Your social media pages can be great marketing assets – given the right content and reach. You can access your target market, connect with your audience and build a loyal following using social networks.
But an essential part of making that happen is visibility. If your visibility is limited to 2% of your following, only 0.02% of that number of people may actually end up adding to your revenue, reducing the potential of social media marketing drastically. Marketers in today’s scenario need to find alternative routes to increase their social media reach and succeed on social networks.
Why you need organic measures to overcome declining reach
1. Ad aversion is a rapidly growing phenomenon. 26% of desktop users have adblock turned on, according to this recent study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. A significant number of your targets are blind to ads.
2. Facebook sold out its ad inventory in September 2016. This trend is likely to continue and social media ads will only grow more expensive.
3. Organic marketing is an essential part of building trust and credibility on social networks.
How to organically amplify your content on social media
People are at the heart of every organic marketing strategy. They decide how far your content travels. Focus on them and you may even earn passionate brand advocates in the process.
1) Earn audience trust with selective content curation
People are more likely to trust you if your content solves a problem of theirs and isn’t always self-promotional. You can collect and share such articles using a three step process.
– Identify what your audience fears
– Find content that addresses them (or create content that does, the objective is to focus on them and not use these pieces as a means to sell your services)
– Share your content with credits to the original source
Content curation can also be a great way to initiate relationships with experts in your niche. To save time on curation, you can set up keyword alerts on a web monitoring tool like Talkwalker Alerts or use a content curator like DrumUp to manage social media accounts.
2. Use content distribution platforms and plugins that invite social media shares
Don’t limit yourself to tools that are commonly used to grow social media shares. You can use essentially any tool that can earn you more visibility on social media, for instance –
– ViralContentBee – This tool helps you get social media shares in exchange for points. You can earn more points by sharing other people’s content.
– StartAFire – This platform lets you recommend content to users by displaying a badge with a link. The reshared links will help you reach new audiences and in-turn drive more shares.
– SumoMe – These social share plugins can be added to your blog pages to encourage more shares.
3. Facilitate social media advocacy by encouraging potential advocates
According to 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, people such as yourself are the most influential on the internet. Brand advocates may well be the best way for you to reach your audience. There are different types of advocates that you can work with.
– Celebrities: They will cost you considerably, but can offer you extended reach and a hefty ROI. They are the ideal advocates if you want to reach the masses and have no specific audience in mind.
– Experts: People look to experts for recommendations and advice. If you work with an expert who has a large following of people interested in what he/she has to say, you can impact a specific audience with interest in your niche.
– Bloggers: Every industry has top blogs that command most of the market share. By connecting with the bloggers who write for those blogs and getting them to feature you, you can direct some of that traffic back to your website.
– Customers: Several businesses, like my father’s, survive solely on customer referrals. You can get referrals rolling by requesting your customers for them.
– Employees: Employees make great social media advocates, as IBM, Adobe and many other companies have proved. With the right platform and a good employee advocacy guide, you can build a powerful content marketing force out of your employees.
Author bio:
Disha Dinesh is a Content Writer at Godot Media, a leading content agency. Her interests include social media and content marketing. When she’s not writing, she’s on the hunt for social media trends and inspiration.
