Written by ContentPowered.com
A strong social media following can propel your business forward, boost your search engine rankings and enhance your brand loyalty. It can give you a two-way path of communication that lets you know exactly what your customers desire most.
The problem with social media is that it takes dedication and a clear plan that doesn’t cut corners at any step. In this way, growing your social media following is much like building a house.
Let’s explore this analogy a bit further to understand why.
Step One: The Blueprint
Before you can even begin building a house, you need to plan it out. Every aspect needs to be taken into account and potential problems need to be mapped out to reduce costs and decrease potential delays in construction.
Growing your social media following is similar. You need to know whom you plan to talk to, how you should interact with them and through what channels you will ascertain how well your campaigns are doing.
You should have a rough estimate of how many followers you need to have before marketing to them becomes viable. If you don’t have that, then you may find out that your social media campaigns, much like a newly framed homed, will collapse in upon itself.
Step Two: The Foundation
Once all the planning is finished, the next step in building a home involves preparing the building site and pouring the foundation. All the green debris, rocks and trees that are in the way of the home building site should be cleared. Holes and trenches will be dug for pipes and the septic system.
The preparation your business should take during this step is similar. You should go through a number of steps to prepare what you already have online for your business to ensure that it’s friendly for your social media efforts.
In other words, things like your business’s web layout should be compatible with your expected audience. If you expect your visitors form social media to come from mobile phones, then it’s especially important that your website is both accessible and looks amazing for them.
You should take this time to tweak your business’s graphics to ensure that they foster customer confidence. If you’re going to change something like your brand’s logo or to make an entirely new brand for your social media, then now is the time to do it. Changing these things will be nearly impossible later in the building process, just like how costly it is to modify the foundation of a home after it’s been poured.
Step Three: The Rough Framing
The next step in building a house involves putting up the rough frame. This step includes putting up all the plywood on the walls, installing windows and installing exterior doors. The frame is then wrapped in a special plastic that allows moisture to escape while preventing mold and other water damage.
Following the analogy of building a house, growing your social following requires that set up your social media accounts to be watertight. You want to have them in such a state that allows you to begin working on the inside to add in walls, interior doors, paint, furniture and everything else inside of your structure.
Take note that you shouldn’t be worrying about engaging followers or even trying to gain your first few followers at this point. You want to focus on having everything prepared.
Step Four: The Utilities, Insulation and the Outside
After everything is framed and wood sheathing is in place for the walls and roof, the next order of business is to install all the utilities. That means the electric, water, gas and HVAC systems all need to be installed. Drywall will be delivered and insulation will be installed during this step. The exterior will also be worked upon.
Though it might be somewhat abstract, this step is analogous to how you should go about connecting your social media profiles to one another and to your business’s main website. You want to ensure that no shortages will occur, no breakers will flip and that every connection can handle the right amount of traffic from one property to the next without bursting like a poorly installed piece of plumbing.
When everything is finished, you can begin adding in the first few seeds to your social networking profiles. These will likely be your own employees, loyal customers and people related to your business in some vague way. They may not necessarily be customers, but they will interact with the messages you’ll begin sending out.
Step Five: Working on the Interior
At this point, the interior will be worked on inside of a home. Drywall will be installed and the interior will have texture and paint applied to it. The house is really starting to look like a home rather than a framed box. The first few touches of the house’s personality are starting to take shape.
As with a home, everything is still very plain but the shape of things to come can be seen at this point. You should work to broadcast general messages about your business that don’t really have any aim to sell a product or service. You want your business to be seen as friendly so that people begin to follow you.
Since everything should be sturdy at this point, you can throw in the occasion social media promotion here. Coupons and contests that don’t necessarily rely upon users creating content are acceptable. Always bear in mind that your goal should be to start filling in the frame of your social media home.
You can move on to the next step when your social media following starts to interact with your business rather than to just follow it.
Step Six: Installing the Flooring, Countertops, Bathroom Fixtures and Trims
This is when everything that you need to live in a home begins to be installed. The bare wood floors are covered with something that you can walk on. Countertops are added to the kitchens and bathrooms. Sinks, bathtubs, showers and their accompanying trims are installed.
At this point, you can continue to grow your social media following while beginning to advertise your business. It’s worth noting that you should try to be authentic rather than trying to simply gather more sales.
Approaching your followers as if they were people who needed to be told to purchase will result in the amount of followers you have diminishing at a rapid rate.
You can do this by using promotions that involve your following and foster interaction with your business. Things like a contest where followers create videos and post them on your social media page to enter for a prize will go a long way to boosting sales.
Step Seven: The Final Inspection
Everything has been installed in the house at this point. The only thing left is to do one more sweep to ensure that everything is up to code and checks out as far as quality is concerned.
Your social following should be strong by this point. You have everything to need to continue growing it into something enormous and packed with value.
This is the point where you should begin monitoring how your followers react. Inspect every message you get from them and begin monitoring how often your brand, products and services are mentioned on the Internet. This will help dictate where you need to go to ensure that your business’s social standing grows to fill your business’s social media home.
Andrew E.
says:What a wonderful analogy! I’ll have to remember this for my clients. Very clever.