How To Grow Your Social Media Following The Right Way
Want to learn how to grow your social media following? You’re in the right place.
In this post, I’ll be sharing a bunch of actionable tips to help you grow on social the right way.
That means no shady tactics that can get your account banned. Instead, I’ll show you how to get followers organically using a bunch of tried-and-tested strategies that are proven to work.
Let’s start with the basics…
1. Focus on the right platforms
Social media is a big world.
There are a lot of different social media platforms out there, and if you try to focus on all of them, you’re going to be spread too thin.
Instead, it’s a better idea to go all-in on the platforms that are going to generate the best results.
The first step in that is to determine who exactly it is you’re trying to reach, and which social media channels they use.
For example, if your target audience is professionals and brands, LinkedIn is a solid choice. Whereas, if you’re trying to reach younger Gen Z consumers, TikTok might be a better fit.
I’d recommend checking out our ranking of the top social media platforms, as well as these social media statistics, for information on which audience demographics use each network.
There are a few other factors to consider when weighing up your options, including your content strategy.
Will you be posting mainly visuals like photos and carousels? If so, you might want to stick to Pinterest & Instagram. Planning to make long-form videos? YouTube is the way to go. Want to stick to text-only posts? Try X (Twitter). You get the idea.
Note also that some platforms are easier than others to grow a following on.
For example, TikTok is widely thought to be the easiest social media platform to grow an audience from scratch.
This is due to its viral nature and beginner-friendly algorithm, which prioritizes engagement & user preferences over popularity & existing followers. So even if you’re new to the platform and have little to no followers, your content still has a chance of going viral.
In contrast, it can be tough to grow a following from scratch on Facebook without investing in paid ads as its algorithm places more emphasis on popularity and relevance.
2. Publish more content at the right times
Content is what earns you followers on social media.
So naturally, if you want to grow, you have to consistently put out engaging posts that your target audience will enjoy.
But it doesn’t just matter what you post, it also matters when you post it.
Ideally, you should aim to publish social media content during the peak hours when your target audience is most active. That’ll give your posts the best chance of reaching more users, getting more engagements, and earning you more social media followers.
Keep in mind that everyone’s audience is unique. So, my best time to post won’t necessarily be the same as yours, and vice versa.
The easiest way to find your personal best time to post is to use a social media scheduling tool that includes analytics that calculate it for you. We use SocialBee for this at BloggingWizard.
The great thing about social media scheduling tools like SocialBee is that they also allow you to create an automated posting schedule. You can plan, create, and schedule posts to all of your social media profiles/pages on the integrated content calendar months in advance, and the tool will auto-publish them for you.
If you want to learn more about how it works, I’d recommend checking out our SocialBee review.
3. Run social media giveaways
Running a social media giveaway is a fantastic way to grow your following fast. I’m talking thousands of new followers overnight if you get it right.
Plus, you can also use giveaways to generate UGC, raise brand awareness, and drive a ton of engagement.
You can use any social media contest app for this, but I’d recommend SweepWidget as it’s super easy to use and has all the features you need.
The idea is to set up a giveaway competition with a prize that your target followers will want. This might be a bundle of products, a free ebook or other digital download, or anything else you want to offer.
Then, decide what you want users to have to do to enter for a chance to win that prize. SweepWidget supports 90+ entry methods covering all the main social media platforms, but since our goal is to increase our following, you’ll probably want to set it up so that users have to follow your profile or page to enter.
You might want to add additional entry requirements on top of that, like ‘like this post’,’tag a friend’, etc. to help farm engagement and increase your giveaway post’s reach.
Once you’ve launched the giveaway in SweepWidget, share it on all your socials with a CTA asking users to enter, and that’s it!
You can read more about SweepWidget in our in-depth SweepWidget review.
4. Optimize your social media bios
Your bio is the first thing users see when they check out your social media profile.
If someone has bothered to check out your profile, it’s likely they’re already thinking about following you. Your bio is there to seal the deal—so you’ve got to get it right.
The most important part of your bio is your CTA (call to action). This is a short sentence that you use to tell the reader to do something.
If your main goal is to grow your following, you might want to use your CTA to ask users to follow or subscribe. Alternatively, you might use it to drive traffic to your blog or store, etc.
Here are some other steps you’ll want to take to optimize your bios:
- Write a compelling description. Your profile description/bio should clearly communicate what your social media page is all about and give users a reason to follow you.
- Use a high-quality profile picture. This could be your brand logo, a photo of you, etc. Keep your profile picture the same across all your socials for consistent branding as this will make it easier for your audience to find and recognize you. And of course, make sure you use the right picture size & dimensions for each channel.
- Use the same handle/username on all your social media profiles. If the username isn’t available, choose something as similar as possible. For example, if @[brandname] is taken, you could try @[brandname]Official or @[brandname].eu. You get the idea.
- Get verified. Most social media platforms—including X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok—offer ‘verified badges’. These are special checkmarks that appear next to your profile name and show users that you’re the real deal. They serve as powerful social proof that can help you to get more followers, so make sure you have them if possible. You’ll typically need to apply to get verified.
- Include niche-relevant keywords. Optimizing your bio to include niche-relevant keywords helps the social media algorithm to correctly categorize your content and show it to the right audience. Plus, it also helps improve your discoverability in search.
Here’s an example of a well-optimized social media bio from @abroadinjapan on Instagram.
His bio clearly tells the user who he is and what kind of content he creates, with a clear, recognizable picture and CTA link. It also subtly promotes his YouTube page, helping him to funnel followers/subscribers between the two platforms.
5. Experiment with different types of posts
Try to include a good mix of different post formats and topics in your social media strategy.
For example, on Instagram, don’t just post single-image photos to your feed. Experiment with Reels, Stories, Carousels, etc. too.
Likewise, on TikTok, throw in some Duets, Stitches, etc. occasionally alongside your original content. And on YouTube, try sharing both long-form videos and YouTube Shorts.
That’s what YouTube streamer @Ludwig does. He takes his YouTube Livestreams and turns them into both YouTube Shorts clips and long-form YouTube videos.
These different video formats allow him to reach more viewers than he’d reach through livestreaming alone and have helped him to grow to over 6.2 million subscribers..
By trying a bunch of different things out, you’ll gather useful data that will inform your own content strategy going forward.
You can look back at your analytics at the end of the month and work out which types of posts performed particularly well, and which types of posts were a flop, then feed that back into your social media marketing strategy.
For example, you might find that when you shared a funny meme Reel on Instagram, you got three times as many views and earned a bunch of new followers. Knowing that, you might switch up your posting schedule to include more of that type of content.
Note: Keep in mind that short-form video is the hot format on social media right now. If you want to grow, this should be a big part of your social media content mix.
6. Use relevant hashtags (yes, this still matters)
A long time ago, hashtags were central to discovery on social media.
In the early days of social media, the way users would find content they were interested in was by clicking on a hashtag or searching for it. This would bring up a feed of all posts tagged with that hashtag.
But things have changed since then, and the role of hashtags has evolved along with those changes.
These days, most people don’t search for content on social media at all. Instead, algorithms look at what posts they’ve engaged with to figure out what they’re interested in and use that to automatically serve up content they’ll enjoy in their own personalized feed.
As such, a lot of influencers and creators mistakenly think hashtags aren’t relevant anymore—but that’s not the case.
Hashtags are still super important because they tell the algorithm what your posts are about so it can categorize them correctly. And this helps to ensure each of your posts gets shown to people who are interested in that topic and therefore, more likely to engage with it.
So, try to use a couple of niche-relevant hashtags in every post. On some platforms like Instagram, you can hide your hashtags in the first comment if you don’t want them to show up in the caption.
Here’s an example from @truffletheweenie on Instagram:
7. Share followers between platforms
It’s a good idea to cross-promote all your different social media profiles and pages in order to drive traffic (and followers) from one platform to the other.
This will help unify your efforts and speed up your growth as you’ll be able to leverage your top channels to build your following elsewhere.
For example, let’s say you’ve successfully gained tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, but your YouTube page hardly has any subscribers as you’re struggling to get traction there.
In that case, you could start adding a CTA to the end of all your TikTok videos telling viewers to check you out on YouTube for more. Or you could make one long-form video on a particular topic on YouTube, and then make a bunch of viral TikTok shorts out of it to promote it.
You can do the same sort of thing on other platforms too. For example, share your Tweets on LinkedIn, or cross-post your Instagram posts & Stories to Facebook. Also, don’t forget to fill out your social links on any platform that allows it.
8. Collaborate with other creators
Collaborations are another great way to grow your social media following.
The idea is to team up with other brands or influencers in a similar niche that align with your brand values, in order to expose your content to a broader audience and attract new followers.
There are many ways you can collaborate, such as:
- Collaborative posts. Some platforms—like Instagram—let you collaborate and ‘co-author’ posts with other users. When you do, the post will be shared to both of your followers with each of you credited, as shown in this post from @mythical and collaborators.
- Sponsored posts. Brands can collaborate with influencers by having them share a post promoting their products/services to their feed in exchange for payment.
- Takeovers. Another user takes over your social media account for the day, and/or you takeover theirs, to share content and engage with each other’s followers.
- Joint Giveaways. Collaborate on a giveaway in which participants must follow both accounts to enter.
- Shoutouts. Promote your partner’s social media profile in one of your posts via a shoutout and have them do the same for you in return.
- Co-host a livestream. Two or more users can team up to host a livestream together on platforms like TikTok, YouTube Live, Instagram Live, etc.
You can find partners by searching social media for accounts in your niche. Or alternative, use an influencer discovery platform like Upfluence.
9. Get involved in the latest trends
The more people that see your social media posts, the more opportunities you’ll have to convert those viewers to followers.
A great way to get more eyes on your social media posts is to get involved in the latest trends.
That might be the latest dance craze on TikTok, a viral YouTube video challenge, or a photo competition on Instagram that’s started taking off.
Another idea is to post about trending news topics. For example, you might Tweet your hot take about the latest celebrity gossip, or weigh in on the election.
These types of posts are likely to reach more users than other posts. And the more people you reach, the quicker you’ll grow.
10. Use trending audio in your video posts
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram seem to push videos that include trending sounds to more viewers than posts that don’t include trending sounds.
The upshot of this is clear. If you want to get more views on your social media content and grow your following, it’s worth using trending sounds wherever you can.
Both TikTok and Instagram have discovery features to help you find and use trending sounds in the app.
You can also try searching for a niche-relevant keyword and browsing the latest posts to see what audio they’re using. If the same audio seems to keep popping up, there’s a good chance it’s trending.
11. Use paid ads to get some initial traction
Growing a social media following completely organically is tough, especially if you’re starting from scratch.
If you have little to no followers to begin with, it’s going to be harder to get the kind of engagement you need for your posts to go viral, which will limit your reach and ability to grow.
That’s why it might be worth investing in paid ads at the start.
You can use tools like TikTok Ads Manager or Meta Ads Manager to create targeted social media advertisements that get pushed out to users in your target audience.
These ads are going to reach a lot more people than you’d be able to reach organically. So you can use them to help gain your first 1,000 or so followers.
Once you have that base of followers, you can stop running ads and start focusing on posting engaging content, and any future posts you share will get an initial boost in engagement from those followers that can help them to be picked up by the algorithm.
12. Interact with your target audience
Another powerful strategy you can use to grow your social media following fast is to interact directly with your target audience.
By that, I mean find the users who you would like to follow you, and then engage with them by liking their posts, replying to their comments, following them, etc.
One of the best ways to do this is to search for your biggest competitors on social media— i.e. accounts with a large following in your niche with the same target audience—and open up their profile page.
Then, click one of their latest posts and open up the list of people who have liked it. These are your target followers.
Now, you can follow these accounts or go to their pages and like their posts. This helps to put you on their radar. They’ll get a notification letting them know you’ve engaged with them, and they might decide to check out your profile to see who you are.
And when they do, they might decide to follow you. And just like that, you’ve gained a bunch of new followers.
13. Use your website or blog to promote your socials
If you’re a brand with a business website or ecommerce store, or you run your own blog, then you can use it as a vehicle to promote your socials.
At a minimum, it’s worth adding all your social links to your website footer and/or sidebar, like we’ve done on the site you’re on right now:
But if you want to take things further, you can also do things like:
- Promote your socials in your blog posts
- Display a pop-up to site visitors asking them to follow you on your socials
- Host a giveaway on your site and use it to drive traffic to your socials
14. Promote your socials offline
Why not promote your social media accounts offline in the real world too?
For example, you could get eye-catching stickers printed with your social media handles and stick them up in your local area (only where it’s legal to do so, of course).
Or you could get business cards printed that include your social media usernames or links to your profiles, and hand them out.
You could get your car/vehicle wrapped to display your social media handles, or even get a t-shirt printed with a QR code that links to your socials, and then wear it out.
These are just some ideas, but there are lots of other things you could do, so get creative with it!
Final thoughts
That’s it for our beginner’s guide on how to grow your social media following. I hope you found it useful.
You can streamline your efforts to grow your social media presence with the help of these social media automation tools.
While you’re here, you might also want to check out our roundups of Facebook Video statistics and YouTube Shorts statistics.