The real power of social media is that it creates conversations between you and your followers. At least, it should create conversations. Conversations are the key to growing your audience through social media.
It’s important to regularly, consistently engage with your followers. Respond to comments, answer questions, solve problems, and more.
If you want to build relationships and gain audience members through social media, you need to be having conversations, not just publishing new content. You want to authentically engage with your followers. Authenticity is attractive. It will attract new followers and turn them into new members.
Another reason to engage with followers is that social media platforms tend to prioritize the posts with the most engagement. The posts with the most likes, comments, shares, and overall engagement get shown more frequently than those posts with very little engagement.
What are some ways that you can create conversations with your followers?
- Ask questions.
- Do live videos in which you talk directly with your audience.
- Conduct polls.
- Ask people to comment on a particular subject.
- Make statements that will get people talking (just be careful about being too controversial).
Focus on being as real and authentic as possible on social media and you’re guaranteed to create conversations with your followers.
Follow The Right People
Consider following influencers in relative to your organization. For example, if you’re a financial adviser, follow other financial advisers in your industry. If you’re a life coach, try to connect with other life coaches.
Once you’ve started following them, interact with the material they share online. Comment on it, repost it and share it with your own followers. Try to develop relationships and simply be part of the conversation that’s happening. A really good idea is to even collaborate with them on content. Share post content with one another to make your load easier.
Additionally, consider being part of groups that are related to your organization. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have robust group features, and there are literally millions of groups about every subject imaginable. When you join a group, focus on adding value, not promoting yourself.
As you follow influencers in your circle and take part in groups, take note of the valuable information that others are sharing. What sorts of posts do others share that resonate deeply with you? This is the kind of content that you want to be sharing with your audience.
In addition to joining online groups, there are also several platforms that focus heavily on answering questions that are posted by users. For example, Quora lets any user post a question and then other users try to answer that question.
Coming Next Week: Using Hashtags