19 Sep How to Grow your Social Influence

Whether you’re a brand, an established blogger, or a fresh-faced novice, growing your social influence is an important step to building your online credibility and overall business success.

For bloggers, building your social influence will allow you to build your audience and collaborate with top brands in your area of expertise. For brands, an authentic social influence is key to growing your consumer base, increasing your credibility amongst competitors, and of course increasing sales.

(For those of you unsure of what “Social Influence” means, head to our “what the heck is influencer marketing” article here for our quick run down. Then get back here quick because we’ve got lots to discuss!)

So we know it’s important, but how do we go about growing it? Here are our 5 tips for increasing your social influence.

1. Choose Your Speciality – And Stick To It

When developing your content strategy, it’s essential to consider what you’re good at and why people want to follow your account. For example, if you’re a foodie, are people following you to get the down low on new local restaurants? Do they follow you for your love of healthy cooking? Or perhaps they follow you for your weekly recipe updates?

Whatever your niche, people follow you for a reason, and highlighting that area of expertise will ensure you earn valuable, engaged followers. If you start posting about too many subjects, it can often be difficult to gain the “expert” label on a particular topic.

2. Share The Love.

Just as you enjoy your followers commenting and engaging with your posts, it’s important to do the same on theirs. Responding to comments on your account and engaging with your fans on their posts are great ways to share the love, be seen by new followers and express yourself on a more personal level.

3. Show Your Personality

Whether you are running a branded or a personal account, don’t be afraid to show your personality. Posts with emotions have been proven to reap much more engagement than those without and showing your personality is a great way to connect and engage with your audience in a relatable fashion.

4. Don’t Be Afraid Of Hashtags

Many users avoid hashtags to prevent their account looking too spammy, but they are crucial when looking to reach a new audience. It’s important to take advantage of them to ensure people interested in your topics will have direct access to your content. Just remember to use them sparingly and with care. There’s nothing worse than a caption jam packed full with irrelevant hashtags. #followforfollow

5. Check Your Insights

Last but not least, remember to pay attention to what type of content your followers do and don’t engage with and tailor you schedule accordingly.

An excellent way to do this is via your Instagram Insights – they will be able to tell you which of your posts are performing the best and highlight which ones to avoid in the future. If you haven’t already, check out our latest blog post here on how to set up your insights.

While these are helpful tips to get you on your way to increasing your influence, this list is by no means exhaustive and it’s important to remember that it takes a lot of hard work, time and effort.

If you would like to chat to one of our influencer specialists to help grow your influence, feel free to contact us via hello@theexposure.co. We have a range of packages to suit both brands and influencers alike.