As Twitter announced the addition of Promoted Accounts to users’ timelines, Facebook announced that organic reach will become much harder for brands in the coming year, and other social media networks have embraced advertisements, it has become clear that marketers will have to pay to play in social media. These announcements have come as a shock to many social media and community managers, whose budgets for paid social media may not be very high. In order to grow your audience, we have a few suggestions.
1) Make all of your content relevant and engaging to your current audience.
This sounds like a no-brainer, but if you already have a set posting cadence, some get lost in the shuffle. It may be better to tweet fewer, better quality tweets than to post a set amount every day. The more that your current audience interacts with you through retweets, responses, and continued conversation, the better visibility you’ll have with their connections.
2) Mix up your content.
Even though you may find that your audience really loves a certain kind of tweet, you’ll still want to mix up your content a bit to avoid getting stale. Say fill in the blank tweets work really well for your page – try a few of those tweets as questions or use an image. Insert promotional tweets between pure engagement tweets for a balanced mix.
3) Still buy ads.
Promoted Accounts on Twitter will work really well especially if your target audience uses primarily mobile devices. While you’re trying to grow your audience, you’ll definitely want to use promoted accounts versus specific advertisements. The bigger your audience, the more you can start to use promoted tweets for specific promotions.
Still want to learn more about paid versus organic reach? Read more about brands losing organic visibility on Facebook and organic backup.
