How to increase your business's reach on social media

Social media is a powerful tool for every business. These networks, platforms and apps allow businesses to communicate and build relationships with customers outside of traditional advertising and marketing avenues.

But your business’s social media strategy can only go as far as its reach. In social media terms, reach is the number of people who see and interact with the content your business has posted to a social media channel.. It’s important to note that reach is different from impressions, which are simply how many people were exposed to the post.

Though both metrics are useful and worth tracking, it’s reach – those interactions – that are most valuable to a business on social media. So, let’s take a look at what you can do to help boost your business’s reach on social media platforms. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or others, these strategies will apply to all networks and apps.

Use words that inspire action

One of the primary ways to drive reach with your social media posts is to use words that encourage viewers to take action and interact with the content. Some of these words are similar to those that are used in other marketing channels, such as “free”, “secret”, “instantly”, “easy” and “limited time.”

What do those words have in common? They make people curious. They are great to include in calls to action. The right words can help increase reach simply by inspiring action.

Focus on posting consistent, high-quality content

Consistency is one of the key factors that determines whether the content your business posts on social media. The other is quality.

Consistency is important because it takes time and effort to generate a following on nearly every platform. Users and potential customers are much less likely to find your content if you only post here and there without rhyme or reason. So, pick a goal of how often and when you would like your business to post to its social media profiles. This could be once a day or once every other day, but it needs to be consistent for the best results.

In addition, the posts need to be high-quality. The content should be original and well thought out with a clear goal in mind. The higher the quality of content – and with the right consistency added into the mix – the more reach your content will see.

Take steps to optimize social profiles

As with websites, people engage more with a business’s social media profile when it’s been optimized to be attractive, inviting and uses effective messaging.

These are all parts of an optimized social media profile.

To optimize your business’s social profiles:

• Create short usernames and handles that are easy to recognize.
• Use your business’s logo or other recognizable images for profile pictures.
• Create descriptions and about sections that use keywords but sound conversational. Social media profiles are not the place for business lingo or jargon.
• Always include links back to your business’s website. Better yet – use a trackable link.

Know how best to use each different platform

No social media network or app is the same. Your profile content shouldn’t look – or maybe even sound the same – on Instagram as it would on a more professional network like LinkedIn. You have to learn how to play to your audience and use the right social platforms.

Another example would be the effectiveness of hashtags. They are great in increasing reach on, say, Twitter or Instagram, but are not as effective on Facebook.

But your business may not be suited for all platforms, either. Maybe you are a B2B business. Then LinkedIn of course makes sense and, depending on your industry target, the laid back, casual trendiness of Instagram may not be as effective. But if you cater to a young audience, then it’s probably best to familiarize yourself with newer apps, such as TikTok and Snapchat that are more popular with that demographic.

It’s best to focus your efforts on the platforms that can drive the most results – generate the most business – for your company or organization.

SEO works with social media, too

We pride ourselves on being search engine optimization experts here at Emagine. We will be the first to tell you how critical a proper SEO strategy is to the success of a website. In fact, the same can be said for a business’s social media profiles. You want the URLs to these profiles to appear right alongside your website when someone searches online for your business or for your target keywords.

As with websites, the right keywords can help your social profiles climb up the rankings on search engines like Google and Bing. Place those keywords throughout profiles, within the post content, inside image captions and in about sections. It’s a good idea to keep SEO in mind when naming social profiles, too.

Build relationships with your audience

Our final tip is to make a constant effort to build relationships with those who engage with your content on social media. This will in turn create more engagement. It should not come as a surprise that engagement creates more engagement.

When you build relationships, people are more likely to continue to interact with your page and its content. Other people will also see this engagement and will then be more likely to join in.

These relationships will hopefully keep the attention of current customers of your business and open the door to new customers.

How is your business’s social media strategy?

Every business can use social media to drive results, including lead generation and even sales. It takes a thorough strategy and a considerable time commitment to put in the effort and create those results, though.

So, does your business need a more focused strategy for all things social? From Facebook, to Instagram, to Twitter and many more, at Emagine, we are able to deliver results that matter through our social media marketing efforts.

Let’s chat about how we can put our expertise to work for your business. Reach out today for a free consultation and we’ll get started working together.