Focusing on the growth of your following base is a great strategy, whether that’s for your Facebook, Blog, Twitter, Instagram or all four.

It won’t happen overnight. The change is gradual, it will take time and a lot of effort before you see any dramatic changes to your numbers. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be actively working on them.

Here are the advantages that come with a growing amount of followers:

  • It will drive more traffic to your blog/website, which can translate into more lead generation and sales.
  • It will enhance link building to your website, resulting in better organic SEO.

Tweet More Often

According to a study carried out by beevolve, more tweets does lead to more followers:

So it is a case of balancing quantity with quality: you want to make sure you’re consistently tweeting often enough, but you don’t want to tweet just for the sake of tweeting. The bottom line is: make sure you’re only delivering high-quality content.

It’s also good practice to be an active member and give back to the community: it goes back to the classic universal law: “give to receive”. Make a point of helping your connections by retweeting some of their own tweets, and they’ll return the kindness. You’ll get more followers, strengthen your relationships with them, and be seen as a team player, someone who is willing to help others. It will paint a more selfless image of yourself.

It’s also important to do the same when someone retweets you: this is the time to reply in a personal way, thanking them for the gesture. In a world of automated replies, this human response will earn you bonus points.

Create Engagement

This is tied with one of the points made above. Your tweets need to be high-quality at all times. it’s impossible to foster engagement and growth without high-quality content, and this applies to all social platforms.

To keep on getting new followers, and maintain the numbers you’ve already got, you’ll need to keep tweeting excellent content on a regular basis, to keep your followers engaged.

Make sure you have plenty of great material that is relevant and helpful to your audience. Try to make the short space work for you, as tweets should have calls-to-action, to persuade people to retweet you, click your links, etc.

Form Strategic Alliances

Arranging partnerships with influencers and other creatives in the same sector as you is a great way to get your brand in front of new eyes.

This can be achieved through many formats: think of guest posts, co-hosting youtube videos, interviews, co-writing blogs, etc.

Do some research and then email the people one by one. After you’ve introduced yourself, present the idea in a way that clarifies how this new partnership will be valuable to both parties.

Work on Guest Posts

Guest posting on other larger websites is a tried-and-tested method, and is a fantastic way to get more followers. It’s important to take good care of your blog, but it’s equally important to craft quality pieces for other websites if you want to take your brand to the next level.

You can research and make a list of blogs that are common favourites among your target market, identify which of these blogs accept guest posts, and from there you can work on pitching ideas.

You’ll want to put plenty of time and effort into this piece, make it the best possible so their readers will want to go out of their way to visit your own website.

Design a Contest

Contests are great because they offer two pleasures: competition and the chance to win a free prize. Setting up a fun challenge is a sure-fire way to double your Instagram followers.

Besides needing to have a great contest and prize, you’ll also need to present the details of the challenge itself in a clear and simple way: making it easier for people will convince more people to participate. Plus, it’s important to make it foolproof in order to avoid any mistakes or inconveniences — the process should be smooth and easy.

Get people to enter the contest by following your Instagram and tagging a friend in the comment section of the challenge post. This should set in motion a snowball effect: the friends tagged are highly likely to trust the ones who tagged them in the first place, and so, they are also more likely to want to enter the contest themselves.

Final Thoughts

There’s no magic to get a sizeable following base to call your own. Naturally, your social channels will need to be consistent and deliver outstanding content to acquire the right numbers and keep them in the long run.

It’s crucial to check your Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Blog, to make sure that they are all branded and impeccable before putting any of the above ideas into action.

Fortunately, there is a number of other features on social platforms to take full advantage of. This includes taking good care of your profiles, as well as using features like Twitter Chat — both can be incredibly productive tools.

Other effective methods include promoting your platforms on ads, business cards and other printed materials. Your physical store can also be used: finding a good spot in it to promote your channels in a subtle, professional way is another great idea to implement.