HOW TO GROW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA BY 37%
This is how I increased my clients’ followers on Instagram by 37% in 60 days.
We create content for many reasons: to gain an audience, to retain an audience, to increase brand awareness, to increase trust, to create loyal brand advocates and most important of all for a small business: to increase sales.
Content marketing has the power to increase a company’s sales dramatically.
That’s why when content marketing is done correctly it can be a great asset to a growing small company.
Some people say that the problem with social media is that likes and followers don’t equate to sales. And it’s 100% true. How many times have we ‘liked’ something on Instagram and never bought anything from that account? Multiple, hundreds if not millions.
The goal when creating content is to make something that moves people emotionally. This is really hard because the first thing we think of is that we need to be controversial. But it’s not really true. We just need a different strategy. I will share below how we can achieve that.
In the last 2 months we have been working with a client called UTVV — they are a yearly trail running event company. We started on the 15th of October with our new strategy and within 60 days we increased their social media hugely.
Here are the stats.
We gained 1.6k followers to our account organically. But what’s more important is that we increased our engagement dramatically and we made a couple of videos viral. To be precise we made 2 videos viral!
We managed to reach 605.2k people organically!
When people say that social media likes, reach and engagement doesn’t equate to sales they are partly right, since if it’s the wrong audience they will never buy an event ticket because they are not runners.
But if you make people feel something and if they are the right audience they will buy.
The sales in the past 60 days reflect it.
Obviously sales are not linked directly with just content or a specific post. There are many factors and elements that contribute to sales growth. I would never say that just because of content or because of a brand story a company is growing.
To grow a brand and to increase sales a lot of things play a vital role. For example, the user experience on the website, the pictures, the fonts, the color palette, the copy, the videos, and the perception of the brand play a huge role. We can’t really pinpoint just one thing. A great brand is coherent — it’s in balance with everything.
The other important element in the UTVV social media growth is that people are coming back every day to the account to check what we have posted, people send us DMs asking questions and praising us, saying that our content is amazing.
On average our posts have gone from two comments each, from the owner and myself, to now having 20, 30 and even 40 comments from our audience.
But in order to increase engagement you don’t just ask a question and people start commenting, you have to create content that will help you win trust within your audience. You have to go deep and ask questions like “Why do people buy from me?” “Why do people want this product?” “Why do people book races?” “Why do people book hotels?”
A perfect example of this is when I shared this strategy at Adventure Sports Conference in Kendal last month while speaking on stage. I mentioned that companies need stories from runners, stories from real people. We need to find out why people sign up to your events. We need to find the emotional reason why, not the logical.
One of social media managers listened to the advice and within a week posted on their account a picture with the following caption: “We want your stories. Why do you run?” They got zero responses. The reason is simple: all their content posted previously is about nice views, product, views and product.
You can’t expect people to start engaging with you just because you asked a question, you need trust, you need your content to reflect that.
Another example is not engaging with people that buy from you let alone potential clients. I love how the majority of brands will tell you how much ‘they care’ about their clients. But in reality we all know they couldn’t care less.
To prove this point, I posted my race calendar on one of my accounts..
I tagged all six brands that I’m racing — not even ONE responded, well, except UTVV, obviously. The other 5 companies didn’t even bother saying thank you. Only @ultratrailsnowdonia liked the post.
So basically what this tells me is that we don’t really care about social media, or we don’t care about our clients. But then when they need people to volunteer or to comment on their posts they are the first to complain that people don’t engage. To be fair because four of the races are from the same company I get that the ethos or the mindset of that company is arrogant.
Before executing marketing strategies it’s important to have the right mindset. Because what’s the point of having all the strategies and ideas but not being able to execute them?
Here are five strategies that will help you increase your social following in the next 60 days:
- Create a creative content strategy
- Create 60 pieces of content for one month
- Focus on hooks — start, middle and end.
- Create interesting content that inspires, educates or makes someone laugh.
- Engage with people on social on a daily basis. For this strategy I have to give all the credits to the Anja who did a phenomenal job in engaging with people.
- Be the client.
Here’s how it looks practically:
Creative content strategy: Sit down and write down what you want to talk about, write on Notion your audience is , and divide the audience into three categories: current customers, potential customer Z and potential customer Y.
Write down what type of content you want to create: what type of videos / reels.
Write down 100 ideas on Notion or Evernote.
Approve 60 ideas that you love.
Put a date in the calendar for shooting day(s)
Write all your scripts, find actors and talent to execute your videos.
Spend more time in pre-production — (something I struggle with!)
Execute.
Create 60 pieces of content for one month: This is really important, if you want to see what works and what doesn’t work create more. The more you create the better you become.
If you go for a run 7 days a week you will become a better runner than if you go for a run twice a week.
There is a huge difference between theory and execution. Theory is great, like now you are reading this article but this theory needs to be put in execution — and in execution we learn more.
In the past three months I learned so much in regards to pre-production, production, editing and distribution.
You have to remember that you don’t create content for a TV Advert, you are creating content for social media.
Focus on hooks — start, middle and end: There is so much advice on how we need to nail the hook, the hook is everything — which is not really true. The whole video is important, the start, the middle and the end.
If you nail the hook in the first five seconds and then on the 10th second your video is boring, guess what will happen? People are going to scroll! So yes, hooks are very important, but we need to remember that everything in the video is important. What’s the hook, what’s the story?
Create interesting content that inspires, educates or makes someone laugh: There is so much content out there that is just crap. The reason why is because it doesn’t inspire, educate or entertain. What worked a year ago doesn’t work anymore. The reason why is because the bar for content creation is higher now.
More and more people realize that they can make a living by becoming full time content creators.
After Covid, people saw a huge explosion in TikTok, and IG Reels and brands are paying big money to influencers to promote their products and services.
Why then don’t people see that their content is bad? Well, I didn’t see that my content was horrendous until one guy sent me a DM last year saying that my content is hard to follow: “It’s like a lecture”. I didn’t like the message initially but after some time looked at it and realized that he was right. I changed it.
Be a consumer of the product: I can’t say that this is the most important because everything is important but this is by far will make your job easier. Be a customer first, be a consumer first, love the product, love the service, if you sell running shoes, be a runner, if you sell hotel accomodation, be a traveller, if you sell ketchup, be a ketchup lover. (But make sure you are the audience that you want to target)
People are like lighthouses, we can shine a light on others but we can’t clearly see what’s inside.
I have to mention that this is a brilliant example but this wouldn’t have been possible if the CLIENT (UTVV) management and team wouldn’t have been open minded. They approved things that was hard to approve because we went into the unknown. I have to give a lot of credit to Bostjan Mikuz, the co-founder, for being bold and approving a lot of things. And huge credit to Anja for engaging and being a great marketer.
If you enjoyed this article, comment below.
If you would like myself and my team at Way Boutique to help you with your content marketing, you can get in touch by sending me an email on an@way.boutique or visiting our website way.boutique
