media platforms like TikTok to find new brands, businesses and products. 40% of Gen Z and Millennials use Instagram and TikTok to search for new places and products instead of Google.
That means you’ve got to make sure people are finding your brand and content when they search.
Optimise your social media profiles
To create a strong brand identity on social media, you need to optimise your profile for success.
Include SEO keywords relating to your brand or business in your social media handle and in your bio so people will land on your profile when searching for your niche. Make sure you have a Link in Bio that drives people to your website and other assets you want them to see.
Use alt-text
Alt-text on your social media posts ensures your content is as accessible as possible to users and it also helps social media platforms better understand the contents of your post. That means incorporating SEO keywords into your alt-text boosts the discoverability and reach of your content.
Include closed captioning in all your videos
Much like alt-text, closed captions also help with accessibility and SEO. If you’re creating video content make sure you’re actively saying keywords relating to your video topic out loud and generating your captions.
Luckily, most social media platforms have auto-generated caption features which makes it super easy to include captions in all of your videos.
Our wrap up
While it may be scary for marketers to think about creating lo-fi and unpolished content, the social media landscape has evolved. Success on socials lies in optimising your social media profiles and creating authentic and value-driven content that engages with your audience.
If you’re not socially savvy, Milestone Creative can help get the social tongues wagging with a social strategy, compelling content and click-worthy creative social media content.
Author: Gabby Kaushansky, 19 September 2023