Research shows that 90% of consumers buy from brands they follow on social media. As a business, tapping into this potential can significantly boost your online presence and drive more website traffic, leads, and sales. The key question is, how do you grow social media followers organically?
Organic growth on social media refers to the natural increase in followers, engagement, and visibility without using paid promotions. Instead of using advertisements and sponsored posts, organic growth relies on quality interactions and content that resonate with your target audience.
For many businesses, especially B2B brands, organic growth is not just a viable strategy but a crucial one. B2B companies thrive on fostering trust and long-term relationships. To fully leverage organic social media growth, it's important to recognize its benefits and the strategies that drive success.
4 Strategies to Achieve Organic Growth on Social Media
While paid social media strategies offer quick visibility, the real value often lies in organic social media growth. This approach enables brands to establish more genuine connections, which is the backbone of any successful B2B brand.
1. Create valuable content that resonates with your audience
Offer genuine, immediate value to your audience before they even convert. Rather than simply advertising your products or services, focus on providing useful information and resources, such as e-books, blog posts, how-to videos, or even complimentary consultations. The goal should be to create organic content for social media that resonates with your audience and inspires them to engage. To achieve this, make sure the tone you use strikes a balance between personal and professional.
By consistently offering value to your audience, you can position your brand as a credible expert and thought leader in your niche. This credibility, in turn, could encourage more followers to convert and even recommend your offerings to others because they already know that your brand has actual value to offer.
If you’re uncertain how to increase social media engagement organically, follow these tips:
- Create content that prompts engagement, whether through comments, direct messages, or shares. Encouraging interaction brings in new followers and fosters a sense of community around your brand.
- Consider sharing live content, such as short clips from virtual events or video messages from key people from the company. This keeps audiences informed with timely updates while introducing the people behind the brand.
- Highlight client testimonials and case studies. Providing social proof is an excellent way to establish your brand’s credibility and the effectiveness of your products or services.
Discover Content That Converts
Clearview Social can equip you with the tools to find fresh, high-quality content, including industry news and media mentions of your brand. Effortlessly share this content with your audience and team to enhance your social media strategy.
2. Stay consistent with your posting schedule
A steady stream of content keeps your brand at the forefront of your audience's minds since your posts regularly land on their newsfeeds. If followers see a regular flow of high-quality posts from your page, they start to expect and look forward to your updates. You position your brand as reliable, building a strong relationship with your audience and encouraging them to interact more with your content. You can reinforce your brand’s credibility by engaging with your online community further through comment responses.
To maintain a consistent posting schedule without the strain of manual effort, invest in social media automation tools. With such tools, you can plan and schedule posts in advance, allowing you to build a well-structured content calendar that ensures your posts reach your audience at optimal times. Automating your organic social media marketing efforts saves time and helps you maintain a steady presence.
3. Leverage employee advocacy
Small to medium B2B enterprises tend to invest more in building human capital compared to B2C enterprises. This makes B2B brands fertile ground for employee advocacy programs.
Promoting employee advocacy involves enabling employees to share their positive experiences and insights about the company on their personal social media channels. Your employees have their own extensive networks, which may include industry peers, clients, and even prospects. When they share your content on their pages, it reaches a broader audience than your company’s channels might not be able to tap, making this a promising strategy for growing social media followers organically.
Beyond amplifying the company's reach, turning employees into online advocates also humanizes your brand. People tend to trust recommendations from peers or colleagues much more than traditional advertising. By having your employees share their authentic insights and experiences, they can foster a stronger, more credible brand image.
The benefits of employee advocacy aren’t solely external. Encouraging it also aids in attracting top talent during recruitment periods and in increasing staff satisfaction by making them feel involved in the company’s success.
To implement an effective employee advocacy program, consider the following tips:
- Equip employees with the knowledge and tools they need to advocate effectively. This includes training on social media best practices and content guidelines.
- Incentivize employees who actively participate in the advocacy program.
- Build a culture where employees feel comfortable and motivated to share genuine experiences and perspectives.
Transform Your Team Into Brand Advocates
With Clearview Social’s employee advocacy software, your team can easily promote company content on their personal social media platforms and broaden your brand’s visibility online.
4. Measure and refine strategies
Implementing an organic social media growth strategy is futile without regularly measuring its effectiveness. This ensures that your efforts are yielding the desired results and enables you to improve and re-strategize.
First, understand the timeline you will need to get the results you aim for. Social media organic growth is not an overnight success. Typically, a well-executed digital marketing campaign requires at least six months to start showing initial results, with more substantial and satisfying outcomes often emerging after twelve months. This extended timeline is essential because building a strong online presence and engaging an audience organically takes time and consistent effort.
Additionally, pay close attention to social media KPIs such as reach, engagement, audience demographics, and content performance. By examining these metrics, you can properly gauge how to grow on social media more effectively and make informed adjustments to enhance your strategies.
4 Challenges in Organic Social Media Marketing
While organic growth offers numerous benefits, it also presents several challenges that businesses must navigate to achieve sustained success.
1. Constantly changing social media algorithms
Social media platforms frequently update their algorithms, which can significantly affect how users see the content you publish. The algorithms are typically designed to prioritize content that drives user interaction, and this can sometimes sideline posts from brands, especially B2B companies, that rely entirely on organic strategies.
To overcome this challenge, it’s worth staying on top of social media news and participating in webinars and discussions to learn more about industry best practices.
2. Limited reach
Organic social media inherently limits a brand's reach to its existing followers and their networks. This is particularly more challenging for startups, which must build their audience from scratch.
Aside from creating engaging content that encourages shares and interactions, you can also utilize features like social media groups, stories, and reels to help extend reach and attract new audiences. Failing to keep up with trends can cause a brand to miss out on timely opportunities for engagement and visibility, so make sure to regularly monitor emerging social media trends and be ready to adapt quickly.
It’s also important to adopt a “share-first” mentality. Create content that is compelling and valuable enough for your audience to want to share. This can help amplify reach and attract new followers. Without shares, content remains confined to a brand's existing follower base.
3. Juggling multiple platforms
Each social media platform has its unique user behavior and content preferences. Managing and optimizing content across different platforms can be overwhelming for small teams, which can lead to inefficient performance and burnout.
Instead of establishing a presence on all platforms, identify which platforms offer the best ROI and focus your efforts solely on those selected few.
4. Content quality
Consistently producing high-quality content is crucial for organic growth on social media, but it can be hard to maintain. Brands may struggle to find a balance between quantity and quality, potentially leading to repetitive or low-quality content. Beyond this, creativity can wane, resulting in gaps in content schedules.
While regular posting can keep a brand top-of-mind, it can backfire if the content lacks value or originality. To prevent the pitfalls of content saturation, set high standards for content quality and focus on producing original content. You can leverage user-generated content such as posts from employees and gather insights from successful posts to get fresh ideas and keep the content calendar full.
Achieve Organic Social Media Growth with Clearview Social
Growing your social media following organically requires strategic planning and consistent effort. By focusing on creating valuable content, maintaining a consistent posting schedule, leveraging employee advocacy, and continually measuring and refining your strategies, your business can foster genuine connections and increase your social media engagements.
Clearview Social offers a suite of tools designed to support your organic social media growth efforts. With features such as automated posting schedules, detailed analytics, social media AI tools, and employee advocacy software, we can make it easier for you to implement, manage, and maintain your organic social media strategy.
Find Success in Organic Social Media Marketing
Clearview Social is the ideal partner for your organic social media strategies. We streamline employee advocacy programs to enhance your social media performance and nurture your digital communities efficiently.