
One the most important concerns of today’s businesses is increasing the number of followers on social networks.
Brands, organizations and institutes use social networks’ platforms on a daily basis to get connected to their audience, acquaint people with their brand and improve their business. Brands can start more effective campaigns and offer their services and products to more people by using social media. But having tens of thousands of Instagram followers or two thousand Twitter followers alone, is not enough for having a successful online career.
You may have thousands of followers who never view your posts or click on your links. The main point is to create a thriving online community, consist of your ideal fans; people who get involved with your contents actively, share them with their friends and eventually turn into customers.
In this article, we are going to present 9 ways for increasing the number of followers on social networks:

1.Run contests!
It can be a great way for attracting new people to your account. In addition, it will get your current followers involved with your page.
Some of the contests you can run are mentioned below:
- Leave a comment and win the game! (Participants leave comments and you choose the winner among them through a sortition.)
- Write a caption and win the game! (People write captions for your post and the one that receives the most like or the one that is the best in your opinion, wins.)
- Answer the question and win the game! (Ask a question in your post and choose the winner among the people who have answered it, through a sortition.)
Or it can be some of these contests combined…
A few tips about running contests:
Promote the contest everywhere; promote and advertise the contest on your website, by sending emails and on other social networks, so that everyone would participate.
Give away a prize that is relevant to your brand; for example if you give away an iPhone-11, you’ll definitely attract lots of likes, comments and followers; but these are not necessarily from the people who would finally become customers or loyal followers for you.
Thank the people who haven’t won: send them a message and thank them. You can also introduce your services and products in that message.
2. Share each of your posts along with a suitable picture
Posts that contain pictures, usually have good functions on social networks. Therefore, you should attach an impressive, colorful or graphic picture to every post.
Take a look at these statistics from HubSpot:
• Contents that contain pictures are seen 94% more than the ones without.
• Pictorial contents are shared on social networks 40 times more, comparing to other sorts of contents.
• Instagram pictures which show faces, receive 38% more likes than the ones without faces in them.
3. Share more videos than you did before
Video is the most interesting type of virtual content. So, it’s a good idea to create video contents in order to maximize the interaction. Note that you should upload the video itself, not its link; then your video will be shown on other people’s feed and they don’t need to click anymore.
Sharing videos encourages users to follow you and that will increase the number of your followers on social networks.
4. Be quick at answering to your followers
83% of Facebook users and 71% of Twitter users, expect you to answer their question in less than an hour. 32% of Twitter users expect you to do so in less than 30 minutes.
Listen to your audience’s needs and answer them as soon as possible in order to create a great user experience for them.
5. Change your profile photo and cover images
Your profile photo and cover images are the best and most-viewed elements of your social media accounts. Use these visual tools to show the impression of your job and the story of the people who use your services.
For example, change your Facebook and LinkedIn cover image once a month. On Instagram and Twitter, you don’t need to change your profile photo every month but you can change your Twitter header once in a while and upload a nice image to be seen in a better way.
6. Encourage users to follow your accounts
Give your current and future followers a reason to follow you on different platforms.
Share contents on different social networks that are relevant to the platforms. For example, share hot news on Twitter, longer contents on Facebook and attractive visual contents on Instagram.
You should be looking for strategic use of each social network based on its strengths and give your audience a good reason to stay connected with you on that platform. Think about the reasons people use each social media for; then set strategies and share persuasive contents for them.

7. Persuade your audience to tag their friends
An effective strategy for increasing the interaction rate, is persuading the audience to tag their friends and families.
If you want to share an inspiring quote, write this in the caption: “Tag someone who needs to hear this today!” or if you want to share a video for Friends’ Day, encourage people to tag their friends in comments. Just remember if you use this too much, you’ll see the opposite result.
8. Use hashtags so that they would find you
There are two top ways of using hashtags in order to get more followers:
a) Use Instagram strategic popular hashtags like #tbt. But it has to be related to your content.
b) Use trending topics on social media which is relevant to you. For example, check your Twitter feed regularly and tweet about the trending topics that your audience finds interesting, using the hashtag. The people who search those hashtags will see your tweet and may follow you.
9. Be entertaining and use humor to interact
Take a look at Frederiction SPCA; an animal protection agency that often shares interesting notes and images on its page.
Brands that use humor, do a really good job on social media. But you should always make sure that the content you share, has a meaning to your own specific audience.
Social networks have provided a good area for brands and organizations to get in touch with their loyal customers and to expand their access to new ones; but this happens if they use this potential in the right way.
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