With so much competition on social media particularly with small/medium sized enterprises (SME) they struggle to gain a following with so much competition. However with the right strategy in place and utilizing different social media tactics, brands can begin to build a strong community and following to help expand the scope of their business. Here are our top 5 social media tactics we believe can gain you more followers.

Building consistency will in turn build your relationship with your audience, if your viewers know exactly what day and what time your next post will be it will greatly increase the number of users that will notice you.

Creating a posting schedule can be of great benefit to you and your viewers. If posting 10 times per day is unrealistic, try researching what times/days best suit your followers and set your goals accordingly.

Most if not all social media platforms run of their own algorithm, this means each platform has their own preferred style of activity and will help push certain content because it meets all the requirements the algorithm likes. Twitter for example will show tweets from specific accounts that have a lot of activity, therefore the more active you are on their site, the more they reward you with potential engagement.

The best feature of videos is the ability to convey more information in a shorter period of time. This enables the creator to have a wide range of choice with their own style of video which includes short/long format videos, tutorials or even ads to increase brand awareness.

Most people want convenience and with almost everybody owning a mobile phone has pushed the new trend of videos to a new level. It’s so easy to take your phone out of your pocket and search for practically anything by the touch of your fingertips. This helps enhance the ability of videos to be viewed through any type of content you choose.

In 2020, Facebook released a statement claiming that the more a post generates conversation, the more the algorithm will help push the content to more people. In fact they even went as far as claiming “live videos on average get six times as many interactions as regular videos.”

News Feed FYI: Bringing people closer together | Meta for Business (facebook.com)

What is a hashtag?

A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the has sign. This means each topic people are talking about can be found by searching for the relevant hashtags and in turn find the communities you are searching for very quick and easily.

How to use Hashtags:

Its important to not overuse hashtags, although most social media platforms allow you to use up to 20 and sometimes 40 hashtags per post, it can be quite beneficial to only the 5 that are most relevant to your content.

Having 5 relevant keywords is better than 40 keywords which would have no relevancy to your niche.

It is important to use the most efficient hashtags possible. This means the simpler and shorter your hashtag, generally the better. The reason behind this is because the shorter the hashtag, usually the easier it is to remember and be used by others.

Here are a few tools to help you find the hashtags that best suit you.

All Hashtag – Home | Top Hashtags for instagram, twitter & more | Hashtags Generator, Top Hashtags, Create Hashtags (all-hashtag.com)

Hashtagify – #nowar: Popularity, Trend, Related Hashtags | Hashtagify

Everybody loves something for free.

When it comes to giveaways/competitions it’s amazing how far some people will go just for the chance of a free prize.

The most important thing to remember is make the prize as compelling as you can, especially to your niche.

It’s amazing how much exposure a competition can create for your channel. Launching a new product with a giveaway is a great way to generate eyes on your brand.

Alof of Creators struggle to find ways to give back to their community. Giveaways/competitions are a great way to give back and directly engage with your followers.

Comparing this to other marketing strategies, giveaways are not only low cost, but they can be created and maintained in a relatively quick and easy fashion. Outgrow is a tool that can be used to make this even easier.

Contests and Giveaways | Outgrow

Influencers bring a lot to the table but the biggest thing to take from them is knowing that they have already been there, done that and got the t-shirt. Most of the time influencers will already have their own audience and this will enable you to tap into their audience and mutually benefit from each other by both getting more exposure and brand awareness.

Influencers can also help build trust in your brand. Most consider influencers to be extremely trustworthy, this is because they are not generally associated with corporations and any collaboration between the two is generally seen as an endorsement rather than an advertisement.

Reaching a relevant audience is extremely important and influencers can provide you with the audience you’re searching for. For example, a company that sells cat food would highly benefit from a collaboration with an influencer who regularly posts about their pet cat. This is because it is highly likely that the influencers audience is a suitable audience that cat food brands would like to target.

With these tactics in place and a consistent social media strategy, brands can begin to gain a foothold in their market and in doing so, create a community and online presence which helps them adapt to the digital world.