Social media has grown to become one of the best marketing platforms, even for people who deal with numbers like accountants, tax professionals, and enrolled agents. But, for social media to work for you, you will need people to market to. In short, you need a robust following on social media. While you may be tempted to buy followers, it’s highly advisable against doing so. There is a high chance you will end up with unengaged followers. Or, you may end up losing your accounts across all the platforms where you engaged in this practice. The best way to get followers is by earning them organically. And, it’s possible, with the right strategies. In this article, we will share some tips that will help you to grow a robust and engaged social media following. With that said, let’s dive in.
Hold Contests
Contests and competitions are a great means of attracting new followers on social media while keeping your current ones engaged. And, you don’t need a huge budget to hold an effective contest.
You can experiment with different types of contests and with time, you will be able to identify the ones that deliver the best results. Some examples include comment to win, fill-in-the-blank, caption contest or photo contest, just to name a few.
Whenever you are holding a contest, ensure you promote it everywhere to boost its reach. So, promote it on your website or blog if you have one, email list as well as across all your social media channels.
Also, make sure you only give prizes or rewards related to your brand. For instance, if you were to give away a smartphone, your contest’s engagement will be high. You will also get a couple of new followers. But, the new followers you get may not be interested in the services you are offering.
Instead, you should offer something like free tax filing services for the winners. With such a reward, you will end up with new followers, who may eventually become lifelong clients.
Go Heavy on Visuals
Visual content performs better than text-based content on social media. It has a higher chance of being liked, shared, favorited and commented on, compared to text-only content.
In fact, studies show that visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media platforms than text-only content. Also, social media posts with visuals generate a massive 650% higher engagement compared to their text-only counterparts. And as you may expect, a higher engagement and more shares increase the chances of getting new followers.
However, if you don’t have a graphics design background or you are short on time, creating amazing visuals can be a challenge. Fortunately, by opting to go for accounting social media templates, such as this bundle from ContentBASE, you can make life easy on yourself. These templates provide an easier and faster means of creating amazing visual content, which will drive engagement and earn you more followers.
Share Valuable Content
You’ve probably heard a thousand times that you need to be posting as many times as possible on social media. However, your focus should be on quality content instead of quantity.
You may be posting every day across all your social media channels. But, if your target audience doesn’t find your posts useful, helpful, actionable or inspiring, they won’t engage with them. Consequently, if no one is engaging with your content, then you will also struggle to attract new followers.
However, it’s equally important to ensure you are posting when your audience is likely to engage with your content. Your analytics data will provide you with insights into the type of content that delivers the highest engagement as well as the time of the day or days when your posts generate the most clicks, comments and shares. You can then use these insights to guide you moving forward.
Interact With your Audience
Social media engagement goes both ways. If you only share content and you don’t bother to interact with your audience, attracting new followers will be a challenge. Also, there’s a possibility that some of your followers will unfollow you, again making it hard for your accounting business to grow on social media.
So, make sure you set aside an hour or so every day to respond to comments, like and share posts, answer questions, start new conversions, share relevant information and reply to messages.
Taking the time to interact with your audience shows you value them. And, they will reciprocate by sharing your posts with their followers, thus increasing your reach and earning you more followers. Connecting and interacting with your audience will also help to humanize your brand, which is vital to transforming your social media followers into long-term, loyal clients.
Partner with Micro-influencers
Collaborating with influencers is yet another effective way of increasing your reach and growing your following on social media. Also, such a partnership will boost your brand’s reputation and increase your engagement, which can lead to more leads and conversions.
However, it will be highly advisable to work with micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers with less than 50,000 followers. And, there are several benefits of working with this group.
Their rates are affordable, they have higher genuine engagements, and they have closer relationships with their followers. In short, you will get better results when you partner with a micro-influencer compared to celebrity influencers. However, make sure you partner with a micro-influencer within your niche.
In Short
If you are looking to grow your accounting brand using social media, then building a large and engaged following is one of the most vital steps. And by using the tips we’ve shared, you should be able to grow your social media following organically.
