How to Grow and Nurture an Organic Social Following
Creating and maintaining a successful social media presence can take a long time to do wrong, and a short time to do right. While it can be seen as a large undertaking, with potentially limited rewards, this only really applies if done incorrectly, and a well established social presence can make a huge difference for your brand (and, likewise, a poorly established or badly maintained one can do quite the opposite). We’ve written a previous article on the benefits of getting your brand on social, so, in this article, we’re going to give a very basic introduction on actually getting started.
1. Finding a base
The first thing you need to focus on is establishing your social audience, which can be done by following the right accounts. There are a few quick and easy places to start, such as by searching for accounts in your industry, or by finding a brand that operates in a similar niche to your own and following some of the people they follow or who follow them. If there are specific accounts that you want to interact with, you can prepare a statement that you send out to new followers, or accounts that you’ve followed, giving a brief rundown of what your channel can offer them.
As a note, it’s important to ensure that you’re following relevant accounts or, when you look to explore and engage with others’ content, you’ll find yourself spending your time scrolling through unimportant content or spending time engaging with the wrong kind of audience (potentially missing a chance to interact with the right kind of person).
2. Nurturing your audience
Make sure to stay active on the channel. You want to check in to see if people have reached out or made comments so that you can respond and increase the familiarity of the relationship. The more familiar your audience becomes with seeing you, the more likely they will be to stop scrolling when they see your profile, and pause to take in and engage with your message. Staying active on your platforms also allows you to become more in-tune with the individualities of each channel, better preparing you to engage with your audience in a more natural way.
3. Providing topical content
You will, of course, be focusing on creating relevant, engaging content (as discussed in our previous article), but it’s also important to add in more reactive content; not the kind you can plan a week or a month in advance, but content that capitalises on particular themes or topics that are being discussed on your chosen platforms or in the widener world. It may sound disingenuous to simply try and join wider conversations, but, if done correctly, this can be a great way to share the ethics and ethos of your brand, and to show additional sides to the personality of the company, whether you’re showing your support for specific causes, your reaction to specific events, or your humour around specific online trends.
4. Consistency with interaction
Above all else, the above steps need to be performed with consistency. Rather than initially batch following a large amount of accounts, it’s better to follow small, better researched batches consistently. Rather than replying to a bunch of comments you received days ago, it’s fantastic to be able to reply as soon as possible, increasing the chances of an organic conversation developing, which will bring more people to the page, and rank your posts higher algorithmically. Having ten to fifteen minutes at the start of each day, per platform, will go further than having an hour once a week or a day once a month.
Give it your time and it’ll reward you in turn
As with many aspects of the navigation of social media, there are many different opinions and many different pathways, but this article will hopefully provide you with a solid foundation.
Establish an audience of interested people, looking to engage with the type of content you’re going to be putting out.
Form a relationship with this audience by engaging with them, respond to their comments, and interacting with the content that they’re posting.
Stay in touch with the online atmosphere in order to be an active participant in relevant, topical discussions.
Acclimate your schedule to maintain consistency on your social platforms. A little regular work goes much further than a lot of irregular work.
If you’re able to get started with the above tasks, you’ll soon see what social can do for your brand. There is certainly some up front and long-term work, but it’s an ever-increasingly vital wing of your marketing that can do more, for free, than many other elements can do even with a huge amount of budget behind them.
