Can Your Customers Make You an Influencer on Social Media?

Not only can your customers build your influence online, your social proof and online presence means very little until your audience begins to show up for you and shares your content on their own feeds and with their own followers. 

What are some things you can do to convert your followers from people who simply like your posts into brand advocates who champion your brand often?

Content That Inspires

Brands that find success on social media incorporate and promote audience participation. It doesn’t have to be every day, but coming up with something weekly that encourages social engagement, interaction, and participation are super impactful for businesses online. 

Posting content just to remain consistent has its place but really growing an audience requires engaging content that motivates people to interact. Pay attention to previous content you’ve shared that has done well and evaluate what aspect of that post made it so appealing? What encouraged people to engage? If you don’t have any content, check out other profiles online and pay attention to what does well. 

Encouraging Engagement

If you want more people to see the content that you’ve created, you have to get creative about sparking conversations and interacting with people on your social media channels. For example, on Facebook, the first 30 minutes of a post are crucial. The more people that like, comment, and share your post in that time will ignite the algorithm to show that content in more feeds. As your engagement on that post grows, so does that content’s reach in your audience. So, if you know that a great post goes live at 9:30 a.m., it makes sense to be available and present – responding to comments and talking to your audience. This is the path to building an engaged audience and becoming an influencer online (and it doesn’t require that you have to be present 100% of the time). 

Building Brand Loyalty

The whole purpose of marketing is to get in front of people so they will consider purchasing your products or services, right? The path to purchase starts and ends with trust. Your audience needs to trust you before they are willing to do business with you. Here are some marketing activities that build trust with your audience:

• Consistency – Showing up online often and setting expectations for when you will be available.
• Community – What are you doing to build a community around your audience – allowing them to connect with you directly but also benefit from interacting with each other?
• Generosity – What are you doing to be generous with your time and your expertise? How are you serving your audience?
• Authority / Credibility – What are you doing to improve your online credibility so that when someone does a search on you they can easily and quickly see that you are a trusted expert in your field?

If it seems like a lot of work to become an online influencer and expand your reach online, that’s because it is. If becoming an influencer was easy, everyone would be doing it and would find success right now. The first step to online success of any kind is finding and growing your audience. These recommendations will help you create more content that gains attention, grows awareness of your brand, and builds trust with your audience.

If you are using social media, you are probably only engaging with pages that share relatable content. Are you wanting to define your story and build a long term relationship with a loyal audience that finds YOUR content enjoyable and relatable? Let’s do a Discovery Session to see which Social Media Advisor programs best fit your needs.

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Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

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