As the world becomes increasingly connected through social media, it’s more important than ever to have a strong online presence. But with so much competition, it can be tough to get the reach that your brand needs. You can spend days planning, creating, and posting content on your social platforms, but you need more than that to gain a bigger reach, increase brand awareness, and generate leads.
In this article, we’ll look at how you can grow your social media reach and why you should use Marketing as a Service (MaaS) for social media marketing in 2023.
6 Ways To Grow Your Social Media Reach (Without Being Pushy)
Most online small and medium enterprises (SMEs) rely on social media marketing to drive business growth. However, not all achieve the same results. Some businesses get tremendous results with their social media campaigns while others lag behind.
So, what separates the successful businesses from the not-so-successful ones? Where do you want to fall in 2023?
It’s social media engagement and reach.
If you can expand your reach and get people to engage with your brand, you’ll be able to leverage all the benefits social media marketing has to offer. How do you grow your social media reach and increase the engagement levels, without being pushy of course?
Here are a few strategies that can help you to grow your social media reach:
1. Focus on your target audience and meet them where they are
The golden rule of social media marketing- know your target audience. Without a target audience, everything else is a waste of precious (and often, limited) resources. The biggest mistake you can make is not knowing who your target audience is.
Create buyer personas and use them to identify your target audience. A buyer persona is a fictional profile that documents detailed descriptions of your target customers. It includes who they are, what they do, where they’re from, demographics, and affinities among other details. This guide will help you to create effective brand-specific buyer personas.
Once you figure out who your target audience are, meet them where they are. Find the platform they engage with most and establish a strong presence there. For example, if you get the most engagement on Instagram, then you should focus your efforts on that platform. Being strategic about the platform that works best for your brand will go a long way in extending your social reach.
| Refining your target audience and the ideal means to get to them can 10X your leads. This was the case for Business Network Academy (BNA), which was initially faltering with its brand awareness and lead generation. This is a networking forum that brings together business owners in diverse niches, with each industry having its representative. It needed more sign-ups for the organization’s weekly networking events, especially for the industries that were yet to get representatives. | We conducted a social media campaign through Facebook marketing, with both organic and paid content. This grew the visibility of the brand and brought more leads, specifically: |
2. Create engaging content, consistently
If you think you only need to speak to your audience when you’re selling a product, you’re making a big mistake. Creating engaging content will help you to increase visibility and, in turn, your social media reach. Choose specific content that will attract the right people and post consistently. The only thing social media users love more than good content is consistent good content.
Remember, the more engaging and interactive your content is, the more relatable it will feel. And the bigger reach it will have.
| Take Xtreme Funfair for instance. This is a traveling funfair with wildly popular rides – from roller coasters and Ferris wheel rides, to activities like squirt gun races. However, the business still had trouble raising visitor numbers for the locations it was setting up in – mainly because of an unstructured social media strategy, across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. | We carried out tailored brand awareness and lead generation campaigns, with interlinked organic posts, paid ads and visual elements that sent out cohesive messages. These were the results: |
3. Be human and seek relationships, not just followers
We can debate all day whether or not your follower count is an important metric to track.
But 1000 followers who engage with your brand are more valuable to your social media marketing than 10,000 who ignore you. The beauty of social media is that you can leverage it to forge relationships with your followers and build a loyal community around your brand. Some of the ways to quickly build relationships on social media include:
Always tag the people you’re referencing in your posts
Respond to questions from your followers
Reply when followers mention your brand or share your content
Start a conversation by replying with a comment instead of just liking or retweeting
Above all, give your brand a human face on social media. Have a personality. Put the “social” in your social media marketing strategy and focus on helping instead of selling.
4. Leverage the power of social media influencers
Social media influencers can be a good gateway to mass attention. If you find the right type of influencer who’s in sync with your target audience, you will be able to gain the right type of followers for your brand and expand your reach.
If you have the budget, it won’t hurt to work with influencers. Find a complimentary service, a community, or an influencer that aligns with your brand, figure out what you have to offer, and reach out.
5. Make your social media posts reachable
Your followers will obviously have access to your content when you share them. But you can extend your social media reach by taking advantage of:
Hashtags: Using hashtags on Twitter can increase your brand’s engagement rates by up to 50 percent. On Instagram, 11 hashtags (you can use up to 30 in a single post) increases your engagement by 79.5%. The power of hashtags in increasing your reach cannot be understated. Be careful though, using hashtags wrongly can make you look spammy
Tagging: When you’re collaborating with influencers, artists, photographers, and other brands on a piece of content, ensure that you tag them in the post. It will give you greater exposure.
Locations: Don’t forget to include locations in location-specific posts. It will help with giving your page visibility to users viewing that location’s landing page.
Don’t forget to make your social presence known by cross-promoting your social media channels on the website and other social media platforms.
6. Automate, but in the right way
With advancements in technology and artificial intelligence (AI), automation is the rage in the world of business right now. According to McKinsey, 50% of companies around the world are already using AI for at least one business function.
And marketing isn’t left behind. Marketing automation has a lot of benefits to your business. But putting your social media marketing on autopilot will be shooting yourself in the foot. For example, mass auto-replies will come off as “robotic” and insincere (remember you’re trying to give your brand a human face). Automation for content curating and scheduling is great, but be cautious when dealing with questions from your followers.
In a nutshell, automation should help you to personalize the customer experience on social media.
Bonus tip: Don’t be afraid to experiment with paid social media campaigns. While there’s still plenty that can be done organically, social ads can have great ROI especially if you’re looking to expand your reach within a short period of time.
Where MaaS Comes In
The harsh truth is that there’s no turnkey or secret solution to expanding your social media reach. If your heavy investment in digital marketing isn’t paying off, chances are you’re leaving out the basics.
It’s these little tips and strategies that will go a long way in priming your social media accounts for maximum reach and engagement. Brands that have mastered these tactics are killing it on social media and getting way ahead of their competitors. If you can follow them yourself, they will help you massively.
But for an SME with limited resources, it can be too much work- finding the right marketing automation tools, researching the right influencers to partner with, curating content, and optimizing your social pages for organic reach. On top of running day-to-day business operations.
This, among other reasons, is why you should outsource your digital marketing needs.
However, you shouldn’t pay for the whole package when all you need is social media marketing services. Why pay for a package that includes web design services when you don’t need web development? This is where marketing as a service (MaaS) comes in. With MaaS, you only get to pay for the digital marketing services you need. MaaS services are offered on-demand. Basically, each of the marketing services your business needs are readily available, as well as the personnel to carry it out.
Some of the benefits of using MaaS for social media marketing include:
On-demand social media marketing services
Immediate access to the technology stack needed to expand your social footprint and reel in more followers
Access to experienced experts in different aspects of social media marketing, for example, media buying experts, content creators, etc.
No worries about high monthly salaries or agency contract fees
Agile and adaptable social media marketing strategy suited to the ever-evolving social media dynamics
MaaS can also help you to optimize the other aspects of digital marketing including website optimization, PPC advertising, and search engine optimization. Using our unique SOS (Situation, Objective, Strategy) model, we’ll help you to identify areas of growth and align them to your business goals and objectives.
Let Salt Marketing Help You Grow Your Social Media Reach in 2023- the MaaS Way
Are you looking to boost your social media reach in 2023? Look no further than Salt Marketing for effective and efficient social media marketing services in Ireland. Our MaaS approach to social media marketing will help you to design and execute effective social media marketing strategies that grow your reach without being pushy. We focus on providing value to your audience.
If you’re trying to expand your social media reach in 2023, we’d love to help.
