Hello my lovely readers (:
I have been away for spring break and I’m ready to jump back into my blogging!
Last time I talked about how to build a blog and the way to layout your blogs look to improve traffic. This week I will be talking about how to grow a following on other social media sites. I know I have touched base on some of this in past posts, but it is always good to learn more! More followers are never a bad thing..
So, I am an avid Twitter and Instagram user all day, every day. Although I am content with my current followers to following ratio, growing more followers is still difficult to accomplish. I have recently made a new Twitter account created only for professional and educational reasons dealing with school. Trust me, starting all over again is harder than I remember! I feel like I have been in a follower slump since I made it! However, recently after a new discovery, I have found that there is an easy way to build your community. This can also be translated into Instagram accounts as well!
This past weekend I attended a PRSSA coference where numerous speakers discussed social media and how it can be used to grow a following and used as a PR tool. One of the speakers I met was a well known social media user with over 15k followers. Once I tweeted at this person, I noticed I started gaining almost 5 followers a day and growing. Then I realized, the trick is communicate and get to know professionals in the same field of work as you and connect with them on social media! Continuous communication, yet not creepy/stalkery, creates a relationship. This in turn attracts their followers to want to communicate and join in as well! Since this past Saturday I have went from 32 followers to 98. All of these followers are in the same profession as I, as well as important people with a ratio of 2k to 15k, following to followers.
Another tool to use is hashtags! Hashtags, Hashtags, Hashtags! Instagram is a great site to use when trying out your hashtag skills! Another example coming in 3, 2, 1…… So one of my friends who is an artist is constantly trying to grow a following on Instagram. On one picture of a drawing, my friend hashtaged: color, pencils, drawing, art, work, artwork, creative, picture, canvas. In a matter of 8 hours, the picture went from 37 likes to 124. Easy right? YEAH! Here is another example:
On twitter, using hashtags is also perfectly OK! However there are rules. One of my man rules I tell myself daily is to use short, simple and easy to remember hashtags pertaining to my topic of discussion in that particular tweet. Some examples are easily laid out like this:
You are tweeting about Obamacare and your opinion on it. Some hashtags you could use would be #Obamacare , #Obama , #Healthcare , #2014
By using these, you are staying neutral to the opposing opinions as well as keeping it short as sweet. REMEMBER, twitter is used to express thoughts, not hashtag ideas. So keep the hashtags short enough to where the main thing on the tweet is what you have to say. Think about hashtags as jewelry on a woman. The woman is the most important in the bigger picture, yet the jewelry poses as accent pieces that enhance the woman as a whole.
I hope these ideas have inspired you to tweet and Instagram all day experimenting with new hashtags. By following these instructions, there is a great chance more followers will come in as well!
Good luck and have an awesome week!
XOXO
Murphie