Your business has been kind of active on social media – Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. You post every week or two with specials, events, or just friendly holiday news. Sound familiar?
Most businesses, especially smaller ones, have a relatively small set of followers. Many that we talk to have follower counts only in the 10’s or maybe a couple hundred.
You may not realize that only 30% of your followers even see your posts. Frequently, it is lower than that based on which day of the week and time of the day that you post. If you have 250 followers, fewer than 80 or 90 followers probably see any given post.
Quality of Followers Matters
Small business followers tend to be their employees, family, and friends with some customers sprinkled in. Follower growth is minimal (or negative!). Posts are rarely so only a small circle sees them.
Setting Up for Social Media Growth
If your social media audience is not growing, you could be wasting your time posting at all!
If you want to succeed at social media marketing for your business – then you need to grow your audience. Here’s how to start:
- Evaluate your previous posts’ activity and results. Do you see any trends in responses based on the time of day, day of week, or by types of posts? Post history may provide you with knowledge about your audience and what they respond to.
- Have the number of followers changed over time. Growing? Static? Or declining?
- What are your goals. Why are you doing social media marketing?
- Are you speaking to your employees? Great, but consider a second channel that does not mix employee information with prospective client information.
- Are you looking to grow your audience? Why? If you want more traffic or sales, then you need to consciously change your approach.
Grow Your Followers
Boosting a post can provide occasional bursts of visibility but not long-term results. For steadier growth, advertising is your next step. Facebook / Instagram offers a robust platform to target interests, geography, and more to present your ads to your target prospective customers.
Increasing followers by following others can be very time consuming but is the best practice for LinkedIn.
Social Media Quality Starts at Home
Your social media page should be informative, interesting, and have calls to action that encourage followers to watch for your next posts. Ideally, other calls to action including phone, chat, web, and email are available for those ready to take further action! Good images, an entertaining story about your business, contact and location information are key to let people know where you are located and where you provide services.
Ad Costs and ROI
Facebook ad click costs tend to run around half those of Google Search ads. The reason is that Google searchers have a question and are seeking an immediate answer. Facebook ads interrupt their time scanning and scrolling. It was not their first thought to click your ad. Therefore, the value and cost per click runs lower on social.
Knowing your return on investment (ROI) is important. What is a customer worth? What is a lead worth? Answering these questions will help you mind your budget and measure value.
Our recommendation is to never “bet the farm” or set your budget so high for ads that you lose sleep over it. You need to be comfortable with your ad investment. You also need to let it run for several weeks or months with partial or even no success. Patience and testing is expected.
Ad platforms rely increasingly on artificial intelligence based on their years of data. Your performance will adjust and improve over time as the system responds to your results.
Gain Targeted Followers
Good ad copy and images changed regularly so people don’t instantly scan past and testing different calls to action can result in improved results over time. Quality posts complementing your ads with a mix of social, fun and products / services will help keep and get more followers.
Add new followers and you’ll see better results from your social media management strategy. It takes time, patience, and practice!
Do you need help growing your followers and managing your social media? Schedule an appointment with us or request a social media review.
