Hello and welcome to season four of Let's Talk Social. This is episode one and we're gonna be going over how to grow your social media accounts. We're gonna talk about specific individual accounts. This season I have my son on the way, my very first born, and he's gonna be born in a month or so!
So if I start looking tired throughout the seasons, if you're one of our guests watching on YouTube or one of the other platforms, I apologize. But I'm gonna try to continue to bring you guys new, fresh content and read old content. So again, today we're gonna be talking about growing your social media pages.
This seems to be almost common sense nowadays. When, and like a starting place on this. When you're looking to grow a business and look like, Hey, let's start a business. What are we gonna do? Let's start social media accounts. Most people that understand the value of that and the value of social media, well have even created the Instagram or TikTok accounts before even registering the llc, which is kind of hilarious, are sometimes even before even figuring out if the business is viable as a profitable business in the first place.
So, This is because they understand the value that can be delivered from social media pages. if you were, if someone were to ask you, like, why do you need social media for your business, you could probably list some reasons. Like, well, more people will see you and you can post pictures to show off your products and you know, there's more awareness and all that kind of stuff.
So I want to chat more really about how we can grow your social media channels. Just to clarify too, I'm gonna mention paid ads a couple times, but really this whole episode is gonna be focused on the organic, unpaid growth reach of your pages. So before we chat about how to grow your social media channels, let's talk about why we would even want to in the first place, and then which platforms to choose as well. So we don't wanna be growing or trying to grow platforms that we can't even grow. So again, welcome to episode one of season four of the Let's Talk Social podcast. Let's hop into this as mentioned, we're gonna go over why we want to grow and then how we want to grow.
All of the notes and bullet points from this episode are also gonna be listed in a blog format for you guys on our Alpha Social Media website. So if you want a cheat sheet, there's no need to take notes, they'll all be listed right there for you., this is Alpha Social Media or Alpha social.media/blog.
Okay, so number one is for why, right? It increased visibility. If you have a larger social media following that means more people are gonna be exposed to your brand, which can actually lead to increased website traffic awareness, and then obviously sales and leads. number two as to why is better customer engagement.
So social media allows businesses to interact with customers in a more personal and direct way. You've seen the dms, which can help build customer loyalty and trust. So it's kind of cool when you can message your local bar or salon, ask them questions about promos they have going or what's, what's the specials that you guys have running?
They actually respond with helpful, personalized information for you. that goes with a, a long, with a lot of people, myself included. So I love getting to interact at that level. Number three is it's effective marketing, so it just works, right? So social media marketing's obviously a very cost effective method that's much more cost effective than traditional forms of advertising, like radio, for instance. That means it's accessible to businesses of all sizes.even though the Fortune 500 companies spend over half of their budget on just social media alone. Number four is customer insights. So you get, basically all the analytical tools will let you track the insights and see what their performance is, gather valuable info to the customer behavior and their preferences.
then you'd probably, obviously benefit from figuring out if your actual customers' age was 10 years higher than you actually think it was. So if you're marketing the 20 year olds and 30 year olds , that would be good to know. then number five is improved search engine ranking. So obviously if you have a strong social media presence, that's gonna help you pop up on the internet for social media, but it also helps your website in the search engine rankings like Google.
So, I think it's cool at least to think that all the keywords in your social media post and all of the activity that you're doing on there actually helps your website get found better on Google and social media platforms. Lastly number six, for why grow your social channels or why try is increased brand opportunity.
So this one's minute for some businesses and gold for others. Having a big buzz around your business can increase awareness of your products and services. Yes, but it also can help you attract influencers who can help promote your brand. A huge audience basically, so you can get crossover from their following and promote yours.
So those are the seven reasons why we're growing social media channels. But now let's talk about which social media channels you want to actually choose for your business to market on. So which ones we're actually gonna try to market on. So I'm gonna give you a list of eight things on this one on which platforms to consider when you're choosing.
So number 1 of the things you wanna consider, it's gonna be your audience demographics. So different social media platforms have different ages, genders and interests. You guys know this, so it's important to choose where your target audience is most active. So for example, if you have a target audience who's mostly young people.
TikTok Instagram, those things make sense. Whereas if your target is,, mostly professionals, older folks, they're all corporate, maybe obviously we're gonna look at more platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. Those would be a much better fit. Number two is another thing to consider is the type of content that you have to actually promote.
So, Some platforms are better suited for visual content while others are better for written content. So choose a platform that is gonna match the type of content that you want to create, and that's gonna benefit your service or products, basically. So if you're a fashion brand, platforms like interest,, Interest, Pinterest, Instagram, those are gonna be great for actually showcasing your products through the visual appeal kind of layout on Pinterest or your, obviously your Instagram feed.
Whereas if you're a B2B company, Twitter, LinkedIn, those are probably going to be more suitable because it's going to be long form engaging content. Maybe something like this podcast or a blog. Number three for things to consider is the features and functionalities of the platforms. So different platforms offer different features such as live streaming, shoppable posts choose a platform that offers.
The feature that you need to actually promote your business. So for example, if you're a business that wants to host live events, Facebook, Instagram, they have live stream options, , even TikTok does now. So, and if you're an e-commerce business, you need something like Instagram or Pinterest that have the shoppable posts, so someone can click straight from there, shop your products, go to your website and purchase.
So choose the platforms based on the conversion methods that you have available to you. number four is gonna be the ad option. So would some platforms offer advanced advertising options? Some only have very simple campaign options that may not offer a lot of analytics. So you need to make sure you're choosing one that will supplement your business in the long run.
for example, if you're a business that wants to target. Specific demographics. Facebook's obviously really creepy and does a good job of that. whereas LinkedIn, is more based on careers, income type, job level, that kind of thing. Number five, what to consider is the competitive landscape of the platform.
So they have different levels of competition. If your industry's already really saturated on a particular platform, it may be hard for you to stand out. So if you're a retail business, and you're brand new, standing out on Instagram and Pinterest is gonna be harder. On some other platforms because there's so many people already on.
Number six is platform specific metrics. So I kind of talked about this with the ads. Different platforms are gonna have different metrics for measuring your success. So make sure you're choosing a platform that has metrics that align with your business goals. So if your goal is to increase website traffic, something like Twitter and LinkedIn where you can actually post the links on it, same with Facebook is more suitable, whereas Instagram, you can't post links on it and some of these platforms let you actually track how many link clicks where they land all. number seven is your budget. So as I mentioned ads a couple times, some platforms are more expensive to advertise on than others. So if you're gonna start a journey on a platform, make sure you're choosing one that if you choose to advertise in the future, it will align with your budget. If you are a small business with a limited budget, something like Instagram and Twitter might be more cost effective for you, just because the advertising options for something like TikTok have a minimum. Spend like, it's 50 times more than what Facebook or Instagram is.
it's 50 bucks a day versus a dollar a day. So find someone like myself or anyone in the ad space that can guide you on those if you need more help in that area. Then finally, number eight is the community and cultural fit. So make some platforms have a specific community and culture, so it's important to understand if it aligns with your business values and goals.
So for example, if you're focused on sustainability, Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest really focus on that so they have a better fit., and also they have a really strong community of users that are eco-conscious, for instance. So, you know, Twitter's more politically charged. So choose your platform wisely.
so those are the eight things to help you kind of choose. Now we're gonna go over to the things that you can actually do to grow your page. The title of this podcast, this podcast episode, and all the general platforms. Then after that, I'll go and tackle some specific things to each individual platform if they require some additional context or explanation.
There's a lot of blurry lines here. So in general, here are some things that you're gonna wanna make sure are done on all of your socials. Again, this is listed on the blog website. So number one is gonna be optimizing your profile. So make sure you have a complete and optimized profile. This is obviously crucial for building a strong presence on social media for your platforms like TikTok and Instagram where you need to stand out.
This includes a clear bio, making sure it accurately represents your brand, so it actually says something that is accurate and represents you, you know. Good light. Make sure your profile picture is visually appealing and make sure you're easily recognizable. good contrast off the background, all those things.
then make sure that you're remembering that your potential followers are gonna be able to see this. So do what you can do to increase the likelihood of seeing all of these things and then following. Number two is how to grow cross platforms and use relevant hashtags. So make sure you're using relevant hashtags in your captions, in your comments, and this is a great way to actually increase the visibility of your post and reach for new audiences.
hashtags are basically nowadays like keywords that make it easier for users to discover your content. This is only really relevant on platforms nowadays like TikTok and Instagram, and if you wanna find trending hashtags by searching for them, you can go to the search tab at, which can give you an idea of which hashtags are currently popular.
It'll have some suggested ones for you. number three of how to grow is host challenges and contests. I feel like this died off for some reason over the last couple years. Host challenges and contests on your TikTok or Instagram account. It's a great way to encourage people to create user generated content for you and to increase engagement with your community.
These things can be simple, like asking people just to create a video. Hashtag or something that's trending, or you can make it more of a competition where you actually host a prize for whoever makes the best video or whatever it is. Number four is to collaborate with other users in your space. So collaborate with the other users, that, especially those that have large followings, you can help expand your reach and gain exposure to new audiences.
They get the same benefit from that, and you can cross-breed your audiences and you maybe even can create a challenge or a contest together, like I mentioned in the previous thing. So you can do those together. number five is track your performance and set goals for yourself. So using your platform's analytics tools, track your performance.
It's crucial for understanding how well your content is performing. My team and I go through monthly and weekly checks on this for content on all the pages we post to. And this obviously makes sense that you need to be able to make adjustments to cater to your strategy. This also allows you to set goals for the actual growth of your engagement and to make sure you're on an upward trend for the lifetime of the.
Number six is to be consistent. Everyone talks about this. Consistency is key when it comes to building a strong presence on social media platforms. This means you need to be posting regularly. You need to engage with your followers. Stay on top of the trends. It's all the pain in the butt stuff. Be consistent.
By doing this, you can keep your followers interested, increase the chances of them becoming long-term supporters as your brand. Increase that ltv, the lifetime value. So be consistent. Stay up with the trends. Have fun with social media. Number seven is to engage with your followers, so respond to your comments and messages.
It sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised with the things that we see actively engaging with others. make sure that you're building a strong presence on your social media. This is crucial for the growth here. You gotta actually react and engage with people regularly. I'm talking daily. If you're interested in building a relationship with them, this is going to lead to increased engagement and loyalty from your followers.
But it has to happen on a daily occurrence if possible. You know, take Saturday and Sunday off if you can. Again, just to emphasize how important this is, we check our client pages daily and you gotta check if urgent questions need to be answered. If they have problems, maybe there's an issue with their order.
all of that needs to be responded to quickly. so that's the last that you can kind of do for general growth in your accounts. But what about TikTok and Instagram? We can kind of talk about some of the things that we can do with them right here. So with TikTok, the newest growing social platform, we all want to know and continue to figure out how the heck can we grow our TikTok accounts and does it do anything for my business?
I get that all the time. Even landscapers, I've seen it help their businesses. So play with it, see what happens. Just mentioned earlier, it's up to you to decide which platforms you think can generate revenue for you. So choose wisely. But I like TikTok just cuz it's video based and it's fun content.
So for TikTok, creating gauging content is the number one. That's obviously all about creating short, engaging videos that are actually visually appealing and relatable to people. So you gotta use trending music hashtags, filters, filters on the actual videos. Make your content stand out. see if you can grow your page in that way.
Engaging is literally defined as charming and attractive. So if you can make your video content charming and attractive, this is largely spilled into and to be true for Instagram and YouTube shorts. So repurpose all the TikTok videos you're using and send it over to those platforms as well. Number two for TikTok is actually utilizing TikTok live. No one does this in a good way. I feel like business-wise utilize the actual live streaming feature to connect with your followers in real time and increase your engagement, even if it's two people. It's cool. number three is gonna be keeping an eye on the actual TikTok trends. This makes sense, but stay up to date with the latest TikTok trends.
Incorporate them into your strategy. Hit that search bar. It'll pop up the suggestions for you now for Instagram. It's very based on visually appealing content. This has been since day one. Instagram's all about visual storytelling, so make sure we're using high quality images, good videos, showcasing products and services apart from reels.
Basically, everything should look pretty good, and we touched on this earlier, but another good way with Instagram is to be able to collaborate with people, so having a good presence. A good look on there lets you not only find the influencers, but collaborate with them, gain exposure to new audiences.
The reason I wanted to mention it again is because Instagram has a built-in collaboration feature that actually lets you post from both your profile and other businesses or other influencers, and it says both of your names are the ones who posted it. Another Instagram tip is to utilize stories. I see so many people underutilizing stories.
Use Instagram to share your behind the scenes content. Promote your products and services. Increase engagement, show them everything. It's okay to have 15 stories every day. Another one for Instagram is, same with TikTok here. Use Instagram Live to connect with your followers. So again, even if it's just a few people, remember Instagram lives a thing.
It's okay to go on there and just test. Now next up is LinkedIn. For the people that this applies to and that want to choose it, use LinkedIn's publishing platform. They have a publishing platform that allows you to share long form content like this blog for instance. Hopefully you can try to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Another thing to do for LinkedIn is use their advanced search feature. I think some of this is paid as well, but use the advanced search feature. You can find new potential customers, partners, employees, business contacts, all of that good stuff. They also have paid promotion features on Instagram, very similar and you can use these options for sponsored content, sponsored in mail.
All of this will basically help you reach the larger audiences in LinkedIn. LinkedIn does have analytics as well. So make sure you're using your LinkedIn analytics to track your performance. I feel like a lot of people forget about that. So just wanted to remind you, if you're trying to grow your LinkedIn, check your analytics on insights on the actual now for the goat. The old one for Facebook, is there's still ways to grow on here, and you're gonna hear me say this again. Facebook Live. It's okay. , if there's not that many people, connect with your followers and try to increase engagement with them. . Also use Facebook groups. I feel like it's really underutilized as well.
Try to create or join Facebook groups. You can talk to others in your industry. You can talk to customers, and you can participate in conversations to hopefully stir up some leads or sales. Facebook marketplace is another good thing, so it's for who it applies to. You can actually sell your products and services directly through Facebook marketplace to an audience, so you can list off all of your things right there in Facebook.
Okay, so that was a huge list. I had to take a breath there. So now hopefully you're sitting with a good pile of notes and takeaway from this. I hope I got a lot of brains stirred up, thinking and just excited about this topic. Again, if you wanna view this all on the Alpha social media blog, you can, all of it'll be listed in bullet points for you guys right there.
you can run through. Everything is your little cheat sheet and hopefully that'll help you out a little bit and just get the wheels turning. Another big thing I didn't really touch on but I feel is important is it kind of just deems a toll on an episode, which is why I haven't talked about it, but it's social media planning and your calendar.
I feel like this is another big thing actually. Help with growth. It's not necessarily like a tactic that you can do, but it's something that's very pinnacle to the actual growth of your page. So I know you guys know this, but it's already the start of the new year, and if you don't have one, January, February, March, April.
If you're listening to this right now in January with me, you should already know what your Valentine's Day post is, if you're doing something for St. St. Patty's Day or not. When, and if you're doing anything for Easter, like these things should already be at least talked about and in discussions so that you can be ready and on top of it, if you have two months to think about a content idea, it's gonna be better content.
You're gonna have an aha moment one of these days, and it's gonna be great. So you're. I'll have another episode coming on social media calendars and kind of tactics to fill in that calendar as well because that's a very asked topic. So that will be wrapping up the end of episode one of season four of the Let Talk Social podcast.
Hopefully I'll be having these come out either weekly or biweekly for you guys.. We're gonna be sending these off to clients as well as resources, so that is even more reason for me to. More and more content. So we're gonna be posting this to our Facebook and our Instagram, our YouTube page, or on TikTok.
I think we're on TikTok. I don't know. Follow us there. If you guys want. We'll give you the follow back, comment to any of our channels. We manage all of these pages just like we do our client pages. So we'd love to hear from you if I'm doing a good job, if I suck, if I'm terrible, if you have things you want to add or mention, you might even have topics that you want me to talk about or just questions about some of the things I'm talking about, and I will be the one on there actually going to answer you.
So leave me something on any of our social channels if you'd like. I'd love to hear from you there. Lastly, if you'd like to view the list of episodes for this podcast, it is ltspod.com. That is where you can find all of the historical episodes. Even all the past goodies that I've talked about from the beginning of.
TikTok started all the way to basically this episode today. So lastly, thank you guys for listening and if you'd also like to hit us up on Alpha social.media, that is my agency's website. So I'm in our agency's studio right now filming this, as you know, this isn't what the old studio used to look like.
Still have all the phone padding around, but got a new background set up for you guys. So hopefully this is going to be a great start to the new year for you and I on social media, and all of us can win together again. Let me know in the comments how you're doing, if I'm helping out or not. Love to hear from you guys.
Summary:
In the first episode of season four of Let's Talk Social, Rich explores strategies for growing social media accounts. He covers various platforms including TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and provides valuable tips on how to effectively use each one to grow your following.
Rich emphasizes the importance of consistency in posting content, highlighting how regular updates can help to keep followers engaged and interested in your brand. He also stresses the value of using relevant hashtags on each platform, as this can increase visibility and reach a wider audience.
In addition, Rich dives into some platform-specific metrics that can be used to track the growth of your account. For instance, on Instagram, he recommends paying attention to metrics such as reach, engagement, and follower growth. On LinkedIn, he suggests monitoring profile views, connection requests, and engagement on posts.
Finally, Rich discusses the role of social media ads in growing your following. He stresses the importance of targeting the right audience and using engaging ad content to capture their attention. He also touches on the importance of measuring ad success and adjusting strategy as needed.
Overall, this episode provides valuable insights and practical tips for anyone looking to grow their social media accounts. Whether you're a business owner, influencer, or social media enthusiast, you're sure to find something useful in this informative discussion with Rich.
