Nathaniel Fried
Keeping your social media followers happy is just as important as keeping your shareholders happy. With the world constantly online, if you’re not blowing up on social media then you’re nowhere. Take a look at these 9 ways you can prevent audience loss so that you can ensure you keep every single hard-earned follower.
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Ask your followers about their thoughts and opinions: do you know what they like?
Launching a quick poll is a great way to keep your followers engaged. Make most of them about current events or trends, and throw in the odd bit of humor. Once they get used to this type of content you can then ask for feedback about your offering without it looking like a market research exercise.
Be responsive by replying nice and quick just like if it were your private account
If you really want to engage your followers then you need to reply to them just like a real person would. Of course, you are a real person. But your followers will assume that a business has a huge autoresponder or a team of people sending its posts out. If you can give the human touch to your posts then people will quickly sit up and take notice.
Send private messages that read like they’ve been written by an individual. No one likes to receive and obvious template message that’s been focus grouped to within an inch of its life.
Create and share valuable content that people will actually care about
Whether you share a video, a handy list of tips, or a stunning image, make it something desirable. Ask yourself whether you and your friends would share or retweet it? This will allow you to get into the mind of your followers.
Too often business accounts focus on sales orientated messages, and that’s just not what people are on social media to see. Create something they care about and you’ll see your posts shared around the world with the click of a button. Just what you need to see when you’re trying to grow your following and build your brand.
Encourage your followers to get their friends onboard so you can grow your network
If you want to grow your audience then you need to make use of the followers every single contact has. Remember that you’re trying to build a network of people who all interact with one another. This means that you need to adopt the same marketing strategy as a number of successful businesses.
Imagine that you wanted to launch a new writing websites page on your site. You would share a link with your followers, and then subtly ask them to share it with their friends. The secret is to do it in a way that makes them think they’re doing their friends a favor. ‘Do you know someone who…’. These kinds of phrases really do work wonders when you want to turn your followers into free marketers.
Make use of monitoring tools so that you can see what your followers really think of you
Sometimes there will be a drop in your audience and you will be at a loss as to why it’s happening. Don’t despair though, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you out. By finding a monitoring tool you can analyze the longterm habits of your followers and learn what they want to see.
The important lesson to learn here is that you don’t want to wait until you see a dip in your follower numbers. Often this will be preceded by a drop off in engagement and participation. As people get bored of your offering they will stop reacting to what you do, and eventually unfollow you. Focus on quantifying engagement and you’ll be able to stop audience loss before it even happens.
Focus on the visuals to ensure maximum engagement
Your brain responds to images 60,000 times quicker than it does to words. This is because we’re visual creatures who instantly react to the world around us. You can use this to your advantage by going all-in with your imagery.
Take the time to create something truly stunning rather than rushing out poor quality images en mass. This will allow you to create beautiful content that instantly stands out on someone’s timeline.
Games, competitions, and giveaways all offer your followers something worthwhile
When you want to create interesting content there’s nothing better than offering something for nothing. People love to feel like they’ve found a bargain, and it’s all the sweeter when it’s something fun and engaging.
Interactive games are a great way to hook people — the more playable and addictive the better. Giveaways and competitions are also a great way to pull your followers in. iPads, discounts, meals out; you name it people will love it. If you get it right then they’ll also share your offering with their followers.
Ask your followers to upload images by launching your own hashtag
Asking your followers to post images of them with your products is a great way to solicit what are actually endorsements in disguise. When someone sees their friends or a well known person holding a product and having fun, what are they going to do? Associate that product with the positivity they see in the image.
If you want to turn your followers into a referral network that will get you even more followers then launch a hashtag. This will allow people to search all of their images and make it look like you’ve created a real storm on social media.
At the same time you need to react quickly and sincerely to negative press. People will often post images when they’re annoyed with you. Respond like a human being rather than a legal team and your response will speak volumes.
Put links in your posts so that you can participate in wider discussions and trends
Imagine if you were trying to convince people that you offer the best editing service, how would you do it? Would you simply post ads everyday? Of course you wouldn’t! Nobody would want to see that.
By all means post the occasional ad, but do it with humor so that you can tie your service into the latest online trends. Share links to viral videos or thought-provoking content so that you can offer your followers something. You don’t always want to glue them to your channel. Sometimes it’s enough to give them something they value and trust they’ll comeback next time you post.
As long as you don’t commit the cardinal sin of linking them to a competitor you can be confident they’ll be back.
About the Author
Daniela McVicker is a specialist in social media and follower growth. She has over a decade of experience in creating a brand presence on social media, and has unique insights into how to grow bespoke networks.
