25 Ways to Grow Your Brand’s Social Media Presence

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Social media started out as a way to connect people. However, today it has become a go-to destination for businesses. Whether you own an online business or an offline one, you can’t afford to not have a social media presence.

With over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and another 800 million on Instagram, how can you ignore them?

These social media sites provide great options to reach your current and target customers. Almost every brand has a social media account today to engage with their audiences and grow their social media presence.

Social media can help you improve your brand awareness and drive valuable traffic and conversions. The only way to reap the many benefits of social media is to understand how to grow your social media following. 

25 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Presence

Social media is a great way to amplify your product marketing strategy in the digital world. There are numerous tried and tested methods available that can help to boost your social media presence. Let’s take a look at these methods and learn how to implement them effectively.

1. Set Your Goals

Before you get to work on improving your social media presence, make sure you have clear goals in mind. You should have an idea of exactly what you want to achieve.

This must be done before you begin the other steps of your campaign. If you don’t do this, you might end up wasting your time and resources.

It’s important that you know how each social media platform that you use works. And you should have an idea of the exact audience that you are targeting. You can decide your target audience on the basis of demographics, locations, and interests.

You should always set precise targets to know which direction you’re moving in. Some questions you may want to consider are how to grow your social media followers or how to increase your social media presence overall. Having specific goals will allow you to measure your success and increase your social media presence in the long run.

2. Create a Great Profile

When you join a social media platform or are about to implement your strategy, check your profile first. You must complete your profile and fill in every single field that is applicable to your business. A complete profile is a necessity for growing your social media presence.

Create a short bio for your brand that tells your story. While writing this bio, use a few relevant keywords which may help drive traffic to your profile to grow your social media following on all channels. You can find such relevant keywords by using tools such as KWFinder and the Google Keyword Planner

It is important to have personal branding on social media. One simple way to achieve this is to start by making sure that you have both your cover photo and display pictures in place. These should ideally have your brand’s logo somewhere and be attractive too. It’s the first thing anyone visiting your profile will see. Your profile images work as deciding factors of whether the viewer will scroll down or simply navigate away. It is due to this reason that they are instrumental in increasing your social media presence.

Once your profile is complete with the required information, it improves your brand’s credibility. Whenever anyone visits your profile, if they can find relevant information, they will start trusting your brand further. If there is little or no information, chances are that they may not get to know your brand which will then hurt your chances of growing more on social media. This can hamper your chances of improving your social media presence..

3. Follow Relevant Accounts

You can grow followers, but only if they know that your brand is a legitimate one. When deciding how to increase your social media presence you need to consider what will help prove your legitimacy. One way is to follow other brands and accounts of real people.

The point to be kept in mind is that these accounts should ideally be relevant to your brand and business. It is important to do this to establish your authenticity and increase your social media presence. And many of those people or brands may even follow you back, thus improving your credibility.

4. Interact With Your Audience

Once you’ve gathered some followers, you can start posting helpful content on your accounts. However, simply posting content with links or media won’t help you grow your social media presence. You really need to interact with your audience to start grabbing their interest. Make sure that you respond to their posts or reply to them when they comment on yours.

The idea is to connect with your audience and make them feel connected to your brand. Only when your audience feels connected to your brand will they want to learn more about it.

Once they feel connected to your brand, they may even visit your website or read more of your posts. Starbucks, for example, interacts with their customers frequently on Twitter. This helps them gain traction and improves their social media presence.

5. Understand Your Audience

After starting to interact with your audience, you need to figure out their needs. It is only then that you’ll be able to interact with them on a more personal level.

Creating a strong social media presence starts by understanding how to reach your target market. When you know what your audience wants to see or read, you can tailor your content to suit them. When they are able to relate to the content better, they’ll engage with it more and that will help increase your social media presence.

Additionally, once you are able to fine-tune your content, you’ll be able to bring them to your website or business. This is simply because of the fact that you’re giving them exactly what they want to see or do.

6. Put Follow Buttons On Your Website

Don’t waste the traffic that you are getting on your website. Use it to gain valuable followers on your social media accounts and grow your social media presence.

Many brands make the mistake of not putting social media buttons on their websites. These buttons are an easy way to increase your social media presence and number of followers.

Follow buttons of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter

Place these buttons at locations where your website visitors can spot them with ease. However, don’t go overboard, and have them all over your website. This may put off your visitors instead of growing your social channels. 

A good practice is to put them on the upper right-hand side of your website. But make sure that you define each button well.

7. Link Your Profiles and Website

Make sure that you link all of your social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to your website. This will help your audience learn more about your brand with ease so you can focus your efforts of deciding how to grow your social media following in other areas. Additionally, it will help increase both your website traffic and social media presence.

View this profile on Instagram

Glossier (@glossier) • Instagram photos and videos

8. Conduct Events

Events are a great mode to spread awareness about your brand. You can use your own hashtags and social media handles on your printed materials or signage. This can help grab the attention of the audience of the events.

You can get as creative as you want to and promote your hashtags and social media accounts at events. This can help you get traffic to your social media profiles and thus grow your social media presence.

9. Share Your Profiles

One great way to learn how to increase your social media presence is simply to share your brand’s social profiles. Share your social media handles with people you know. However, try not to spam them. Do it in a non-pushy manner.

This tactic will make them aware of your presence on social media platforms helping you see the success it can have on growing socially. They may even share them with people they know and help spread the word.

10. Use Hashtags

Hashtags are used to bring together similar content under one roof to help grow your social media presence. Whenever you post something on your social media accounts, try to incorporate some hashtags. These can bring people to your social media accounts and subsequently to your website. They matter a lot, especially when you’re posting on Twitter and Instagram.

However, make sure that you don’t overuse hashtags and load your posts with them. While using them when deciding how to grow your social media following, it can be easy to make your posts look spammy and may harm your social media presence if you aren’t careful. 

You could also create branded hashtags. These can consist of your brand name or even your slogan. Encourage people to create content with these hashtags. This is a great how-to when growing your social media followers.

11. Leverage More Networks

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Plus are some of the most popular social networks. However, you should increase your social media presence on other social media platforms as well.

When branding your business, it may be beneficial to branch out from the typical social media sites and try platforms like Pinterest, Foursquare, Tumblr, and more. You could also register on social bookmarking sites and social review sites. Try to expand your social media presence as much as possible.

12. Incorporate Social Icons into Your Emails

Emails are a great way to spread the word about your social media accounts. You are likely already sending out multiple emails to your subscribers every month.

If your social media icons are present in your emails, your readers may be prompted to check them out. This can get you some valuable eyeballs and more followers, thus growing more socially on your chosen platform.

If you do send a newsletter out regularly to your audiences, make sure that you include your social handles in it. You can do this even if you send it out through the mail. You can slip in a card that has all of your social media handles on it. Doing this can help you enhance your brand’s social media presence.

13. Give Away Freebies

Audiences love freebies. When you give them a freebie, you’re giving them a reason to be your follower. While you can choose anything to be a freebie, it’s best to choose one that can draw your audience to your brand.

You can even give away a free trial or discount codes. Not only will such freebies help to engage your audience, but they can also motivate people to spread the word about you. This can help your brand grab more eyeballs and improve your social media presence.

14. Engage, Engage, Engage!

The best way to gain the support of your audience is to engage with them. And by engaging, we mean engaging on a personal level. You are learning how to increase your social media presence. That presence will be reflected when someone follows your page because they expect your brand to engage with them.

For this, whenever someone posts about your brand, or comments on one of your posts, try to respond to them.

You can engage with them in many other ways too. Set up polls, quizzes, or contests that encourage your audience to participate. Instagram Stories are a great medium to engage your followers. Add stickers that they can use in their IG Stories.

By actively engaging with your followers, you send out a clear message to them that you care about building long-term relationships with them. This keeps their trust in your brand intact and makes them more loyal followers of your brand and grows your socials. 

Loyal followers may recommend your brand to others. This, in turn, can help you grow your social media presence.

15. Optimize Your Content

Everything that you post on your social media accounts can be seen by the search engines. This means that it can get listed on Google and other search engines. So it’s a great practice to incorporate some relevant keywords into your posts whenever possible. This can help your posts get visibility for the right keywords on Google.

KW Finder homepage screenshot
Image via KWFinder 

Similarly, you could check what your followers are looking for on Google using the previously mentioned keyword research tools. Once you’ve found the relevant keywords, you can use them in your posts to grab the attention of relevant users.

Content from social media that ranks higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) will get more visits. This, in turn, can improve your social media presence.

16. Utilize Your Brick-and-Mortar Locations

If you do have a physical store, you can utilize it to increase your social media presence too. Placing an attractive poster with your social media handles on the windows or inside your store can grab eyeballs.

People who come into your store can see your social media accounts. And if your establishment has a window, a poster placed there can grab the attention of many more people. Include your social media handles and attractive visual content on the poster. You could also print your social handles on your receipts or business cards to get more attention and grow your social media presence.

17. Post Regularly

Posting regularly on social media is a great practice. This can help grab the attention of your followers and target consumers.

However, the frequency of posting content is equally important. Post too rarely and your audience might start losing interest thinking that your profile isn’t active enough. Post too often and they might feel like you’re spamming them.

In an effort to learn how to increase your social media presence, it is imperative to find the perfect balance and then post consistently. This can ensure that your audience gets information at regular intervals and can increase your social media presence. If needed, you can also schedule posts in advance so that they get posted at the optimal times.

18. Give a Personal Touch

Whenever you’re replying to your audience, try not to use generic words to address them. Instead, put in the effort to personalize your messages and address them with their names.

Also, keep your reply genuine and try not to use template-based replies. Tailor your replies each time. This can make your audience feel closer to your brand by applying a “human touch” to your social media channels.

Machine-like replies can be annoying to people and can actually damage your brand’s reputation instead of helping it grow on social. On the other hand, a genuine reply is always appreciated by people and can help improve your social media presence.

19. Handle Complaints Well

Whenever a customer complains on your social media accounts, make sure that you take them seriously. Try to respond to their concerns as soon as possible, and in a professional manner.

Try to stay away from automated replies like, “Email us if you have any questions.” Instead, take the time to think about their concerns and answer each complaint in a personalized way.

Remember, customers may recommend your business to others. If they give positive feedback, it will definitely help you in your journey to discovering how to grow your social media following. 

Even if your customers are not polite with their feedback, ensure that you remain that way. Everyone loves a brand that takes care of them.

Additionally, others will notice how your brand interacts with your customers. If you give them a positive impression, you may be able to increase your social media presence and perhaps get some new customers. A negative impression can have the exact opposite effect.

20. Ask Your Clients to Share

Another good way of attracting more followers is to ask your existing followers to share your branded hashtags in their posts. This can attract more eyeballs and attention to your profile, which can result in an increase in your social media presence. For the best results, offer an incentive to your followers to encourage them to share your branded hashtags.

21. Treat Each Profile as an Individual

While all social media channels serve basically the same purpose, each has to be handled differently. Many marketers often make the mistake of using the same content across all platforms, which will gain social media followers. 

However, you should treat each social media platform individually. This gives you the scope to optimize for each of them in different ways. This optimization will help you grow your social media presence substantially.

A study by SocialInsider and Marketing Profs had some interesting findings. Instagram posts containing three to four hashtags had an average impression rate of 3.41 percent. User engagement decreased when more than five hashtags were used.

Bar graph of "Average engagement rate of Instagram posts from March 2021 to March 2022, by number of hashtags"
Image via Statista

1-2 hashtags: 3.21% average engagement rate

3-4 hashtags: 3.41% average engagement rate

5-6 hashtags: 3.35% average engagement rate

7-8 hashtags: 3.23% average engagement rate

9-10 hashtags: 3.13% average engagement rate

11-12 hashtags: 3.16% average engagement rate

13-14 hashtags: 3.22% average engagement rate

15-16 hashtags: 3.23% average engagement rate

17-18 hashtags: 3.02% average engagement rate

19-20 hashtags: 3.14% average engagement rate

Sources: Marketing Profs; SocialInsider

Additional Information: Worldwide; SocialInsider; March 2021 to March 2022; based on the analysis of 73,361,233 Instagram posts

A study by Buffer found that on Twitter, posting 3 times a day drives the highest engagement. Similarly, for Facebook, the engagement dropped drastically after posting twice a day.

For the best results, you can post 5 times a day on Pinterest, and 1.5 times per day on Instagram. Following these best practices can help you grow your social media presence

22. Paid Promotions

If you’ve tried all of the different ways to try to gain social media presence organically, you can move on to paid promotions.

Nearly every social media platform has the option to run advertisements. Using these advertisements, you can reach a highly targeted audience on social networks.

You can target people based on location, demographics, and interests. Based on your target audience, you can then enter the details while creating your paid promotion. This can help you effectively target the right people and get higher engagement and conversions.

There’s a lot you can do with paid promotions. You could run promotions to increase your page likes, boost engagements, get link clicks, or even drive sales. Paid ads can help you harness the true power of social media and grow your social media presence.

The best part about paid promotions is that they are often cheaper than other types of marketing. So you can use them to promote your business when you have a tight budget.

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide robust analytics to check the performance of your ads. You can see how well your promotions are performing and can improve upon them to continue to grow socially. 

This can help you decrease your costs and increase the performance of your promotions. You should be proactive and keep analyzing your ad performance frequently. Only then can you optimize your ads to improve your brand’s social media presence.

23. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a rising star in the digital marketing world. In influencer marketing, brands collaborate with influencers on social media to achieve a specific objective, in this case, how to grow a social media following. 

It may be to increase sales, leads, or even their social media presence. Influencers are people who have a loyal and large fan following on social media. These influencers can share your products with their audiences and thus get your brand eyeballs and sales.

You can easily leverage influencer marketing to your advantage. By collaborating with a few influencers, you can easily get the much-needed attention of your target audience and grow your social media presence.

One way of doing this is by running a campaign that encourages people to follow your page. In return, you could give them some discount or a freebie. This can help you get many more followers on your profiles, hence increasing your social media presence.

Learn more about influencer marketing: Influencer Marketing 101

24. Be Proactive

You need to be proactive when you’re trying to enhance your social media presence. Don’t wait for people to come to you and interact with you.

Instead, take the initiative and get in touch with other people and brands in your niche. Also work on increasing your interactions with your audience and be more engaged. This will help you retain your existing audience and get new followers, which gain a social media following easily. 

You can also post engaging content and encourage your followers to share it or tag others. If your audience likes the post, they will surely share it or tag their friends. This can create a domino effect and increase your reach drastically.

Being proactive and coming up with new strategies is beneficial and can take your social media presence to new heights.

25. Conduct a Q&A

Sometimes the easiest way to improve your brands social media presence is to do a simple Q&A with your followers. Social platforms like Instagram have implemented features like stories to help brands achieve this marketing tactic. 

The premise is simple and the return for gaining social media followers and mentions is tremendous. Indicate that your company will be answering any questions that customers may have. Not only will you increase your engagement, but your customers will feel closer to your brand by having their biggest questions answered. 

Conclusion

Growing your social media presence may seem like a daunting task at first. However, if you follow these tips with dedication, it is a task you can conquer. It’s important to engage with your audience often and take care of their pain points. Additionally, you should motivate them to share your content and even create content that is worth sharing.

You can’t afford to have a set-it-and-forget-it approach to social media if you want to grow socially. You should be proactive and come up with new strategies and campaigns to grow your social media presence. It’s also a good idea to collaborate with influencers to increase your reach.

Just keep in mind that growth on social media takes a lot of time, dedication, and effort. You’ll need to be patient and keep modifying your social media strategy dynamically.

Are you ready to stake your claim in the creator economy? Discover more helpful tips and resources from the experts at GRIN: Creator Management Learning Center

Updated: July 2023

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Written by GRIN Contributor

GRIN is the pioneer behind the world’s first Creator Management platform built to support every brand’s journey to connecting with consumers through authentic creator relationships. Thousands of the world’s fastest-growing brands—including SKIMS, Warby Parker, Allbirds, Mejuri, and MVMT—use GRIN to make creators feel like trusted, empowered partners and work with them to build their brands into household names.

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