How to Increase Your Following as a Social Media Influencer

Are you looking for ways to grow your following, and become a social media influencer? Maybe you’re already one but you wish to get more fans to further monetize your influence. Either way, there are a few effective tips that can help you build a bigger audience.

Take a look at these effective ways to grow your following across the top social media platforms.

Instagram is by far the best platform to become an influencer. In fact, Hashoff surveyed their 150,000+ opt-in influencers and found that Instagram is a favourite for 91.9% of them. So if you want to increase followers and become a social media influencer, this is the best platform for you. Here are a few tips to help you get more Instagram followers whether you’re a beginner or you’re already an influencer:

If you’re going to become a social media influencer, you’ll need to pick a niche to specialize in. But even if you create quality content related to that niche, you might have a hard time growing your audience. The best way to tackle this issue is by capitalizing on the influence of accounts related to your niche.

Lots of influential Instagram accounts curate content from other users. They may assign a specific hashtag that you can use to tag your content for submission. Others may also ask you to tag them. But in some cases, you might have to reach out to the account and see if they’ll be willing to share your content.

For instance, if you want to build a following in the makeup and beauty niche, you need to look for influential accounts that share makeup looks and other types of content from amateur MUAs. Try using relevant hashtags and check out the accounts that pop up in the results.

Make Up Certified is an example of one of the accounts you can contribute your content to. The account regularly gives shoutouts to upcoming influencers in the makeup and beauty industry. They have close to 54,000 followers and encourage users to send them a DM if they need a shoutout. You could contact them and have them share some of your best photos.

Shadow banning is an ongoing issue that’s plaguing Instagram users in particular and can significantly impact your chances of growing your following on the platform. Users have been experiencing issues with Instagram banning their accounts without notifying them.

Everything seems normal from their end but their account has limited visibility. Their posts won’t be visible in relevant hashtag search results made by non-followers, limiting their ability to grow their following or drive higher engagements.

According to PetaPixel, some users have been experiencing only 1/3 of their usual engagements as a result of shadow banning.

If you find that your engagement rates are dropping, it might be a case of shadow banning. And to confirm this, you could try getting 3-5 non-followers to check if your post is showing for a certain hashtag you’ve used in the post.

Make sure you use an uncommon hashtag that isn’t updated regularly so it’ll be easier to discover your post. If none of them can see the post, it’s likely that your account has been shadow banned.

Although Instagram hasn’t provided any official resolution to shadow banning, you could try to avoid it or correct it by making sure that your account isn’t “spammy”. First of all, review the Instagram Platform Policy to see if you’ve violated any of them. Here are some additional tips you could try:

Avoid using any of the hashtags that have been banned or censored by Instagram. The Data Pack has compiled a complete list of censored Instagram hashtags. Fair warning: some of the hashtags may be offensive to some users and some may be unsafe for work.

Instead of using hashtags in your comments, make sure you use them in the caption.

Do not use any third-party apps that engage with users by liking or commenting on their posts on your behalf.

While posting regularly is important, make sure you don’t post more than a few times in a day as this may come off as “spammy”.

While Facebook continues to be the most popular social media platform with 94% of Australian social media users active on the platform, according to Sensis, it is not neccessarily the best platform for growing your audience.

Facebook is what we like to call a “Pay to Play” platform. With so much paid advertising stuffing dollars directly into Zuckerberg’s bulging pockets, it’s not surprising that to get your content out there you need to put your money where your mouth is.

As an influencer it is critical that you rely on organic reach, as this is a true measure of the “virality” of your content, and ultimately how bloody brilliant you are. Other platforms (like Instagram and Snapchat) give much more weight to organic distribution, and are better suited to growing your following, particularly in the early stages of your rise to greatness.

That said, Facebook can be a great platform from which to scale your already established audience with paid advertising. Also for those of you that are looking to become thought leaders and influencers from longer form written content  or engaging video content (see below), Facebook can be a great platform.

The most obvious tactic is to create content that’s relevant to your audience and that will engage them. Whether you provide them with useful tips or some entertai
nment, the content should have some value to them. In other words, don’t just use the platform to share your life story, especially if you’re not a big influencer yet.

For example, beauty influencer Desi Perkins, who has 91,000+ Facebook fans, uses her Facebook page to share her experiences with her fans. But she also uses it to promote her YouTube makeup tutorial videos. And to vary the type of content a bit, she even creates bite-sized tutorial videos, such as the one in the following screenshot.

If people enjoy and value your content, there’s a good chance they’re going to engage with it by liking and commenting on it. Some may even share it with their friends, further increasing your visibility. This particular video received more than 3,000 likes and reactions and has been shared 274 times.

Posting regularly on your Facebook is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you should flood your followers’ newsfeeds with dozens of new posts in a day.

According to Adobe Spark, you should post at least once a day, but not more than two times per day. Otherwise, you could risk annoying your fans, and you could end up losing out on followers.

While you only need to post a couple of times a day, it might be difficult to maintain a regular posting schedule. Especially if you have a full-time job, and have to keep up with social engagements. The good news is there are scheduling tools like Rivuu which you can rely on to publish posts on your behalf.

The platform isn’t just for scheduling posts. You can use it to create content like images, GIFs, and videos. And you can customize content for different social media platforms including Twitter and Instagram. You’ll also be able to see a preview of how the finished post will appear on each platform to ensure there are no mistakes.

You can then schedule this post for a time when your fans are most engaged and then leave it up to the platform to post it for you. This ease of content creation and publishing will make it easier for you to maintain a regular posting schedule not just on Facebook but also on Twitter and Instagram.

Growing your following and becoming a social media influencer on Twitter involves creating and sharing valuable content just like every other social media platforms. And of course, you need to be active.

Make sure you regularly engage with relevant content by liking them and replying to them especially if they’re posted by a big influencer in your niche or a big brand. In addition to this, you can use the following tips:

One of the best ways to enhance your visibility and increase followers on Twitter is by participating in Twitter chats. These are live discussions that take place in Twitter and use a particular hashtag that people can use to keep track of the conversation. When you participate in a relevant Twitter chat, you improve your chances of getting noticed by a relevant audience.

You can use TweetReports to discover potential Twitter chats you can participate in. Their Twitter Chat Schedule displays some of the upcoming Twitter chats along with the topic, description, day, and time. You just need to find relevant topics that interest you and join in on the conversation.

If you want to get more followers on Twitter, you need to be a bit bold and take the chance to start a conversation with relevant brands and top influencers in your niche. There’s a small chance they might respond to you or engage with your tweet but if they do, you could gain plenty of visibility.

In case of big brands, you could give a review about one of their products and mention them. And in case of top influencers, you could ask some questions or try to engage them in a conversation in some way or the other.

The following user tweeted to British blogger Zoella, who has 10.2 million Twitter followers. She asked about a jumper that the blogger wore in one of her vlogs and from where she can get one. The blogger took the time to respond to her. This response has received 1,328 likes.

And plenty of Zoella’s followers also joined in on the conversation. If you wish to increase followers, you can take the opportunity to engage with these people, which could hopefully earn you new followers.

In addition to all this, you can improve your chances of monetizing your influence by joining an influencer network. Influencer networks make it easier for relevant brands to find you and connect with you. So you can easily find brands to work with without having to manually grow your social media following. Hello Social is an excellent option if you’re interested in joining an influencer network.

Did you find these tips helpful? Where do you plan on building your influence first? Let us know in the comments.