How to Grow Your Social Media from Zero to Hero

Who wants to learn effective social media strategies that will vastly improve your content, engagement and social media following? Me me me!

How do I know these strategies are effective? Because I personally used each of these strategies to grow my first business to over 100,000 social media followers.

But followers aren’t the only thing I’ve gained. I also met my husband on Instagram. More on that later.

None of these positive milestones would have been possible if I had not focused on organizing my social media strategy.

1 – BE CONSISTENT

You don’t have to set up an extensive social media strategy. Just be active and consistent on your platforms of choice. This means posting regularly and not straying too far from a schedule. When you post on a regular basis, your community will become familiar with your routine.

How often should you post?

Depending on the platform you’re using, there are different outlines for how often to post. For instance, you could get away with sharing 25 pins in a row on Pinterest. But if you were to do the same thing on Instagram? Nuh-uh.

What times should you post?
Timing is everything in the social media world. But there is no “magic hour” that works for every account. The best thing to do is follow a consistent posting schedule and then analyze your account to see how the posts have performed.

2 – OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES

Social media engagement is drastically improved by visual content. This is true even for Twitter, where the majority of posts are text-based. Images and videos (especially high-quality, eye-catching ones) can increase engagement on social media.
A common myth about photography is that you need a professional camera to take quality photos. This is simply not true. You can take amazing photos with your phone. You don’t even need fancy (or expensive) photo editing equipment. You can also easily edit photos with apps!

Apps for editing photos on the go:

• VSCO

• Afterlight

• AColorStory

• Canva

3 – SPRUCE UP YOUR COPY

Just as images are important, so are words. But good writing isn’t necessarily dependent on what you write… a lot of the impact of “good writing” is how you write your content. Persuasive tones, first-person recounts, power words and active voice can turn around a previously boring piece of work.

Power words to use in your copywriting:

• Exclusive

• Guaranteed

• Hurry

• Proven

• Magic

4 – SHARE A VARIETY OF CONTENT

Variety is the spice of life, right? Would you want to see the same post over and over? Probably not. So why subject your followers to that? As humans, we are naturally curious beings. We want to see content that intrigues us and commands our attention. Stumped for what you can share?

Examples of content to share:

• Behind the scenes posts

• Flat lays of your workspace

• In-progress videos as you create

• Other people’s content (just get permission to post if it’s an image!)

5 – ENGAGE WITH OTHERS

This just in: social media is meant to be social! Did I just blow your mind? Hah! Seriously, though, it’s surprisingly quite easy to forget. But it does not take a lot of effort and, guess what, you don’t have to be extroverted to make friends online.

As I mentioned above, I met my husband on Instagram. We happened to be using the same hashtag for our city and I liked one of his photos.

We commented back and forth. Our messages jumped over to Facebook. Next thing you know, we’re meeting up at a coffee shop, getting married, having kids, the whole shebang. Note: not all of these events happened overnight (or in that order).

I wasn’t too weirded out. Mainly because I had already made a habit of meeting people from social media. I could write a whole post about the people I’ve met on Instagram. Hey, that’s a great idea.

Exciting ways to make new connections:

• Twitter chats (my social media bud Zoe Linda wrote an awesome post here)

• Insta-meets

• Instagram stories

• Pinterest group boards

• Facebook Groups (check out this post by Caitlin Bacher)

Simple ways to boost your engagement:

• Respond to comments

• Ask questions in your captions

• Tell your followers to tag a friend

• Host giveaways