Increase Your Social Media Reach: 5 Tips

The social media reach of your business is largely influenced by the content you post and its "shareability" — that is, how and whether others like, comment, link or share it. Providing content that triggers emotional or surprise responses is more likely to be circulated in social networks. When you are posting an article that is factual, spin it to evoke emotion or provide an unexpected fact to elicit surprise.

Above all, your goal is conversion, which means turning audiences into active, loyal customers. Your social network platforms should serve as lead generators for your small business.

1. Share useful content

Content marketing has come to define how businesses share useful information and indirectly advertise without selling. You can expand the social media reach of your business by writing and sharing instructive articles, blog posts or tips and tricks. Adding value to peoples' everyday lives will likely lead them to subscribe to you and further share the content with their followers.

Additionally, your posts must be consistent in order to attract more visits from people who want to remain up-to-date. Provide original, quality content that seeks to answer customers' questions related to your industry or area of expertise.

2. Social media integration

It is important for customers to know you are on social media. Promote your social network presence by integrating social media in your product packaging, service communications and traditional marketing campaigns to alert the public about where to find you on the social web. You just need to include your social network addresses on your packaging, printed materials, email signature, Website and other advertisements or promotional items.

3. Engagement and feedback

Interacting and engaging with other people is one of the most important functions of content marketing. Make sure to always acknowledge and thank those that comment, provide feedback or even complain about your product or service to assure them that there is a real person representing your company. People want to be heard, and participating in discussions creates that sense of community.

Make an effort to configure your page to block content that contains specific keywords or profanity, but do not delete negative content. Instead, address it objectively and promptly to create trust.

4. Organize contests on social media

An effective way to extend your reach is to organize a social media contest, such as a sweepstakes where participants retweet a funny but educational video about your product or service or a photo caption contest where entrants submit a photo of a friend and fill in a caption about how your product makes them stand out. This ensures both the actual participant and their friend become engaged in your business social site. A contest will reward loyal followers, fans and/or readers and can be leveraged as motivation for a new audience (potential customers) to connect their profile. Companies such as Constant Contact offer social campaign tools that are easy to use.

5. Offer to guest post

Guest posts are an excellent way to expand your reach to audiences in an unfamiliar community. Ensure your business name is mentioned alongside your posts. Though many people might not know who you are and what your business is about, a well-written guest post can compel a user to connect with you or share your post. This will not only increase your reach socially, it will translate to an increased customer base.

Marketing is essential to your business. However, as you create truly great content and share it on your social networks, do not overwhelm your followers with branded posts. Content marketing should be subtle, unlike traditional push advertising. Follow the 80/20 rule and limit promotional posts to 20 percent of your content. Having an effective social media strategy ensures that regularly published, relevant posts will stand out from a cluttered social media news feed, giving you the most exposure possible.