How To Improve your Social Media Presence with 17 Proven tactics now.

We all know Social media is part of us, but it’s no longer like how it used to be because you can’t easily gain exposure like in the past.

But what if I tell you it’s still possible to gain that exposure you need for your brand.

And what if I continue, that it’s pretty easy to do? Would you agree?

“No!” It’s what your mind is telling you. But it is still possible.

Yes, Facebook is a pay-to-play, but you can still reach your audience organically.

With a trend in social media, you too need to have it in your marketing toolkit, but the only drawback is it’s difficult to go through like how Kim did it.

Today I will show you what you should do to make you stand out. Keep on reading.

Let’s Get started, You can skip and move to what you’re interested in if you are done with one;

• Set clear goals.
• Fine-tune your profile.
• Know your audience.
• Create an Editorial calendar.
• Be active.
• Be human not a robot.
• Build a relationship don’t focus on numbers
• Provide a solution not Over-promoting yourself.
• Automation is key but do it the right way.
• Focus on engaging your audience.
• Jump on trends.
• Mix in visuals.
• Go live.
• Promote your presence.
• Don’t fear spending.
• Monitor your analytics.
• Keep Learning.

Why is Social media still important?

Social media has evolved with new social platforms coming in, and the existing ones updating regularly with features to keep their users.

With 4.55 billion active social media users, you can say that social media has greatly developed.

According to Smart Insights, Facebook is the most popular social platform with over 2.8 billion daily active users, this means you will have an audience here.

Does this mean you should concentrate only on Facebook? No, Tiktok, twitter, Instagram and others still work.  TikTok has passed the 1 billion active monthly users, 90% of Instagram users follow a business profile according to Statusbrew. I would have continued, but you can check out the graph below;

And the good thing regardless of any type of business, you will have a platform that provides you with the audience you need.

Therefore, social media is important for your brand because;

• It helps you build a diverse and engaging fanbase which can result in a loyal relationship.
• It can help you make a new sale by promoting your products and services.
• Become an authority. With social media, you can set an agent and become an authority in your area of expertise.

Now let’s dive into what you can do to grow your Social media following for free and effectively;

Set Clear Goals.

You have heard this before, not only in marketing but if you wish to achieve everywhere in life you should have clear and smart goals.

To help you with this, first, ask yourself, why are you on social media? If your answer is “Hmm….”, “Uhhh…”, “I can’t tell.”

Then you are surely in the wrong place. But it’s not too late as you read this post you should develop a reason for using social media and set your goals clear.

Think of what goals you want to achieve, how will they help your brand, and for how long it will take you to be achieved them. An example of a goal can be;

• To increase sales
• Brand awareness
• Get more followers
• Improve on engagement

Most beginners tend to ignore this or set unrealistic goals which are even hard to achieve, but this will make your social media strategy short-lived.

Now, let’s look at a clear and smart goal from a cosmetics shop on Instagram; “We’ll increase our reel engagement on Instagram by 24% by end of the second quarter of the year”

From that goal, we can tell that it is;

Specific: They have specified a social platform, Instagram and with reel Engagement as a metric to measure.

Measurable: Through using Instagram analytics and tools like Hootsuite, they can see and measure the engagement levels.

Achievable: Increasing engagement by 24% is something achievable, like saying 100%.

Realistic: The goal is realistic in that it will have an impact on their brand on Instagram, by exposing it to More people.

Time-bound: They have a time frame, before the end of the second quarter of the year.

Wow! You know what smart goals are and how to set them for your brand. You can let me know your goal in the comments section, and I’ll advise you accordingly.

Fine-tune your Profile.

Your profile is the first place a user will see on social media, thus giving it more time to make it stand out from the rest of the accounts is a great deal.

“What makes up a social media profile?” After knowing this you’ll now work to optimize it and make it tell a story where you’re not around. A profile generally consists of;

A profile photo: This is a photo or an image that represents you or your business on social media.

It’s always good to use your brand’s logo on your brand’s social media platforms, as it tells what is it. And for personal accounts, using a nice headshot can be great.

Before you can upload any photo as a profile pic, make sure that it meets the specific size recommended by the social network you are using.

To help you; the required profile pic size on Facebook is 170 x 170 pixels, Twitter recommends 400 x 400 pixels and you can get a detailed article about social media image size here.

Header photo/banner: This is the photo area at the top of your profile. It’s as well called a cover photo.

Here, you can put more content that defines your brand in a visual form. It can be a discount, a free trial, or something to keep your viewers looking for more.

Just like on a profile photo, follow header photo guidelines when uploading your cover photo.

Remember the required size for a cover photo on Twitter is 1500 X 500 pixels and Facebook recommends 851 x 315 pixels for a cover photo, For more about social media cover photos, click here.

Bio/About section: This will vary from one social network to another, but it lets you tell a brief story about yourself or your brand.

In your bio section, you can tell what your business is, your address, contact info, and a link to your web content (which could be your website or your other social networks).

Hint: Some social platforms like Twitter allow you to put #hastag in your bio, you can utilize it.

Pro-tip: Choose your name or brand’s name wisely, and it’s better to use the same throughout all social networks you plan to use, hence building brand trust.

Congrats, you can now set up your profile on any social platform. But if this was too brief to explain everything, Worry not! Check out my detailed guide to using Twitter or Facebook.

Know your Audience.

I know if you were asked, what is your audience on a social network you are currently using, you’ll happily say, “Everyone”, this is very wrong.

Ask me, why?

Take an example to understand this better, Instagram is having over 1.3+ billion active users monthly, does this mean that all this is your audience on Instagram? The answer is “No.”

But in 1.3 billion, you have an audience that you can target with respect to your brand.

Ask yourself the following questions when defining your audience;

• Where do they stay? (Their location)
• How does your audience communicate both online and offline?
• What are their sex, culture, and religion?
• How much do they earn and where do they work? And many others.

After answering these questions, you’ll know who your audience is and then work to keep it for your brand.

Nice! Our audience is now defined, if you still need to know more, let me know in the comments

Create an Editorial calendar.

You ask yourself why brands like Walmart, keep posting quality content and you ask yourself where to get it from!

Know that they are doing something which most the small businesses tend to ignore, and your brand might be ignoring this too; that is creating an editorial calendar.

Having an editorial calendar can be great in building a social presence, as this will keep you consistent in posting.

And you will not run out of ideas to post. Here are some of the things that you’ll gain when you create an editorial calendar;

In an error where, we find it hard to have our valuable content in the eyes of our favorite readers on #socialmedia @socialmedia2day you can give us a few #socialmediatips

— Amo Maida (@AmoMaida) August 8, 2021

Timing effectively when to post to maximize your reach. When you have an editorial calendar, it will be easy for you to post your posts on social media at a preferred time for your audience, which can maximize your reach.

Create fresh content and repurpose the old content easily. An editorial calendar will help you to avoid repeating the same posts as you would when try to try to brainstorming what to post in reality, and it allows you to choose which post to repurpose for your audience.

It allows you to create/post content for/on different channels in one place. Gone are the days when we used to have one social platform, but how can you keep your audience engaged on different platforms and with fresh content, it’s through using an editorial calendar to post on all the platforms without jumping from site to site.

Cheers! You learned how an editorial calendar can help your brand’s growth, and it’s all free to make it. If you want to learn more on how to do one, read this post on how to create an editorial calendar that works.

Be Active.

You are on social media because it is social and then how will you socialize with others if you are not active.

Twitter says 60% of its users expect a response to their tweet within an hour.

60% of its users expect a response to their tweet within an hour.

Twitter.

You can’t make it through on social media if you are not active regularly, this is a rule of thumb.

Thus, be active on each and every Social media platform at least find 15 minutes in a day to answer questions, interact with your audience, comment on other people’s posts, and much more.

Now let’s make a simple cheat sheet for us to stay active;

• Get at least 10-15 minutes to respond to customers’ complaints.
• Post User-Generated Content and retweet at least 7 to 10 tweets from others in your niche.
• Schedule your posts to easily reach your audience. (We will discuss this in detail).

When you’re regularly active on social media, you will create a human image, not a business image, this many people will have a reason to follow you and engage with your content.

Be Human not a Robot.

You might ask yourself why I didn’t put this with activeness, but this is different.

Have you ever been interacting with a business on Facebook and they only reply automatically with unrelated messages? How was your feeling?

Having a human aspect in your business can gain you more exposure on social media because you are interacting with people, not robots.

Mixing in memes, jokes, and more in your social media game can make you appear human to your followers,

Thus building your social media presence effectively, because the more the human nature in your business the more the relationship you’ll build with your fanbase.

PS: Don’t associate your account with bought followers, because most of the bought followers are fake and they won’t add anything to your presence rather you may be penalized by a social media platform because this act violates their guidelines and their algorithms can easily detect not accounts and close them. Check out this article, if you are in doubt about buying Instagram followers or not.

Build a Relationship don’t Focus on Numbers.

Now, this is another rule of thumb you should follow if you want to build a presence on social media.

Seek to establish a relationship with the followers you already have not to build a fanbase that is not interested in you.

Remember this;

Earned relationship + Loyalty = All-time Trust

Thus, when you have a good relationship with whatever follower count you have they will trust in you and help you to grow your brand.

It’s better to have 500 followers that are engaging with your content and have trust in you than have 50,000 followers who don’t engage with your content.

Building a relationship for your brand can go beyond trust to close more sales because your trusted fanbase is interested in your services and products.

Walker found out that a customer will spend up to 20% more on a product in the future if they receive a response from a brand.

Now, how can you build a relationship on social media without focusing on numbers?

Reply to @mentions and comments. You have noticed some of your followers are mentioning you or your brand in their posts and tweets.

Don’t let it go, appreciate them by replying and start a conversation, that way you’ll build a relationship with time. If it’s a negative comment handle it wisely to win the person’s mind again.

Retweet with quote retweet. This is specifically for Twitter, and it allows you either to retweet or quote.

But I appreciate a quote retweet, here you can ask questions or say anything that can start a conversation which will, in turn, build a relationship between you and your followers.

Comment on other people’s posts. This is another way how you can build a relationship with others because leaving a comment on a post or a retweet, attracts more replies, which sparks a conversation, and people believe you care about them.

Use Twitter space and chats. Specifically for Twitter, Twitter chats and spaces can help you to come closer to your audience and interact with them in real-time, hence building a relationship.

Provide a Solution, not Over-promoting Yourself.

With 71% of businesses using Instagram itself, according to Oberlo, you can say the many businesses have joined social media.

But do they try to solve a problem or to promote themselves?

Aspect says 71% of customer service complaints made on Twitter aren’t answered.

Click to Tweet Now

That’s why you should focus on solving problems that your audience is facing other than over-promoting your products.

Social media will always have questions from different users who need your knowledge from seeking technical knowledge on how to operate a smart TV to relationships issues like how to make a first-time impression on your first date.

That said regardless of your brand you’ll have a question to answer.

Remember solving users’ problems through sharing what you know about certain issues that affect Social media users, can greatly help you to build a relationship and become an expert in your niche.

If we sat there for two hours, and I didn’t deposit anything that could help you get any further, what is the point of that? If I make 7 million people laugh next year, and nobody was better as a result of it, then I need to go fill out an application somewhere.

Michael Jr.

You may not answer each and every question in your niche but you should try to solve a problem daily users are facing either with your products or your niche.

You can ask your team to help you with this, hence making it easy to provide a solution.

PS: As you answer people’s questions you’ll be gaining more expertise, now don’t let them go, keep them for your brand.

Because you were able to solve their problems they will eventually want to know more from you, why not have a landing page for them on your website. I’d this hard for you, if yes, read this post on how to start a website and create great landing pages for your brand.

Ledgeview Partners statistics show, that 54% of people had a more favorable view of brands that responded to customer service questions or complaints on social media.

Wow! I hope today you’ll try at least to answer 2 or 3 questions from your followers, Now let’s jump to the key

Automation is Key but Do it the Right Way.

Ask a big brand like HuffPost, how they manage their Social media platforms, they will eventually say automation and use of scheduling tools are part of their game.

Automation is where you allow a task or an activity to run at a specific time as you prefer but not do it in real-time, it can be scheduling posts, retweeting, sending DMs, and much more.

There are a variety of tools to do this for you most with freemium plans but limited features such as Chatbots, Hootsuite, Buffer, and Coschedule to mention a few.

But we said automate wisely this is where you either lose it or win it.

On average, 6,000 tweets are sent per second. This means averagely 500 million tweets are sent per day. ~ https://t.co/5Qhvw8vxfy what can we learn from this as #socialmedia users? @neilpatel @RyanBiddulph pic.twitter.com/5bj3wOIyPy

— Amo Maida (@AmoMaida) March 6, 2022

From the above tweet, you can see that around 6K tweets are sent per second, but is this done by humans?

The tools shared above can help to schedule your posts, view your different accounts in one place, view analytics, attend to customers’ complaints, and more.

But there are other tools that can retweet for you or send DMs for you, distance yourself from them.

Why?

You should not automate everything on social media, because you will appear like a robot.

Pro-tip: You should at least spend 15 minutes a day sending a DM, retweeting a tweet, and commenting on other people’s posts.

Imagine interacting with a brand where they only send you automated messages to answer your questions! How do you feel?

Do you want to be this brand or do you want to beat it out by spending some time Interacting with your followers? Think about it.

Great! You can now choose which task to automate and which activity you’ll do on your own to grow your social media presence, but you should always have automation tools at your hand if you wish to grow your social presence. Are you still doubting how to do it the right way, I wrote for you a detailed post on how to use automation in social media.

Focus on Engaging your Audience.

After all, how will you know that what you sharing on social media is getting noticed, it’s through engagement?

And it’s through engagement that you can gain more exposure hence building your social media presence.

But let’s first know what is considered engagement? 

We consider Likes, Retweets, Shares Comments, Clicks, mentions, and saves. Now you know what is engagement.

This is what you will measure to determine how successful are in achieving your goals.

Now let’s look at what can bring in engagement;

• Post User-generated content: Posting content from others can boost your engagement more than the content you create on your own.
• Ask questions: Through this, your followers will provide answers which can easily grow your engagement.
• Post at the right time: By posting when your followers are online you can get more people to engage with your content.
• Post shareable content: Yes, not all content is shareable, thus, posting content that is worth sharing can boost your endorsement. (Continue reading to know what’s sharable).

That’s it for engagement! Was it so brief? I just got a detailed article for you on engagement.

Jump on Trends.

Did I say continue reading to discover something?

Then it’s trends, if there is a list of what social media users like most, then are trends top the list.

Posting trending content either from your industry or general trending news can greatly work up your social media presence.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou How does this apply to your #brand

— Amo Maida (@AmoMaida) March 13, 2022

According to Twitter, 67% of users use Instagram to keep up to date with what’s trendy.

You have seen that users like to share, comment, and trend news and posts on social media.

Therefore, in your social media arsenal look for and post trends.

Pro Tip: Don’t overdo it and don’t post irrelevant trends just to win followers, but instead post to gain targeted followers.

This is because when you post irrelevant trends, you will be growing an untargeted fanbase which will not grow your ROI.

You got it! I was brief but it is worth it. Worry not, check out this guide on what trends can do for your brand.

Mix in Visuals.

When don’t have what to post then post visuals to build your social media presence?

In 2020, 84 percent of communications were visual.

And as of the second quarter of 2021, Statista found out that the photo and video sharing app, Snapchat, had 293 million daily active users worldwide.

You can see that images and videos work well on social media than text.

Why not jump use them as well?

In a worry about how you will get good images and videos for your brand! This is simple with your smartphone.

Thinking about what visuals you should post on your social media, look no further, I have something you’ll start with;

• Memes and GIFs
• Infographics
• Image Quotes
• How-to videos
• Behind the scenes photos
• User-generated content
• Product images and many more.

Now you have a variety of where to start from, you can start mixing in visual content for your brand.

And tools such as Canva can really save you a great time when editing your photos and give your photos a more exciting look.

I use Canva for most of my design. Therefore your phone’s camera plus Canva should save you a dime because they are all free.

Wow! You’re now a designer! Post it on social media, and go viral! Let’s see now more in our cheat sheet to build our presence.

Go Live.

I think I should not emphasize much on this much because I know you already know what a live video or audio can do.

You have heard it somewhere on the net that Facebook favors live videos, then prove it to me, that live broadcasts can surely grow your social media presence.

Rather than read a blog post, 80% of people prefer to watch a live stream. [Source: @Hootsuite ] @AmoMaida

CLICK TO TWEET

From the stat above, you can see that many people enjoy watching live videos, now why not use them for your growth?

Many people think that going live requires a heavy budget, but in the digital era, you don’t have to break the bank.

Your smartphone can be a good camera to go live on social media platforms, and getting a cheap microphone can add up quality audio. 

Thinking of what you can do while going live, there are a variety of things you can do;

• Q&A session.
• How-to videos and tutorials.
• Live contests. And more

Remember, always look human in your live videos because you are the talent that should bring in viewers.

Nice! You can think of going live tomorrow, plan in advance and roll the camera. Let’s now promote it.

Promote your Presence.

Worried about how you will do this, don’t worry you won’t pay a single penny for this.

Promoting yourself is as simple as cross-promoting yourself or your brand.

If you are already established on Facebook why not promote your Twitter presence there. Most likely your Facebook fan base will be interested to check out what you see shared on Twitter.

Do you still wonder how you can do this? Let me walk you through it.

Put a link for an account you wish to promote in the bio section of the platform you are promoting. For example, if you are promoting your Instagram account on Twitter put the link to your bio or website area.

Share the content you post on one Social network on the other social platforms. By doing this, users will like to check out what you are doing on other social networks, such as sharing your Facebook posts as tweets.

Promote events on different social platforms. Let’s say you have a Facebook live event, why not promote it on Instagram, or you can promote your Twitter chat on other social networks.

Run contests and promote them on different social platforms. A giveaway can boost your engagement by, this proves to you that it’s ideal to run one for your brand.

But how can you make it successful without promoting it? Let’s say it’s an Instagram giveaway, you can promote it on Facebook or any other social platform to get more people to participate.

Wonderful! Now you should be almost at the tip of your social media presence, be without the remaining 3 you will lose it soon, so let’s jump into them.

But I have a detailed guide for you on how to successfully run a contest.

Don’t Fear to spend.

I know most of us don’t like “spending” especially when it comes to social media since most think we are not gaining anything from it.

But this is because you didn’t set a clear goal in step one, if you had then you will know why you need to spend and how.

And again spending is not only running social media ads as most of us think, with is a big trend in the social media world.

There are also a number of areas where you can spend in order to achieve your goals effectively.

You can spend on running social media contests, influencers, using social media monitoring tools, and more. As you see it, it’s more if running ads.

Did you know that 93% of marketers have used influencer marketing?

And Influencer Marketing Industry is expected to reach $16.4B in 2022, which means for you to compete favorably, you should play the game well.

Thus, you should not be worried about spending, but spending wisely and having your goals in mind is vital.

Ask yourself what will an influencer add to your brand, “how will a contest I plan to run, impact my overall brand” and many others, by asking yourself these and more questions you’ll know when and why you should spend.

Did you enjoy “spending”, let me know in the comments, but you can know everything about ads in this guide.

Now let’s dive into a real way to measure our success.

Monitor your Analytics.

We made nice goals in step one, but will it make sense if we didn’t follow up whether we are trying to achieve them or not? The answer is “No”.

Now it’s the time to measure how far we have gone in the social media journey, and you have s variety of free and paid tools to help you do this in a short time.

Most of the social networks will provide you with basic analytics tools for free that can provide you with the data, required for you to continue.

And you can as well choose other tools such as Hootsuite, sprout social, and more but they have paid plans, but their paid plans are worth a penny.

These tools will show you your followers’ count in a specific period of time, how your posts are performing, who is reacting to your content, and much more.

This will help you in the next step for example it can help you when running an ad campaign to target an audience that had already interacted with your business.

As a marketer or any other person interested in building a social presence, you should visit analytics regularly to find out how far you have gone.

Nice! You know how analytics data can help your brand’s social media growth. Oh, this is brief, but if you wish to read the full article on how to use Social media analytics, read this blog now.

Now check with me about how the last step can help your overall growth.

Keep Learning.

My mind is saying, “Amo, this is useless.” But is it really useless? I know most of you have the same answer in my mind, but it’s wrong.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.

Doris Lessing.

Therefore, for you to succeed in growing your social media presence, you should keep learning new things, trends and tricks. 

This is because everything is bound to change, and social media is part.

Because what works today may not work in the next two years. Organic posts went viral when social media had just started, but nowadays it’s hard for them to go through.

That’s why you need to keep learning what is working in social media.

Here are some of the strategies you can take to help you keep learning;

• Subscribe to blogs related to social media: If you want to learn about social media, subscribe to this blog and other blogs that labor to inform you about social media marketing.
• Join forums: There are a variety of online forums that discuss social media tips, look for them and join them to stay up to date.
• Attend social media events: Attend online social media events that are organized by big brands in social media, as they always discuss what is working on social media.

Wow, you made it here! It was our final strategy for building our social media presence. If you enjoyed this article, share it with a friend here or subscribe for more.

Final Thoughts.

If you follow all these strategies and implement them in your social media toolkit, you will reap something in your social media journey.

Remember, social media success does not come overnight, but it requires consistency, time, and where necessary it will require spending.

It’s been nice having you here, check out my Twitter, for daily tips and tricks in social media, content marketing, and SEO.