How to Increase Your Social Media Presence

There are literally billions of active users across social platforms like Instagram, Twitter (X), Bluesky, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. So it’s pretty easy to see how social media has become such an important, powerful space for creators, brands, and businesses to reach wider audiences, increase their engagement, and grow!

Choosing the right platforms, creating exciting content, defining and communicating with your audience, and using effective hashtags - these are all parts of creating your social media strategy, to better engage with your audience and increase your followers and views with your newly polished social media presence. Read on to find plenty of pro tips to help ensure your success!

Why a Strong Social Media Presence is Crucial

With a strong social media presence being an essential for you and your brand, learning how to increase both the quality of your posts and the size of your audience are two of the keys you’ll need to unlock your goal of becoming a successful creator on social media.

Active, engaging socials help brands and individuals build credibility, attract new followers, and grow interactive relationships with their target audience, turning them into supporters and fans. For businesses, social media is an effective channel to showcase products, make exciting announcements about drops and events, and communicate with customers directly. 

For individual content creators and influencers, socials are a pivotal tool to build your personal brand and establish an engaging social media presence in your niche. Posting consistently on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter can help lead to increased brand awareness, customer loyalty, and growth, making good use of your social media strategy to set yourself apart from competitors and build a loyal online community.

10 Steps to Develop Your Social Media Strategy

A top tier social media strategy is how you’re going to fire up your new and improved social media presence! Follow these steps to create a strategy that will both align with your content creation ambitions and hype up your audience:

1. Define Your Goals

Setting specific objectives provides a solid foundation for your social media strategy. Each goal helps dictate the content you create, and how you engage with your audience, so careful planning is your friend. 

Decide what you want to achieve with your social media strategy - some common goals might include gaining followers/fans; targeting a specific audience demographic (see below); improving engagement rates; building your brand; and challenging your own creativity. These objectives help guide your content creation across your social media platforms.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Are you aiming at fashionistas, music fans, foodies, sports enthusiasts, or just general viewers as your target audience? Your target audience’s preferences and viewing behaviors can help guide the content you produce on social media. 

By understanding your target audience’s demographics (including age group and location) and their interests, you can deliver more relevant content that will have an easier time engaging their attention, whether on Twitter (X), Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or elsewhere. 

3. Choose the Right Social Media Platforms

While it might be tempting to just group them all together, each social media platform has a different type of audience. Selecting the platforms that best align with your desired audience demographics can make a big difference in how your content is viewed. 

For instance, Instagram and Pinterest are generally thought of as best for visually striking content (especially Instagram); Twitter (X) and Bluesky are great for quick updates and trending topics; TikTok is a hub for creativity, entertainment/infotainment, and emerging trends; and LinkedIn is best for professional networking and industry insights. 

Focusing on the right social media platforms for you and your brand will increase your chances at engaging the right type of audience, increasing your followers, and hitting your target social media goals.

4. Research Your Competitors

Checking out your social media competitors doesn’t mean you’re out to copy them; it’s simply a smart way to check out trending socials approaches, templates, trending memes, and more that you can then creatively adapt to your own content and brand. 

Competitor analysis also offers insight into effective strategies and audience preferences. Observing your competitors’ approach to their content and how they engage with their viewers can help identify gaps in your own social media strategy, so you can continue to refine your content and how you communicate with your fans.

5. Develop a Content Calendar

Sometimes underrated, but always effective if used, setting up a content calendar helps keep your social media posts consistent, timely, on-trend, and aligned with your audience’s interests. 

Planning posts and social media campaigns in advance will help you stay relevant, which is vital for creating a strong social media presence; posting regularly also helps build your audience, as they’ll start relying on (and looking forward to!) the appearance of your posts.

6. Post Consistently

Did we mention that it’s important to post consistently? Let’s go over that one again: posting consistently is crucial for maintaining engagement and growing your followers. Regular posting demonstrates your commitment to your audience and keeps them engaged. 

So use your new content calendar to create a schedule that works for you and your brand, whether you’re posting daily or multiple times a week on specific days. You’ll often see the rewards of this strategy pretty quickly once you’re consistent!

7. Use Hashtags 

Using good hashtags helps increase the visibility of your content on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Bluesky. Research relevant hashtags in your posts to make your content discoverable to new audiences who share similar interests.

Avoid hashtags that are too generic; and select carefully so you’re not using too many hashtags, which can make your posts come across like spam. Choosing trending hashtags can also be a really effective way to quickly get new eyes on your posts. 

8. Engage with Your Audience

Building a loyal following and a solid fan base may start with good content, but it only continues to grow with equally good audience engagement. As the content creator or business, consider it part of your everyday job to respond to comments, messages, and mentions; answer questions; and encourage UGC (user generated content) when appropriate. 

By engaging with your followers and showcasing your personality outside of just your social media posts - much of which boils down to simply being friendly! - you’ll encourage them to participate more and share your content with others; they’ll also feel more connected to you and the content you create, which builds fan or customer loyalty.

9. Use Your Socials Analytics

Have you dug into your social media analytics? Social media platforms provide creators with analytics tools that track engagement, reach, and other performance metrics. The stats tell the story! 

These interesting insights are great assets for refining your social media strategy, so you can better focus on what works best to connect with your audience. 

10. Adjust Your Strategy 

Between conversing with your audience and using your analytics for research, you can put together a good guide for yourself to adjust your social media strategies. Regularly use these tools to evaluate the effectiveness of your content and your audience interactions; this extra effort can help ensure that you’re meeting your social media goals, staying on top of trends, and adapting to your audience’s changing preferences as you go.

Pro Tips for Growing Your Audience

First and foremost: respond! Promptly replying to comments and messages shows that you value your followers’ thoughts and opinions, and appreciate their engagement. This two-way communication is essential for building community and keeping your comment section active and interesting. Then, use these additional approaches to keep on growing:

• Maximize Social Media Features: Each social media platform has its own unique features, such as Instagram’s Stories, LinkedIn’s Articles, and TikTok’s Duets. Many social networks also have “going live” capabilities, like Insta, TikTok, and Twitter (X.) Use these, plus hashtags, to reach and connect with your audience in new, fun, and interactive ways, increasing your visibility and hyping up engagement by offering your followers a unique experience on each platform.

• Collaborate: Partnering with influencers who make sense with your own brand can help you reach an even wider audience. Influencers’ followers often trust their recommendations, helping you build credibility outside of your own social media accounts; this makes collaborations a powerful way to grow your social media presence and build a friendly network of content creator colleagues at the same time.
  
• Share UGC: Similar to collaborating with other content creators, featuring content created by your followers grows your social media presence and also encourages a sense of community. User generated content (UGC) also acts as social proof, showing potential followers that others already value and engage with your brand. By publicly sharing your fans’ content, you help support your own community-focused atmosphere, encouraging even more followers to engage with you and your brand, and create their own content.
  
• Give Stuff Away: Everyone likes to win! Contests and giveaways encourage sharing and increase visibility, and by offering prizes, you can prompt users to follow your social media accounts, tag friends, and share your content. Interactive experiences like giveaways increase engagement and attract new followers, making them feel involved and encouraging them to hype your brand. If you have a merch line, like the ones you can create on Fourthwall, you can give away your own branded merch, promoting your brand even more.
  
• Use Paid Advertising: Utilizing paid ads on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn allows you to reach a highly targeted audience. While not necessarily a good fit for everyone, paid ads can definitely help boost engagement, attract new followers, and increase your visibility to users well beyond your existing audience.

Pro Tips for Using Your Analytics

Tracking your social media performance lets you check to see how your social media strategy is working, to make sure it’s aligned with your content creation goals and is progressing as you’d like. Key performance metrics to watch include:

• Engagement: Track likes, shares, comments, and saves to understand how your audience interacts with your content, and how your content is resonating with your audience; high engagement rates are good!
  
• Follower Growth and Reach: Monitor how many followers you’re getting and measure your reach to see how your brand’s visibility is growing over time. Consistent upward growth indicates that your social media presence and your posting strategies are working well.
  
• Platform Analytics: Utilize platform-specific tools like Instagram Insights, Facebook’s Page Insights, and LinkedIn Analytics to measure your audience demographics, engagement rates, and content performance. Regularly checking in with these tools can help you make data-driven adjustments, so you can keep improving and revising your social media strategy as the social scene changes and evolves.

Grow Your Social Media Presence Even More with Fourthwall!

Building a strong social media presence takes time and strategy. But Fourthwall helps you simplify the process so you can focus on what matters most - connecting with your audience and growing your brand!

Fourthwall’s platform provides loads of tools to help creators and businesses manage their online presence effectively. Fourthwall’s engagement tools help you reach your target audience on each social platform, so you can further solidify your fan base; and Fourthwall’s social integrations make connecting your Fourthwall website with your social media networks easy! 

Audience interaction is also a breeze with Fourthwall, as you can message your audience using Fourthwall DMs; keep them engaged via your socials feeds, your own custom mobile phone app, and video highlights; manage their merch orders; and more. 

With Fourthwall, you can even create a customizable online storefront, so you can sell custom print on demand merch and other branded products directly to your followers. 

By integrating Fourthwall into your social media strategy, you can amplify your online presence, strengthen your community connections, grow your followers and your audience, and extend your social media reach. Check out Fourthwall today to elevate your social media and make a big impact on your fans!