5 ways to increase visibility on social media
Struggling to show up on social media? Sian Mansbridge gives her top tips for increasing your visibility and your business profile on your social platforms.
Sian Mansbridge
The world of social media is pretty hectic these days – it can seem like an impossible task to gain any cut-through and get your business seen amongst the crowd. But, don’t give up, there are some basic strategies you can follow to help increase your visibility and get you noticed.
While the more detailed strategies are different for each platform, here are five overarching approaches that will work on any social media channel.
1. Be consistent
Decide how often you can realistically find the time to post and engage, make a schedule, and then stick to it. All of the social media platform algorithms value consistency.
Look at it from the perspective of your followers – if you post six times in one week, and then don’t show up at all for three weeks, they really won’t know what to expect from you; they’ll just know they can’t rely on seeing you regularly, so it’s unlikely they’ll bother to engage with you much.
Treat social media like a good friend – you need to put into the relationship as much as you would like to get out.
2. Add value
Make sure that the content you’re sharing is useful, educational, inspiring or entertaining. Think about whether the content you’re posting is genuinely entertaining or insightful – the more valuable it is to your followers, the more they will engage with it, making it more likely that the algorithm will show it to a wider group of people – gaining you more visibility. Hoorah!
3. Be sociable
Comment on others’ posts, be helpful, add useful insights and share your knowledge and experience. Social media is all about conversations and relationships, so don’t be tempted to jump in for the hard sell; let the conversation develop naturally and you’ll be surprised how often a simple conversation develops into a strong relationship or a new client.
The platform algorithms also take notice of this sort of organic conversation, and will ‘rate’ you and your content more highly as a result – so you’ll get seen by more people.
4. #UseTheRightHashtags
Not all platforms support hashtags, but if the one you’re using does, then do your research. Choose hashtags that are relevant to your business and to the specific content you’re posting (eg: #MNCSOS) – don’t just cram a load of popular but irrelevant hashtags into your post and hope for the best. It will annoy your followers, causing them to unfollow or block your content, and reduce your visibility in the longer term.
For example, the hashtag #Covid19 has been trending on Twitter for months now, but don’t be tempted to use it unless the content you’re posting is genuinely relevant to coronavirus – it will just look odd.
Remember that each platform is different; a hashtag that’s ‘trending’ on Twitter might not be used at all on Instagram so it would be a waste of time to use it there – check them first.
5. Bring others into the conversation
There’s a fine line between careful, targeted tagging, and an irritating spamfest. But if done in the right way, tagging the right people in your posts can be a great strategy to increase your visibility.
Do make sure the person you’re tagging is either already actively engaged with your account, or has shown genuine interest in this topic before. And don’t tag just for the sake of it – tag asking for their opinion or experience of the topic you’re discussing. Make it conversational not salesy and they’ll be much more likely to take part.
Remember to make use of your networks, like MNC, who will always be happy to support you.
Above all, remember, social media is a marathon not a sprint – being consistent and showing up is the basic commandment to follow on any social media channel, so stick with it and good luck! And if LinkedIn is your channel of choice, check out our free download on how to draft a Killer LinkedIn profile.
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Thanks for a good advice. Social media is very important to any business and there are more chances of lead conversions from facebook and instagram. I myself do many kinds of promotional activities for e-commerce sellers.