Improving Your Social Media Presence

Social media’s uses go far beyond simply keeping your family and friends updated in your life. Now it is viable to turn your social media profile into a moneymaker for yourself, leading to all sorts of amazing possibilities, like quitting the rat race, meeting celebrities, and traveling to new places. But before you can attain the rewards of the top earners you’ll have to gather followings like the top earners.

Unlike the lottery, there is no luck involved with improving your social media presence. There are tried and true methods that you can apply to your profile that are certain to boost your numbers.   

Analyze Your Current Presence

This may be a bummer to those pursuing the influencer life because they wanted to avoid critical thinking, but you will have to use your brain in this industry, too.

With so many platforms popping up with different specialties it takes an analytical mind to stay on top of the trends. Not only will you need to know which platforms to ignore and which to focus on, but you will also need to know how to integrate your different platforms to reach the most people.

Just because you may be known for your funny TikTok videos does not mean you should ignore the benefits of Twitter, Instagram, or the like. Many people have a preference for one platform over another but are willing to use another if they are given good reason to.

By having an active Twitter account you will be able to pique the interest of new people and guide them to your TikTok. The same can be said for any other platform. The key is to identify the strengths each platform is best suited to provide and exploit them.

Learn About Your Current Followers

When you produce content you are likely making assumptions about the people following you. The most common assumption is that they are from the primary demographic that you identify with, but this isn’t always the case.

A millennial woman giving out relationship advice is likely to have people from all sorts of age groups, including loads of men, because her insights are unique to their perspectives and just as relevant.

To learn more about your followers, spend time in the comment sections of your posts and do some good-natured creeping on their profiles. Some comment sections are going to require thick skin to get through, but if you want to be in the spotlight you’ll need that anyway.

Send direct messages and create polls to get honest answers about what they are most interested in at the moment. What you find will likely surprise you.

Once you’ve performed this detective work it is time to apply your findings to your content. You can now tailor your posts to be exactly what they want without having to guess. If you’ve had one post go viral while the next three flounder it was probably because you didn’t fully understand why the first one was so interesting to begin with.

By curating content that they specifically ask for you will be able to easily get their attention and hold onto it.       

Partner with other influencers

Although you may feel like it’s you against the world on your road to success, it is important to realize that isn’t the case. In fact, if you hold onto that mindset you are going to make it a whole lot harder on yourself than it needs to be.

The influencer industry is not a zero-sum game, where for you to win others need to lose. People are more than capable of following multiple influencers, so it isn’t like they have to choose one or the other.

By partnering with other influencers in your niche, or outside it, you both will have the opportunity to share followers and produce unique content they can’t get anywhere else. Just because you may exclusively post about the fitness industry does not mean that you have to partner with other fitness enthusiasts.

Branching out, say into the mental health niche, means you can surprise your followers with information they don’t get from other fitness influencers. By shouldering the load of content creation with another you will also find the stress of coming up with new ideas is greatly reduced, while your actual creative output is greatly improved.  

Another way to excite your followers with a partnership is to organize a takeover. Either you let them control your media for a set amount of time, or you take over theirs. This requires a great deal of trust in the other person to not damage your image, but it often leads to a ton of new action.  

Create discussions/trends

We’ve already mentioned the importance of engaging with your followers, but one aspect of this tactic deserves to be expanded in further detail.

Live streaming can be found on a number of platforms today and it provides the opportunity for you to interact with large amounts of your followers at once. It promotes a degree of authenticity that can’t be found in prerecorded, edited videos. But along with this comes the risk of damaging your image by saying something incorrect or offensive.

A major benefit to this segment of social media is that it appeals to people’s fear of missing out. FOMO is a powerful feeling and it encourages immediate action from people who would otherwise put something off.

Don’t jump into live streaming without first testing your own skill in speaking off the cuff and maintaining people’s attention. Live stream fails are an endless source of entertainment but not something you’ll want to be associated with.  

When looking for topics to talk about with your followers you don’t need to solely rely on what they recommend because even they might not consciously know what they want. To proactively meet their desires, research the hashtags that are being used in high volumes, but have little competition. This signals an opportunity where the supply does not meet user demand.

Measure your progress

All the initiatives and trendsetting in the world will only get you so far if you do not measure your progress. This can take the form of charting the growth of your followers or tracking which posts get the most likes and shares. These can easily be done on your own and will give you an accurate picture of which pursuits gave you the best returns.

There are also many tools that have been developed specifically for social media marketing. These enable their users to gather even more precise insights than they’d otherwise be able to on their own. Here is an in-depth list for you to find which tools are right for your needs. 

Stay committed and stay passionate

Applying the tips listed above to your own social media is a great way to keep your content fresh and your online presence growing. Since the social climate is always changing, it is important to stay up to date on cutting-edge strategies. By implementing the best strategies with your best content you’ll turn a hobby into a revenue stream and say goodbye to the corporate world for good!