How to Build Up Your Social Media and Grow Your Audience

Knowing how to build up your social media and grow your audience takes time, but this step-by-step guide streamlines the process by explaining where to focus your energy.

Social media. Love it or hate it; it's a vital part of your online presence as a business. Learning how to reach your target audience through social media marketing takes skill. It's something that you can achieve with practice. If you have yet to post content regularly on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, it's time to change that. Your business stands a better chance of selling a product or service if you're able to connect with your audience on a deeply personal level.

To better understand the power of a rock-solid social media strategy, you need to recognize why it's crucial. First, it extends your reach from your website to other platforms that your customers spend time on. They're likely not going to spend hours scrolling through your webpage daily. They will, however, check out the social media platforms that you post on because they do spend time scrolling their feeds in search of something to read, look at or watch.

How to Build Up Your Social Media Step-By-Step

To improve upon your social media presence, you're going to need to put some time into social media marketing. It's a rewarding process that takes your brand out of obscurity and puts it into the spotlight where others can see it better. To potentially make things easier for you, we created this step-by-step guide for reference purposes. Whenever you have questions about the next move to make, you'll have it to review.

Step One: Get Very Clear About Your Target Audience

To better understand what type of content you'll want to post, you first need to know who you're trying to engage with online. Your ideal customer fits specific demographics. Being very clear about what those things are will help you determine which social media platforms to focus your time and effort on regularly. Each social media platform has its target demographic, which lends insight as to who spends the most time on the platform.

You're going to want to create the type of visual content that stands out on its own without a lot of accompanying text. Your social media accounts may be among hundreds to thousands that your ideal audience follows. Knowing how to make your content stand out takes practice, which leads us to the next step in building up your social media by studying what other brands are doing to succeed.

Step Two: Study Brands on Social Media

Getting to know the competition intimately helps you plan your social media strategy. Studying their posts, familiarizing yourself with their tone, and reading their fan/follower responses to branded content enables you to get a better sense of how they operate and relate to their customers. It's how to make your Instagram more appealing and allows you to see standards such as ideal photo sizes for various social media accounts as well as the type of handles created by companies to ensure brand consistency.

Knowing what types of blog posts they share with their fans and followers allows you to see the subject matter that your potential customers might find useful. You want to know what constitutes shareable content. The ultimate goal of studying other accounts is to find out what it is that makes sharing content easy for people. It also allows you to look closely at social media profiles to learn how to make yours optimized through the inclusion of images, keywords, and a filled out profile.

Step Three: Set a Goal for Your Social Media Accounts

Creating a social media presence for yourself is far easier when you know what it is that you're trying to achieve with your content. Having goals that you set for your various accounts helps you identify opportunities to reach your audience in new ways while maximizing your return on investment (R.O.I.) and return on time investment (ROTI). It helps you create a content strategy that is in alignment with your values and the things you're trying to achieve through Facebook and Twitter. Following the S.M.A.R.T. method of goal setting is ideal as it ensures that all goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

The type of content you post can be an introduction to your brand. It's how people get to know you and what you have to offer without using a search engine. If you want to increase the visibility of your website, cross-promote your blog posts on multiple platforms. Your Facebook posts can lead to your Twitter account, which invites people to check out your Instagram account, which references your website. Make one of the goals that you set for yourself to promote your site as organically as possible through cross-promotion.

Step Four: Come Up with a Foolproof Marketing Strategy

Now that you've completed steps one through three, you know who your target audience is and where they spend their time online. You're aware of how your competition relates to their customers, and you have goals in place for the content you share. Now, it's time to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to create a foolproof marketing strategy.

You'll want to determine how often to post, where to post, what days of the week to post, and the ideal time to post. You'll also want to decide if you're going to create content on your own or curate content from other sources. You may find that a combination of the two is the best way to engage your target audience. Applying the 70-20-10 rule is best, which states that 70 percent of the content you post should help build your brand, 20 percent should come from other sources, and 10 percent should promote your business.

Step Five: Create Content or Curate Content

Now comes the difficult decision to create content from scratch or to curate content that you find interesting that pertains to your brand. People have had success in doing both. It's up to you to determine which method best serves you, but it's important to remember not to be the person at a cocktail party that does nothing but talk about themselves. The idea is to keep your fans and followers coming back to your pages and accounts regularly by including industry adjacent content that makes sense and allows others to be part of the conversation.

Valuable content gives your fans and followers a reason to revisit your pages and accounts. They get something from the interaction, whether it be in the form of information, support, or entertainment. If your concern is building trust, the best way to go about it is to create engaging content that you can share across the various social media platforms you have a presence on already.

Step Six: Post Relative Content Frequently

Your content should have a voice that is consistent with your brand and the image that you've created online. It should also be posted frequently and checked regularly for comments and questions. Authentic engagement starts with your willingness to relate to and converse with the people you consider your ideal customers. Rather than spend a great deal of time reading the F.A.Q. Page on your website, they go straight to the source—you, to ask questions and get the info they need.

Don't keep anyone from the conversation. The more engagement you have, the better. You want to be seen as human and relatable so that your fans and followers feel more comfortable interacting with your social media accounts. You can also make it easier for people to find what you've shared by including hashtags and providing them with incentives for sharing. You'll learn which hashtags are trending by the number of posts that come up under the ones you've decided to include in your content.

Stand Out Online By Following Each Step in the Guide Entirely

You now have the knowledge needed to stand out online. The more attention you give your social media accounts, the better off they will be. By putting your social media buttons everywhere and making sure that branding is consistent, the better chance you have of turning fans and followers into loyal customers of your brand. Request a free business report and transform the way you interact with your fans and followers on social media today.