The fact that you’re here could mean that you have already evaluated where you are, developed a strategy, and have readily set objectives to grow your online audience – with the goal of bringing more traffic to your website and increasing the amount of followers on your social media.
If this is true, you’ve come to the right corner of the web! Goals to grow your online audience can seem daunting at first, but it is an important step to get yourself known and reach potential customers. There are a few steps to take before that can likely happen: brand awareness and engaging with your audience. It is one thing to get your content seen, but another to get online viewers interacting with you.
While there can be many ways to approach this, here at Social Chameleon, we have hand selected 7 that we think would be a great place to start to maintain good habits and housekeeping.
1. Know Your Audience
Research your target audience. Find what is more likely to encourage them to engage with your content. What are their likes and dislikes? What content would be useful to them? What’s more, you could create a few segment profiles. This is when you group potential consumers with similar needs and characteristics. A profile would include their age, location, interests, behaviours and more. You will be able to find profile templates online quite easily and you could use these as a guide.
It is almost impossible to attract the attention of the entire public; on the contrary, every service or product should have a specific target market. It’s much better to appeal to your niche well, rather than try to reach everyone. If you attempt the latter, you’re more likely create bland content that has little chance of cutting through the digital noise.
Sometimes going back to basics can have great results – such as ensuring you provide top quality customer service. With everything you do, and all the content you create, think how they meet your audience’s needs. Be helpful, be interesting, be entertaining, and importantly, make them like and trust you.
2. Competitor analysis
Have a look at what your competitors are doing. What are they doing well? Not so well? Where can you do even better? Again, hone in on your niche.
Create a SWOT analysis of your competitors and your business.
Look at your current following and see what content they engage and interact with. Hone in on it. Learn what resonates with your audience. Most of the channels used will have metrics that can give you insight on how consumers use your content.
3. Plan and Create Quality Content
Start developing a content plan. Outline all the assets, data and content you need to achieve your goals set in your strategy. Here, you can plan the content you need to create in order to meet your audience’s needs.
Based on your learnings on what you do well, create more of that great quality content. For example, what forms of content do your followers respond best to? Instagram reels or carousal posts? Polls or ‘how to’ guides? Resonate with your niche and grow from there.
Be consistent. Stay true to your brand, constantly produce relevant content for your audience to the highest quality you can.
4. Know where your online audience are
Google Analytics is a great tool to learn about your website landing pages and where your audience are coming from; there are plenty of free online tutorials on how to set up google analytics for your website.
Social media will often have their own built in analytic tools. Here you will be able to see which posts and content have worked the best and who uses what. Some of your users will be more active on certain social networks. Learn and adapt your content to work with each channel.
Each channel is better at doing certain things, working with what is best for you if you have limited resources. For example, if you’re all about creativity and engaging visuals, Pinterest and Instagram may be better choices than others.
If you are only on one channel and you have the time, try to branch out and get on different platforms and adapt your content to work with each one. Include links on your content or captions in your posts which could drive traffic to your main website and landing pages; this can also help towards your SEO and lead to you getting recognised within your industry.
5. Practice Good SEO
On that note, how clued up are you on SEO? SEO stands for: Search Engine Optimisation. Good SEO increases your chances of being found by potential customers online. You want people to see all the amazing content you create, after all! Working to improve SEO will help get your content displayed further to the top of result pages – although this can often be a lengthy process, so be patient!
Google’s Spiders ‘crawl’ the web looking for good quality content so Google can display the most relevant item for the searcher. Be original. They can spot any duplicates – this will harm your chances of being seen by your online audience.
Good website maintenance is of utmost importance, including making sure it is easy to use and mobile and tablet friendly. With the majority of people using mobiles it is important that your website is optimised for mobile. If it is hard to navigate and slow, it will not hold users’ attention for long.
Top Tip: Google is the biggest search engine, so catering for them will likely mean you will be optimised for the smaller ones as well. But how do you work in favour of Google’s Algorithms? Well, to tell the truth, Google are highly secretive, and rarely publish insights and information. BUT, they do a quick, free online course on SEO and how to be found. So, get enrolled! Alternatively, check out our post on The Most Important 2022 SEO Trends for more exclusive insights!
6. Don’t Get Stuck On The Technical Headache
Focusing on overly technical aspects to please Google’s ‘Spiders’ could take away some human element and be more time costly. In its simplest form, catering for the ease of the users will more often than not, work best. You can get stuck in a rabbit hole of optimising every tiniest detail which won’t add a huge amount of value.
7. Track and learn as you grow
Use trackable urls, custom hashtags, and evaluate your analytics to gather insight. Track your progress and constantly learn ways to improve to meet your audience’s needs and subsequently grow your online audience.
As either a startup or established business, growing your online audience is an ongoing, long-term process. As time goes on, you’ll learn more about the right tactics that work for you, what content works best, and ultimately, what your audience want from you. For more advice on how to grow your online audience – get in touch with our expert team of marketeers at contact@socialchameleon.com, or by filling out the enquiry form on our contact page.
