Be Active

Social Media Channels are almost like T.V. channels, if there is nothing playing, no one is going to stick around. Similarly, it is key that your social media channels are active, and by that I mean you should be posting at least 5-10 posts daily. Of course, if you have content that is unique and interesting, you should strive to post more. However, you should keep in mind that none of the posts should be repeated, and that all of them are different and unique, adding to your followers interest. I use hootsuite to curate and schedule posts on weekly bases, so that my social media channels remain active.

Be Visual

This ones a no brainer. Time and time again, it has been proven that people are attracted to visually appealing content. The ‘eye candy’ is the number one attraction point for your followers. Therefore, every single post should have a visually appealing content that goes with the copy. Research says that there is a 94% increase in views when articles/posts contain an image that goes with it, as compared to the ones that do not have any. My personal favourite stock photography site, unsplash, has stellar images, and guess what? They’re free! 

Be Valuable & Interesting

In this day and age, when everyone is bombarded with information, nobody wants to follow someone who does nothing but spam their followers’ dashboards. Followers are increasingly becoming pickier and pickier about what appears on their news feed. I personally can not stand it when my news feed has series of useless and mindless content. When this happens, I go on an unfollow-spree and cut out any spammers that add no value to my news feed. Thus, the key to attracting and maintaining a good following is by posting/sharing interesting and valuable content. Give your followers a reason to stick around when they can easily find another (better) source to grab information from.

Create & Curate

There are two types of content development: creation and curation. Creation is when you build the content from ground up yourself and then share it across your social media channels. Curation is when you search and collect other people’s content and share it on your social media channels. My advice would be to have a healthy mix of both, to give your viewers a good dose of posts that come from all around the realm of the information network. Also, remember, your channels need to be active which is why it is vital to make sure you have a healthy bank of posts to share. Therefore, if you stick to only creating posts you will find it time-consuming and hard to keep up with the schedule. Hence, it is smart to have some curated posts to keep your channels active while also giving your followers different sources to enjoy from. I personally curate images and quotes from tumblr and pinterest. My dashboard is always filled with unique and interesting posts which I then try to incorporate on my Twitter and Facebook pages.

Engage

This practice is one the most effective and yet the least used. When I first started out on my social media adventure, I rarely ever retweeted, commented, or generally engaged with others. However, once I got comfortable with idea and started engaging with others on Twitter and Facebook, I saw an increase in my followers and the amount of engagements on my channels. I mean, if you think about it, it is common sense really. If you put yourself out there and engage with others, they will most likely try to get to know you more and would, therefore, visit your channels and browse through your content. It is almost like a marketing tactic for your social media channels that actually truly works!