Social Media: How to Grow Your Small Business Following

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. 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 just a few tips you can use right now (with ease!) to start getting more followers and clicks for your small business social media.

Gaining Followers: 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. Just asking people you know and meet to follow your social channels can pull in new followers. Here’s just a few things you can do:

1. Talk to your family, friends, and members of your community/network. Ask them to follow and support your business on social.
2. Put your social handles/information on your business card.
3. Include your social handles in the signature box of your emails.
4. Include your social handles in the footer 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.)
5. 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, the more people will know about you and your business and the platforms you’re on.

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 a step-by-step guides.

Gaining Followers: Cross Promotion & Sharing

Words have power, and so do actions. In bringing new people to your page, using your trusted community of business partners can do wonders for your social media.

A great strategy to use is cross promotion. Ask a trusted business partner 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 partner, and you can even do it with more than one business partner. Cross promotion works great on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

If you want to run a cross promotion, simply reach out to your business partner, talk through logistics, and then connect your social media managers to make and post the content.

In addition to using your business partners to pull in social followers, you can also ask your friends and family to share your social media posts. On social media, your friends and family have a lot of influence. People simply trust the people they know! A recommendation/share from a community member will inherently make people more likely to be instantly trustworthy of your brand than if they learned about you through an ad. You never know who your friends and family could bring to your social channels 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.) 

Gaining Followers: Posting & Tagging

The people you are working with can use their social media to help your business. Just like someone can leave a Google review, on social media people can recommend and promote your business through their posts.

When working with clients, ask them to take pictures of your product or service, 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 works wonders on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Here are just a few photo ideas your client/customer could use:

1. A work-in-progress shot(s) of a project you are working on together.
2. A finished project shot showing off the best of the best.
3. A before and after photo(s) if applicable.
4. A photo with them and your product in a fun/close-to-home location.
5. A tour or tutorial video they post of your product or service.
6. A photo of something they created or produced because of your product or service.
7. A photo and text review/recommendation of your product or service.
8. A photo of them at your location/office.
9. A fun group photo with you and your crew.
10. A video of them talking about why they love your product or service.

Just remember: Always comment, like, and thank your followers for posting about you and your work. A thank you goes a long way on social media (social media is about connecting, after all).

Your Growth Action Items

So what now? How do you start all of this? Here’s our suggested action plan to help you get started (that you can even check off as you go). Just start with number one and go from there!

1. Start with inviting all of your contacts to like/follow your Facebook/LinkedIn pages.
2. Speak to your friends, family, contacts, and business partners and ask them to follow you on all of your social media channels.
3. 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).
4. 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!
5. Start including your social media handles on business cards, emails, etc. Plus, find ways to introduce and promote your socials in conversations with new connections.
6. Ask clients on the site or in the office to take photos of your work and tag you in their posts on social media.
7. Find a business partner to do a social media cross promotion event with.

By completing these steps and by utilizing your existing network, you’ll see more traffic on your social media pages. Just remember, organic social media takes time, but with a persistent and consistent social strategy, your small business social media will grow.

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