F is for Followers

Followers

Someone who is tracking a particular person, group, organisation, etc. on a social media website or application: she remains an immensely divisive figure, but she has a million followers on Facebook – The Oxford Dictionaries

Followers – they can make or break your brand.
How do you get them? What do you do with them? Are they really  that important?
These are all questions which will flit through any social media savvy person’s mind, but in truth these questions have been around for ages – even before social media.
Brands have always worked diligently at increasing their fan base – why? Because more people means more customers and that means more money.
There are many aspects to followers and there’s a lot that can be said about them, so here’s a breakdown.

What followers can do for you

Followers can do a variety of things. They can actually become paying customers, they can be ambassadors for your brand – preaching their love for it with everyone they meet, they can create engagement, and they can also generate content. If you show them love – they’ll show you double the amount.
Followers are like a group of hard working ants, they’ll work together to help build your brand and their loyalty will reap great rewards.

What you can do for your followers

It’s simple – show them you care. You’ve got to build a relationship with your followers – neglect them and they’ll give up on you. But if you treat them with respect and interact with them on a human level you’ll be showing that they’re important – which they are, because these days your brand is nothing if it doesn’t have followers.
Simply organising giveaways, sharing their content, or even sending out a thank you note every once in a while will make sure you’ve got a permanent place in their heart. At the end of the day we all want to be appreciated, these people are human beings and your brand should be human.

So how do you get them?

This is probably the million dollar question everyone keeps asking. Marketers work their fingers to the bones trying to come up with creative ways of attracting more followers, some going to crazy lengths and spending far too much money on this. The reality is that it’s not that hard – you just need to have a good head on your shoulders and the will to work.
There is off course the easy way out, and this is to go down the desperate route and simply follow hundreds of people in the hopes that they’ll follow you back. This might work on a short term scale – but in the long run you’ll end up with a skewed follow to follower ratio and probably won’t have valuable followers who genuinely care.
If you put a little bit of effort into it though you could end up with a healthy list of followers. Just follow these tips:

• Social media flirting – Spend some time each day going through the particular social media platform. Look for people with similar interests and like their posts. Comment on things you find very interesting, and where possible interact with people who don’t have a huge following. Going for the smaller users first will help you – they love receiving attention from brands as this makes them feel important, so go ahead and see what they’re up to. They might just provide you with inspiration!
• Create valuable content – If you want people to share your content then you’ve got to make sure it’s interesting. Get creative, share motivational or useful tips, and invest in high quality copy and visuals. With a bit of effort you’ll quickly get people sharing your content – increasing your brand’s visibility.
• Remain relevant – Get with the times, involve yourself in current trends, just make sure that the trend is in some way applicable to your brand.
• Cater for your audience – Don’t share the exact same content on all your social media platforms. Write specific copy for specific platforms so that you appeal to your readers. An instagram style post wouldn’t be effective on LinkedIn and vice versa.
• Be consistent – You’ve got to have a plan. Posting sporadically will mean that you’re not constantly at the top of your followers’ minds. So keep things regular in order to see great improvements.
• Analyse – this is perhaps one of the most important things in digital marketing. Crunch the numbers and see which posts do really well and why. Look into your audience’s demographics and learn from your mistakes.

The above are actually pretty simple – they just require dedication, but with a minimum of an hour a day you could boost your brand’s presence on social media and acquire loyal, loving followers who will be more than happy to shout our about how amazing you are.
Remember, it’s quality over quantity – you’re better off having 90 followers who really love your brand than 900 who never engage with you! If you’re stuck in a rut we’re happy to help, why not drop us a line?