How to Get Followers on Any Social Media Platform: 6 Ways to Boost Your Follower Count

Many businesses are interested in learning how to get followers on social media. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually happen overnight. While you may think using potentially damaging ‘quick-win’ techniques is the only way to increase your follower count quickly, it’s better to keep your brand authentic.

To organically grow your social media accounts and get more followers, you need to have a strategy. Although it may seem difficult, it’s definitely not impossible. The key is understanding your audience and establishing a strong social presence people find valuable.

How boosting followers can benefit your business

Having a high follower count on social media can benefit your business in many ways. The more people who follow your brand, the greater exposure you get. A high follower count can also help make you appear more credible. The average Twitter account has around 700 followers. So, accounts with followers reaching into the thousands and beyond stand out.

When it comes to marketing, first impressions are everything. This is especially true on social media. Like the blue check-mark verification badge, a high follower count indicates legitimacy and authority. Follower count is also a form of social proof. The more you have, the more likely others are to perceive your brand in a positive light. It helps affirm that you’re worth following.

Learning how to get followers can also help ‘unlock’ certain features on social media. For example, Instagram accounts need to have at least 10,000 followers (or a verified account) to use the Swipe Up feature.

You may come across ads offering thousands of followers for the price of a venti latte. However, buying followers and taking shady shortcuts won’t benefit you in the long run. These ‘followers’ are usually bots that won’t engage and could end up spamming you to boot. Plus, they aren’t sustainable. Last year alone, Twitter shut down millions of suspicious accounts.

This week we’ll be removing locked Twitter accounts (locked when we detect suspicious changes in behavior) from follower counts across profiles globally. The number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down. #health https://t.co/JGmE4ofoZ2

— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) July 11, 2018

As such, focusing on organic growth is more effective for building a meaningful network. People who are genuinely interested in your brand are more likely to engage with your content.

Six ways to boost your follower count on any social media platform

Once you have a better understanding of follower count importance, you can learn how to get followers. Let’s take a look at six strategies you can use to boost your follower count on any social media platform.

1. Optimize your social profiles with keywords

As with your website, you can optimize your social profiles for certain keywords. For example, on LinkedIn, you can optimize your job title for words or services you want to be found for.

On social media, you’re faced with limited space and character counts for your bios. The parameters for social bios vary by platform. However, there are a few basic strategies for optimizing your own social bios.

First, focus on highlighting the essential aspects of your brand using brief but direct statements. Use punchy, concise sentences to communicate what your business does and why users should follow you.

People can use platforms such as Twitter and Instagram as search tools. Therefore, relevant keywords and hashtags in your bio can help increase the visibility of your social pages and attract new followers.

Let’s say someone was interested in finding cooking tutorials. When they enter this phrase in the Twitter search bar, relevant accounts appear:

The top two accounts include ‘cooking tutorials’ in their bios. This is just one example of how to get followers using relevant keywords.

You can also add a location, as well as links, and a Call To Action (CTA). To further maximize your bio space, you may consider using emojis. A solid example of a business making effective use of links, hashtags, CTAs, and emojis on Instagram is ASOS:

Finally, consider using a quality profile picture across social platforms. Using the same image for your profiles helps people identify the brand more easily.

2. Engage with other people’s content and respond to followers

You can also gain followers by being an engaging follower. Commenting, sharing, and liking other peoples’ posts can help get you noticed and followed back. To discover influencers in your niche, as well as the type of content they share, you can use tools such as BuzzSumo:

This analyzer lets you see top-performing content for a certain domain or topic. You can also use it to get an idea of the type of content people share on social media.

Another useful tool to consider using is Tweepi:

This tool essentially recommends which accounts to follow. It also suggests accounts to unfollow, such as inactive ones, and which tweets to interact with. Responding to your followers and sharing other people’s content is a way to stay active on social media. Additionally, it prevents your social profiles from looking like a spammy, automated feed of promotions.

Let’s say someone clicks on your account and sees you’re sharing relevant, valuable articles with added commentary. This is more interesting than seeing a feed full of auto-generated posts from your business’s blog.

Being active and responsive on social media can also help you demonstrate good customer service. According to research, approximately one-third of consumers prefer contacting a company on social media than the phone. Plus, 71 percent of customers are more likely to recommend the business if they receive good customer service on social media.

3. Create highly ‘shareable’ posts

To boost engagement on social media, you want to make your social media posts shareable. People who find your content useful or interesting may want to share it with their followers.

When sharing posts on social media, be sure to use engaging images. Research has found that tweets with images receive:

• 89 percent more favorites
• 18 percent more clicks
• 150 percent more retweets

To make your social posts shareable, you may want to make sure your profiles are set to public. On Twitter, if your account is private, not even your followers can retweet your posts.

You can see whether your tweets are ‘protected’ by going to your Twitter profile, then Settings and privacy > Privacy and safety:

The same applies to Instagram. Users can’t view your posts unless your account is public or they follow you. You may be thinking, Isn’t the point to get more followers? Well, making people request to follow you adds an often unnecessary barrier of entry.

Public profiles let users preview what they would get by following your account. Done correctly, this can actually work as an incentive to follow you rather than a reason not to. To make your Instagram profile public, tap the hamburger menu icon > Settings > Account Privacy – make sure Private Account is toggled off.

Another way to enhance post ‘shareability’ is to understand the kind of content your audience prefers. For example, 63 percent of customers follow brands because they’re interested in discounts and promotions.

4. Use social share buttons on your website and blogs

As we mentioned, social share buttons on your website make it easier for users to share your content with their followers. People interested in your content likely have a network of people who are also interested.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins you can use to add social share buttons to your website. However, to take it a step further, you may also consider integrating your WordPress site with social profiles using our Revive.Social plugins. Our Revive Old Posts plugin lets you easily connect your WordPress site and social accounts:

The free version lets you automatically share posts to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. You can unlock additional features by upgrading to Revive Old Posts Pro. This includes integrating your WordPress site with more social accounts, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. It also lets you create a custom sharing schedule.

5. Create a consistent posting schedule

To keep your audience engaged and attract new followers, it’s important to post regularly and consistently. If someone visits your social profile and sees you haven’t posted in weeks or even months, there’s little incentive for them to hit the Follow button.

The best way to make sure you post regularly is to create a posting schedule. You can use tools such as Revive Old Posts to schedule blog posts to share on social media:

In order to make your posting schedule as effective as possible, use analytics such as Instagram Insights to gain insight into when your audience is most active on social media. This way, you can post during times when engagement and shares are most likely to help boost your follower count.

6. Make use of hashtags

Hashtags can be used on social media to expand the reach of your posts. By including hashtags in your posts, you can target people who are interested or searching for that hashtag. You can also use hashtags as an exploration and research tool. By searching hashtags, you can see what users are posting about regarding the topic and which types of posts are performing well.

The number of hashtags you should use is up for debate. For example, Instagram allows for a maximum of 30 hashtags. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean you should use all 30 hashtags. Abusing hashtags can result in you being ‘shadowbanned’. One study found that the ideal number of hashtags to use on Instagram to generate the most engagement is between 9–12.

Research has also found that using hashtags on Twitter can double engagement rates. However, using more than two can cause a 17 percent drop in engagement. Clearly, there is a delicate line between useful and annoying hashtags.

The smart approach is to focus on using relevant hashtags. You may also consider the popularity and density of them. For example, if you choose a broad term, you could be competing with thousands or even millions of other posts.

To generate ideas for relevant hashtags, you can use tools such as Hashtagify.me:

With this tool, you search the volume and popularity of hashtags. It also provides suggestions for alternative hashtags you could use, as well as which influencers are using it.

Conclusion

As with any marketing platform, the larger your social media audience, the better. However, figuring out how to get followers on social media requires a careful approach and a well-thought-out strategy.

As we discussed in this article, there are six tips you can use to help boost your follower count on any social media platform:

1. Optimizing your social profiles.
2. Engaging with other people’s content and responding to your followers.
3. Creating highly shareable posts relevant to your market.
4. Adding social share buttons to your website and email.
5. Using Revive.Social to make scheduling and sharing content across platforms easy.
6. Including relevant hashtags with each post.

By John Hughes

John is a blogging addict and WordPress fanatic. He's also a staff writer at WordCandy.co, which produces quality blog content for WordPress plugin and theme developers, hosting providers, website development and design agencies, and other online businesses.