As more and more businesses jump onto the social media boat, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out in such a crowded sea. Today, it seems like everyone and their dentist is on social media.
However, there is a good reason even your friendly neighborhood dental hygienist is on social media: despite how terribly crowded it has become, social media still works.
With the right strategy, you can still bring in new customers and clients to your small business.
But it’s no longer enough to just post on your feed — not with every platform’s algorithm preferring and promoting paid content and ads. To have a successful social media strategy, it’s important to incorporate other boots-on-the-ground tactics to start gaining more followers.
Luckily, we’ve got a few tips you can use right now (with ease!) to start getting more followers and clicks for your small business' social media.
Tip #1: Grow Your Social Media Platforms: Tell Everyone
Our first tip isn’t about some tool or algorithm hack you can use — not at all! In bringing more followers to your page, we always suggest simply talking to your network.
A person-to-person (or Zoom-to-Zoom) conversation always has and always will go a long way, even with your social media. Asking people you know and meet to follow your social channels can help you with your social media presence. Here’s just a few things you can do:
- Talk to your family, friends, and members of your community/network. Ask them to follow and support your business on social media.
- Put your social handles/information on your business card.
- Include your social handles in the signature box of your emails.
- Include your social handles in the footer of company newsletters and email campaigns. (You can even send a new email blast to your contact list right now asking them to check out your social media accounts.)
- When meeting new clients, customers, or new business associates (whether you’re on the site or in the office) tell them about your social media and show them how to follow.
Ultimately, the more you remember to tell people about your social media platforms, the more people will know about you and your business. Also, bonus tip, remember to invite all (yes, all) of your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections to like your business pages. Unsure of how to invite? Just click this Facebook article and this LinkedIn article for step-by-step guides.
Tip #2: Build Your Network: Cross-Promotion and Sharing
Words have power, and so do actions. In growing your social media, make sure that you reach new potential customers by using your trusted community of business colleagues.
A great social media marketing strategy to use is cross-promotion. Ask a trusted business colleague with active social media accounts to do a cross-promotion event with you. On an agreed-upon day, they share about your business and encourage their followers to follow you, and you do the same for them.
You can do this more than once with this business colleague, and you can even do it with more than one business partner. Cross-promotion works great on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can gain more social media followers by reaching out to your business colleague, talking through logistics and connecting your social media managers to create and post the content.
Harness the Power of Personal Connection
In addition to using your business colleagues to grow social media followers, you can also ask your friends and family to share your creative content. On social media, your friends and family have a lot of influence because people simply trust who they know!
A recommendation/share from a community member will inherently make people more likely to trust your brand than if they learned about you through an ad. You never know who your friends and family could bring to your social platforms through a share, so ask them to get involved.
Plus, when people share your posts, it also has the added benefit of increasing your reach and potentially your overall engagement. All in all, sharing can go a really long way. (You know what they say about sharing and caring.)
Tip #3: Invest in Your Social Media: Posting and Tagging
The people you are working with can use their social media to help your social media strategy. Just like someone can leave a Google review, on social media platforms, people can recommend and promote your business through different types of content.
When working with clients, ask them to take pictures of your products or services, post it on their social media, and tag your business. Not only does their post work as a recommendation for your business if they tag your business in their post, they give their followers a guaranteed way to find you and your social pages. Posting and tagging is a great way to boost your content strategy on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Here are our favorite photo ideas that your client could use:
- Work-in-progress shot(s) of a project you are working on together
- Finished project shot showing off the best of the best
- Before-and-after photo(s) if applicable
- Photo with them and your product in a fun, close-to-home location
- Tour or tutorial video they post of your product or service
- Something they created or produced because of your product or service
- Photo and text review/recommendation of your product or service
- Them at your location/office
- A fun group photo with you and your crew
- Video of them talking about why they love your product or service
Just remember: always comment, like and thank your social media followers for posting about you and your work. A thank you goes a long way when you want to grow your social media (social media is about connecting, after all).
See how our team here at Eternity responds to Google reviews:
Your Social Media Strategy Action Items
So what now? Where do you begin? Here’s our suggested action plan (that you can even check off as you go).
Instant Follows
- Invite all of your contacts to like/follow your Facebook/LinkedIn pages.
- Speak to your friends, family, contacts and business colleagues and ask them to follow you on all of your social media channels.
- Email your contacts in a new email blast or planned newsletter and ask them to check out all your social media accounts (just remember to link the accounts in the email).
A Little More Work
- Curate a list of trusted connections who would be comfortable sharing your social media posts. Ask them to start sharing some of your posts today!
- Include your social media handles on business cards, emails, etc. Plus, find ways to introduce and promote your socials in conversations with new connections.
- Ask clients on-site or in-office to take photos of your work and tag you in their posts on social media.
- Find that business colleague to do a social media cross promotion event with.
By completing these steps and by utilizing your existing network, you can gain social media followers and boost brand awareness. Just remember, organic social media takes time, but with a persistent and consistent social strategy, your small business social media will grow.
Looking for more social media and marketing tips? Follow Eternity for more educational content on our Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok.
