Help! How Do I Increase My Business Presence on Social Media?

I am not one to ask for help, but in this case I must. I am a fairly successful marketer but I don’t do social media. Kind of hard for me to be a better marketer without it right?

Well, I’ve gotten by for many years, but I am at the point where I want to scale my business. I know that in order to scale, I must have a steady stream of people I can interact with, much like my mailing list which has been very successful for my business. One way to do this is to increase my social media following.

I got lucky a few months ago after reaching out to a few influencers for help. I met social media specialist Leonard Kim, managing partner of InfluenceTree. He had recently completed a case study on social media growth which I authored on Influencive. In doing so, I was able to learn many techniques that I will be implementing in 2017.

In 2016, Kim increased the social media following of Keck Medicine of USC by 1,265 percent. While I don’t have that high of a goal, I am convinced that applying some of Kim’s techniques, I will at least double my audience. Kim agrees that even applying a few of these strategies will help increase my following.

Why My Social Media Strategy Sucks

The problem I have with social media is my strategy (or lack thereof). You must have a social media strategy in order to determine your social media return. Kim says, “One of the main problems people have with growing their audience is that they have no strategy. There is a secret behind social media growth and strategy is the main driver.”

I have no strategy for how to grow my audience. I know all the methods that people have recommended, but have not sat down and put them in an order I can follow. I am more of a “do it as you go” social media strategist. So basically, I have no strategy which is why my social media efforts are suffering.

Where I’m At and Where I’m Going

Currently, I have 5,331 followers, combining my stats from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I chose these three networks as they have been the most engaging for me. (I have tried other networks such as Pinterest, but I did not have the interactions I was hoping for.)

• Twitter – 2,017
• Facebook – 98
• LinkedIn – 3,216
• Overall – 5,331 (Actual)
  

I find Keck’s 1,265 percent growth to be an unattainable goal for me. After all, I will be limiting the amount of time I spend implementing my strategy. Ultimately, I am striving to triple my following by the end of the year. This means I will amass 15,993 followers by the end of 2017, and I am aiming to triple my followers for each individual platform as well.

• Twitter – 6,051
• Facebook – 294
• LinkedIn – 9.648
• Overall – 15,993 (Anticipated)
  

How I Plan to Get There

The first two things everyone must do when trying to gain followers is update their profile and create a strategy. Yes, part of your strategy includes creating the strategy. Bear with me here.

Prior to publishing this article, I went to all three of my profiles and made sure all the information was correct, I had profile images, and everything was up-to-date. You can see that my LinkedIn profile has the most followers which I can attribute to the LinkedIn best practices I picked up from some influencers a few years back.

Next, came my strategy, which again, if you don’t have one, you will have no way of telling if what you are doing is working (or what needs changing). My strategy isn’t complex, but it is more than I have ever had. Keep in mind that it may change depending on how I attract the most followers. I will publish updates to this post if that happens.

“One of the best strategies you can have is to have a content calendar, whether it be for a week, a month, or a year,” adds Kim. “The further ahead you get, the better off you are because you won’t have to scramble around for content and come up with things to do on the fly.”

Each weekday I plan on spending 30 minutes planning posts for all three social networks. The two software suites I will use are Feedly (to help find information to share) and Buffer (to schedule the posts). I am switching from another social media scheduler simply because Buffer integrates with Feedly so I can get more done in less time.

I will be doing four scheduled posts per day, per social media profile. In addition, I plan to share four other posts that I normally find in my feed (which I will repost/retweet with a unique headline).

Facebook seems to be where I need the most help. In order to increase followers and try Kim’s suggestion of boosting posts, I will spend $1 per day to boost posts. I am going to take the most popular post of the month and boost it the next month. Even spending as little as $1 will make a difference according to Kim. He says, “By spending a dollar a day on your most popular post, you are able to get more engagement on it. When more people like your post, you can start to invite the people who like your post to like your page as well.”

That’s it. May not seem like much, but it’s a plan—something I lacked up to this point.

Final Thoughts

When you read through Leonard Kim’s case study, you will see many best practices I did not mention herein. Many of these, such as the use of Twitter cards for posts, are something I have already set up. These are the minor things you can do to help attract followers and they are easy to implement.

I still don’t plan on being a social media guru, but I do plan on testing this study. Over the course of the year I will provide updates (Guess where? Social media!) to track my progress.

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