Clients often ask us at Williams Whittle, “How do we reach the maximum amount of people on social media without a large budget/ large following?” We’ve uncovered a few simple steps through trial and error and the success stories of others on how to maximize engagement and reach through social media.
- Keep your social media handles consistent.
One of the easiest rules of social media (and often the most overlooked) is to keep your social media handles consistent. By maintaining the same social media handle, anyone that is searching for you will find multiple social sites, hopefully at the top of Google. This is important for expanding reach because, if someone loves you on twitter, but can’t find you on Facebook, you’ve lost out on a potentially engaged audience member.
- Review your analytics on a weekly basis.
Facebook makes it simple. They will email you your weekly activity. Download a free social media dashboard like Hootsuite if you aren’t currently using anything to monitor your other social sites. When evaluating your content, be sure to ask yourself is the content you’re sharing working? Is it reaching the appropriate people? Are people liking or sharing? If the answer is no, your analytics will most likely tell you what is successful and what isn’t. Review. Change. Repeat. Until you notice successful results.
- Share others content.
I firmly believe in the 70/30 rule for social content sharing, especially on Twitter. 70% value + 30% self promotion = 100% social triumph. If you are constantly tooting your own horn, it will be difficult to keep people engaged. By sharing other relevant content, audiences will you realize your account is helpful to them not there to simply just as a sales or donation mechanism.
- Never underestimate the power of a good hashtag.
More than 17 MILLION people uploaded a video of themselves doing the #ALSicebucketchallenge. This social media phenomenon spread largely because of the hashtag.
Even Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups turned a mostly negative situation—people were complaining that Reese’s Christmas Tree Peanut Butter Cups looked nothing like actual trees—into a positive by creating the hashtag #AllTreesAreBeautiful. Its first official tweet with the hashtag #AllTreesAreBeautiful received over 5000 shares and 7000 likes.
- Boost your post.
If you have an extremely cool piece of content or a fantastic event to promote, post it to Facebook, and then boost your post. This will help your subject matter reach audiences outside of just those who like or follow your page. To boost your post, click on the bottom right button on your Facebook post, pick an audience group, set a budget (whatever you are most comfortable with-even $20 can go a long way), and the amount of days you’d like the post boosted. Voila!
- Encourage employees to share posts to amplify reach.
Another easy method to reach audiences outside of your followers is to announce the content you’re planning on posting and ask staff to share it. Whether that’s on LinkedIn or Twitter, your employees and coworkers probably have more friends, colleagues and family members that are interested in the content you’re posting than you think. Those friends, colleagues and family members might also know someone ELSE who is interested in your cause.
We hope these tips will help you successfully craft or share content to increase your reach. If we can help in anyway, feel free to contact us!
Written by: 
Jordan Craig, Account Director, Williams Whittle
