Social Media Numbers Declining? Here's What You Can Do

It’s common knowledge in the world of social that getting your first 10,000 followers is the hardest, and it’s all smooth sailing from there. But what about when your social media numbers are heading backwards faster than you can figure out why? Here’s what you can do to boost those numbers and get your social presence back on track.

Revamp Your Bio

People should immediately be able to tell what you do or what you’re known for. Think about what your potential customers might search for in social media and include those terms. Social media search is on the rise, so geographical indicators and service types will be enormously helpful for getting your profile in front of the right people.

Do a Content Audit

Engaging and relevant content is the backbone of any popular social media feed, so drilling down into what’s most interesting to your target audience is vital. The 80/20 rule works well for most feeds. Essentially, 80% of your content should be useful and enjoyable content for your audience to consume. The remaining 20% can be purely promotional content that advertises your products or services. More than this, and you may risk a decline in audience numbers.

Plan, Plan, Plan

This tip is mostly for Instagram, where a visually coherent feed requires careful planning and curation. Luckily for us, there are some great apps for achieving this. UNUM and Planoly allow you to test and rearrange tiles of content as they appear on Instagram, and most of the features on these apps are available for free.

Beyond Instagram, content calendars are incredibly helpful for every social media channel (including blogs) to make sure content is fresh and regularly reposted for maximum reach. When it comes to the time-consuming nature of social, you’ll want to establish a solid process so you’re not wasting any time. Here’s a great content calendar template and explanation by Coschedule.

Think About Sponsoring

Thought about boosting your social media numbers with paid social ads but not sure which posts to push? The sponsoring gold, so to speak, is any post with above average engagement and low levels of initial reach. Whatever it was that caused the low reach; time of day, high competition, maybe you posted during an event that was monopolising everyone’s time – sponsoring a post ensures a much larger audience will see it.

Look at Analytics

By looking at the performance of each of your social media posts, you’ll be able to gather valuable insights like the most effective time of day to post, the type of content that resonates best with your audience, whether certain posts attract more website traffic and so forth. Each social media channel has pretty great analytics tools, but you can also use an external tool like Hootsuite to analyse, test and strategise.

While you’re there, look at your most popular content over the past year and schedule times to reshare it. Chances are, half your audience didn’t see it the first time around, and you want to be getting all the bang that your buck deserves.

Never Stop Learning

Like all aspects of digital marketing, social media trends change faster than Melbourne’s weather. So keep your finger on the pulse of new info in the social media realm. Our favourite resources for social media news and knowledge are;

• Social Media Examiner
• Digiday
• Buffer Social
• Social Media News (for statistics about Australian social media usage)
• Marketing Profs

Want Help Getting Your Social Media Back on Track?

Our social media experts offer comprehensive social media management, social media strategies, social media advertising and everything else related to social. We can also help you out with some professional photo, video or copywriting content to keep your audience engaged and hankering for more. Get in touch with our social media managers today.