Sometimes it can be difficult to make yourself known on social media as a business owner. Here are a few tasks that you can start today to help grow your influence on social media.

I recently had an amazing conversation with a family member who owns a business. We were exchanging ideas and strategies about business growth. During this conversation, she gave me advice on many things, but the highlight of the conversation for me was when she said, “Setting goals, especially for your social media, will help drive your business.” She has over 180,000 followers on TikTok. 

Growing your influence on social media doesn’t happen by chance. It takes a lot of planning and strategy.  Even trending posts aren’t trending by accident. So how can you get the interaction and engagement on social media like you see with some of the world’s biggest brands? Here are a couple of tips on how to grow your influence on social media.

Set SMART goals

You don’t just want to set any goals. You want to set SMART goals. When starting a social media account, you have to have a plan for where you want it to go. Take some time to brainstorm how you are going to use your social media to help set these goals. SMART goals look like this:

• Specific: Your goals aren’t vague. You know exactly what you want to accomplish
• Measurable: There is a way that you can measure progress and growth
• Achievable: It’s attainable and you know that you can get it done within a set timeframe 
• Relevant: It makes sense and aligns with your values and long-term goals for your social media 
• Timebound: Your end date makes sense and it is possible to properly plan to achieve those goals

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Be aware of your audience

Now that you have your goals set, it is also important to understand who your target audience is. You don’t want to be posting aimlessly. Remember, it takes more than luck to grow your influence on social media. When creating your target audience persona, you want to know a couple of things to help guide you on when and what to post. Ask the following questions:

• What platforms are my followers most active on?
• What times of day are they most active?
• What type of content are they interested in?
• How should I speak to them?
• What information do they want to know?

You want to create content that people are interested in and that catches their attention. Stay aware of what’s trending on social media, because that can also help direct your content. 

Fun Fact: Videos actually get some of the most attention on social media. You can use websites like Promo to help create beautiful videos for your social media.

Be relatable 

So you have goals and a target audience. Now you want to be relatable and design content for your audience. I once read in an article that, “People don’t repost something that is just informative, they repost things that are impactful.” Being relatable on social media helps build trust between you and your audience. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Being personal, and funny, and responding to followers on social media helps build that trust and relatability to your followers. Here are some ways you can build relationships online to further grow your influence on social media: 

• @mention people that you post about
• Answer questions 
• Reply to your audience when they @mention you and share your content 
• Start conversations with your audience

Create a content calendar

Creating a content calendar is a great way to help outline your posts and set a direction for what you are going to share on social media. It helps bring order to your social media and prevents you from reposting things that you may have already shared. It’s a clean way to help visualize your schedule. 

If you are wondering where to start with your content calendar, we’ve already designed one for you! You can also use automation software, such as Hootsuite or Buffer, that connects to your social media accounts to automate your content and save you time.

Use all of your resources

There are several ways to optimize your social media profiles and track the growth of your social media accounts to see what is and isn’t working. You can:

• Fill out all of your account information 
• Use links in your bio 
• Use relevant keywords in your profile
• Share content related to your industry 
• Stay active on social media 
• Repurpose content  

As you post, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to view how each post is doing and it’s audience reach. You can also use tools like Google Analytics to help analyze your social media accounts. 

These are a few first steps to help you get started and on your way to growing an impactful social media account that gets results. If you’re looking for more ideas on how to grow your influence on social media, book a free consultation session with South Street & Co. We would be happy to discuss your vision.