Friday, August 14, 2015

3 Ways to Grow Your Audience on Any Social Network

Hashtags: A quick word on these. For those who don't know, hashtags are absolutely indispensable! I don't think people ever put enough emphasis on this. I was amazed when I first got on Tumblr about how many people found my posts who weren't following me and who I hadn't yet interacted with. I'm telling you, PEOPLE SEARCH HASHTAGS to find things they're interested in. Hashtagging your posts will grow your audience EXPONENTIALLY more quickly that not having hashtags will. You'll be amazed at the growth. And of course it depends on the network. I believe in using hashtags on EVERY network, because it helps the search feature on any network present your work to people who are searching for your subject matter. But it's also true that hashtags are much more effective on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram than on Facebook or Goodreads. Still, I hashtag absolutely EVERYTHING I post.
This is the frame I use for everything. This
meme actually isn't mine. I pulled it off
Pinterest and will post it with credit, but
I still put my frame on it so that when
people see it, they know it came from
my account.
Branding: When I started my TWD account, I just made an arbitrary decision to do all my pictures using a particular frame. I just liked it and decided that all my pics (theories, memes, even stuff I re-posted) would have that frame. I then just posted those same things straight over to Tumblr. Now, most people do more blog-type things on Tumblr, as I mentioned above, so it was definitely a different format for Tumblr. But it's worked phenomenally well. I got this comment a while ago on Tumblr, so obviously it's become a trademark of my account and people know me by it. This is branding at it's most basic. Create a look for your account. You may even be able to do the same one on many/most of your social network platforms, which actually makes less work for you because you won't have to convert to a new format for each one. Then just stick to it. Just with books, brands, businesses or anything else, you want your brand to stand out so that people not only recognize it, but learn to look for it. Do this with your social networking!!!
Theory slide from my TWD account.
Post Often and Consistently - I've said it in past posts, but the more you can post, the better. Your audience will grow just fine if you're posting once a day. It will grow 3x faster if you post 3x a day. And I know, that's a lot. You're afraid you won't be able to sustain it. But this is where brainstorming comes in. Once you get the creative juices flowing, you'll be amazed at how many ideas you come up with.

 For example, I'm posting 3x a day on my author Instagram account right now because I'm trying to grow my audience. I post one thing about myself/my books in the morning. This could be an event, a report on my progress, a picture of a cover, something that inspired some part of the story like a character or setting picture from Pinterest, a picture of what I'm working on (screenshot of Scrivner, perhaps?) or any number of other things. Once you start looking for things to post, you'll probably end up with more ideas than you have time to post. Then I post something about reading in the after (quote or picture about reading, something by a favorite author, quote or cover from what I'm reading, etc.) and something about writing in general in the evening. (Again, quote, picture, author, whatever.)

 Follow these tips and your audience and interaction will increase on any social network you're currently trying to grow.

 What do you do to grow your audience?
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