For most businesses, the obvious goal of social media is to increase sales. However, with the recent decline in organic social media traffic, marketers, business owners, and users alone are left wondering, how do I increase my social media reach? 

Before getting ahead of ourselves, your first task in order to leverage your social media outlets is to gain followers! Of course right? No follows = no fun! We're not just talking Facebook here. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other social channels are losing organic traffic as well! Don’t worry, though. Organic social media is hardly obsolete. Instead, you just need the right strategy to keep your following strong. The larger your following, the greater your reach will become. Here are a few of our suggested ways to increase both followers and organic traffic.

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Step 1: Create Your Profiles 

Well, if you haven't yet gotten to this step, welcome! The world of social media is constantly evolving and moving in many directions, so choosing the proper channels to engage with your audience on can be a little confusing. Start by creating profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. These are your go-to daily outlets. While plenty of other social media sites do exist, these heavy hitters are a safe bet for anyone looking to increase social media reach. While you may feel you only need one specific social platform for customers to contact you, it's important to remember that everyone does things their own individual way. Additional outlets allow brands to reach users in potentially untapped market places. 

Step 2: Optimize Your Pages

Whether working on existing social media pages or constructing new with the goal of increasing social media reach, it is important to always remember to optimize. Very similar to SEO for blogs or webpages, social media pages can be optimized using a number of small tricks to help users with similar or shared interests find your page. Use an easily identifiable username (name or company name), update your profile photo with a recent picture or company logo, provide links to send as many people back to your website as possibe, and don't forget to include a clear and conside snipit of who you/your company are and what you/company do. 

Step 3: Share Useful and Relevant Content

When focusing in on growing your social media reach, it is important to remember that the majority of people begin online trying to solve a puzzle or problem. Where to eat, what events are going on, who's doing what, how do I fix this? Sharing useful and relevant content such as a trending story, video, or meme will make you much more visible to a larger audience tied to anyone who is looking at or seeking similar or relevant content. Posting your own thoughts and ideas is wonderful, but never be scared to hit the "share" button! One of my personal favorite pieces of inbound knowledge from the team over at HubSpot, is the 80/20 rule. 80% of the content you post to social media should be helpful and valuable to your audience, and 20% can be self-promotional. This helps assure you are engaging with your audience on a personal level, while still allowing times for self-promotion. 

Step 4: Connect With Your Followers 

When making efforts to increase your social media reach, it's important to remember that social media is a community. Individuals from all over the world are frequently posting content, and chances are, there's an exact niche of people & brands out there who will also find your content extremely relevant and useful! Approach things with a light-hearted manner, follow new people, engage with others content, and share your own content to a targeted list of people.  Growing your account organically is best! When following new handles, be sure to search for social media influencers in your physical area as well as your industry or marketplace. Becoming a well-known and trusted online contributor can have major impact on your brand in the near and distant future. 

Step 5: Consider Paid Social

It’s important to everything you can to maximize your organic reach for all of your social media accounts. However, the best way to not only maximize your reach, but to reach the right people is to use social media advertising. With targeted social media advertisements, you can create content that people will like and guarantee that they’ll see it. You can target your ads based on different characteristics such as location, age, gender, occupation, political affiliation, and other interests. If you’re looking to reach the highest number of people that fit your target audience, paid social ads are the quickest way to get there.

ImageWorks, LLC | CT Social Media Marketing

Implementing a social media strategy is not always a simple task, and can take more time than you have on your hands. When properly executed, a social media campaign can generate website traffic to your website, while bringing in new leads for your business, allowing you to connect with prospective buyers. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions, or would like to begin a social media campaign of your own!

Whether you are just getting started or have an engine in place that needs fine tuning, ImageWorks can help you join the Social Media wave to get yourself recognized and generate more business. Market yourself and your brand to the 100’s of millions of online interactive users.

We understand that social media can be overwhelming, and it's not always easy to change with each update or refresh. If you are looking to boost your social media marketing then you may want to take a step back and reevaluate the online presence you already have.