Tips to Effectively Grow Your Organization's Social Media for Free

It’s no secret that organic reach has declined over the years. This has caused marketers all over the world to do everything in their power to raise their marketing budgets to cover the cost of paid efforts. However, growing a company’s social media presence organically isn’t unheard of, nor is it impossible to achieve. It just requires time and consistency.

The following efforts have helped us grow an investment bank’s social presence and engagement – reactions, comments, shares – by 5,188% on LinkedIn. Ready to begin the journey?

Here are a few tips to help you effectively grow your brand’s social media presence for FREE.

Learn your audience and outline a strategy

When putting together a social strategy, it’s important to understand who your audience is and what that audience is looking for. At BlueByrd, we like to say all you have to know is three things: who we are talking to, what keeps them up at night, and how we solve that problem better than anyone else in the world. For example, if you’re trying to grow your skincare brand’s social media presence, your audience might be looking for a reliable product to smooth their skin, get rid of blemishes, or remove those dreaded wrinkles. Understanding who you’re talking to is the first step.

Once you’re aware of your audience and the problems they’re facing, you can begin to brainstorm a strategy that will solve those problems. At BlueByrd, we start this process by developing a topic calendar that allows us to recommend the type of content we’ll post throughout the week and has a social strategy attached to it that outlines:

• which KPIs we're measuring and why,
• who the audience is,
• the purpose of the posts, and
• how we're going to get to the desired goal.

Post engaging content 

In 2019, the usage of visual content rose by almost 70% and kept rising during the pandemic¹. Videos, livestreams, webinars, and other forms of audio/visual content became increasingly popular, which is why video is still topping other types of content in terms of engagement. In fact, Twitter has stated that tweets with videos receive 10x more engagement than those without. 

It’s no surprise that images are the most used form of visual content on social media. With Canva, brands can easily create unique graphics and videos using their own brand guidelines. Don’t think it matters? According to an infographic by Venngage, 41.1% of marketers said original graphics performed the best for them in 2021 compared to video, stock photos, GIFs, and memes². Other successful and engaging forms of content are case studies, infographics, guides, memes, and event posts.

We work with a few clients who attend regular events, including conferences and luncheons. Since LinkedIn is more B2B focused, we see a substantial amount of engagement on event posts compared to other posts, particularly when everyone in the pictures is tagged. 

Take a look at how this blog post performed compared to an event post.

A less than 1% engagement rate versus a 55% engagement rate. So why the disparity? The truth is, people like people. People appreciate authenticity, enjoy seeing people they know, and simply want to be acknowledged. As human beings, we are more likely to interact with a post that evokes positive emotions.

Post consistently

We’ve all heard the saying, “Consistency is key.” Well, it’s the same with social media.

To build and maintain a presence on social media, your brand needs to be putting out quality content on a regular basis. Some brands post four times a week on one platform while others post seven times a week on three different platforms.This is where the topic calendar and social strategy mentioned earlier comes into play. Where exactly is our audience? What platforms do they use on a regular basis? What types of content are they looking for?

To make posting a bit more efficient, automation platforms like Sprout Social, Buffer, and Hootsuite make it easier to schedule content in advance and at the right times when your audience is most active. This removes the stress of posting manually every day so it doesn’t lead to burnout for you and your team.

Look presentable 

As a consumer, there’s nothing more off-putting than clicking on a company’s page only to find little to no information about them, no logo, nada.  

As a brand, it’s necessary to optimize your social media profiles. Upload your logo, upload an eye-catching banner, write a description of your company, link to your website. Once you’ve done that for one platform, move on to the next. This will help legitimize your brand in the eyes of consumers and will often take just a short amount of time to do.

Train your team

Every employee should be a brand ambassador, sharing the company’s posts, liking, and commenting.

Think about it this way: When the company posts something and an employee shares it, not only is it appearing to the company’s followers, it’s also appearing to the followers and connections of that employee. Now think of how many people the post could reach if all employees shared it.

If you’re unfamiliar with how to train your employees to become brand advocates, BlueByrd offers a fun and in-depth Social Selling Workshop that shows your team how to use LinkedIn to your advantage, how to network with current and potential customers, how to fully optimize your profile to close business, and how to craft strategic posts tailored to your audience.