Most organizations want to build their social media audience, but is there a magic number of followers to guarantee success?
Social media success typically is more dependent on the quality of your interactions with your followers than your quantity of followers. Successful community building relies on setting goals, planning and commitment.
What are your goals? – Many organizations are focused on numbers thinking success will come when they reach 500, 1000 or 100,000 followers. With this mindset, organizations often launch contests and giveaways to gain more followers. This can be a successful technique, but if your followers are only there for the freebies, chances are good that many will ignore (or unfollow) your brand once the freebies stop flowing. Conversely, if your goal is to build a core group of brand evangelists, developing an interactive and rewarding content strategy for the long term becomes more critical.
Planning – Once you know what you want to achieve, you need a plan. A contest or giveaway generally involves a fixed monetary investment plus the time investment for execution and fulfillment. Once a contest is completed, having a content strategy in place will help you capitalize on that investment. For those looking nurture and grow their community without giveaways, a plan is critical but commitment is even more important.
Stay the course – Creating a plan to grow your followers can be tough; sticking with it can be even more challenging. If your organization does not have a dedicated social media team in place, there is a great probability that those tasked with executing your plan (in addition to other responsibilities) will get pulled off course along the way. Most organizations can’t afford a dedicated team, so creating a plan and staying on top of each team member’s involvement is critical to successful community building in social media.
The Fresh Creative team is ready to help your organization develop a plan to build your social media audience while giving you the tools to manage your social media in house. If you’re looking for an affordable outsourcing solution, Fresh Creative also provides full social media management services. Look for the next social media blog post on content strategy for more on how to grow your social media presence.
