How to Manage Your Following Like a Business

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It can become hard to handle even as a micro-influencer with a following of between 50,000 and 100,000 users. The time comes when you must manage your following like a business instead of a hobby. Thinking of your growing channel or profile as a brand helps it appear more genuine and establishes a unique voice. Of course, it's challenging, but your capabilities make it what it is. From organization to using SEO, here are some suggestions.

Outsource Some of the Work

Did you know that over 90% of businesses use a third party for at least one necessary process? This is called outsourcing, and it's a handy way to relieve some of the work you have to do for almost anything. As a growing influencer, you may not have the experience to get your channel/account to the next level. A reputable influencer marketing agency can help you with more complex work, and some even offer professional video editing services!

Manage Your Following with Organization

Being organized is the key to running any successful business. You may not think about it yet, but if you keep working at it, your following will become a brand before too long. This requires a lot more work, and you don't want to burn out. Burnout is common among influencers, affecting 80% of well-known web personalities. Like any job, it helps to think about your work-life balance and a schedule for releasing content so you can focus on making it even more engaging.

Use Creative and Unique Hashtags

This is one of the most complex challenges when establishing an online presence. However, creatively using hashtags can help boost your ranking and recognition across multiple social media sites. Fun and unique hashtags are excellent marketing tools. However, you can offend people with words, so choose them wisely. Blatantly using trending hashtags out of context will also open up your account to negative attention and ridicule from social users.

Partner with Other Influencers

Why do all the work? There are other influencers out there, and many are more than willing to work with others and help an upcoming influencer gain more exposure. Working with established influencers can be a highly informative experience and helps share the workload. Often, all you need to do is show up on a livestream to piggyback on the followers of another influencer. If all goes well, you can work on more collaborations further down the line.

Stay Consistent to Manage Your Following

If there's one thing that users and algorithms love, it's consistency. Posting around twice per day is consistent enough to engage your followers. However, it means much more than that. Users and software detect consistency in different ways, but you can consider these moving on:

• Plan all your content ahead of time with specific goals for each piece.

• Include a voice, tone, and visual style in your content strategy.

• Create content in bulk beforehand and automate a release schedule.

• Stay as engaged as possible with your audience on socials and live streams.

• Find a niche and cater to the specific audience if you think it's necessary.

• Work on building a brand that resonates with the audience's expectations.

• If you find something that works, rinse, repeat, and drop what doesn't.

A regular pattern helps establish expectations and increases engagement when users know when your posts will go live. It also means you can plan to be there for live engagement that users enjoy. However, keep to the basics that work so as not to undermine the audience.

Establish a Cross-Platform Presence

Sometimes, one platform is all you need. And it can work well for some creators. However, there comes a time when you must consider using more than one. A blog should be your first concern as it provides a jumping-off point for everything else. From there, at least one other social media account can help attract more followers and appeal to a broader audience. Of course, all social media platforms are different, so learn how to craft posts for any new platform you want to use.

Use All Available Data

As you probably know, businesses use a lot of data. As an influencer, more data is available than you probably think. All social media platforms provide tools for data analytics, and you would be foolish not to use them. Even if it is to check when your niche users are most active, that's robust data you can use to your advantage. With further data, you can form a picture of your audience and learn how to use it for further campaigns and engagement.

Manage Your Following with SEO

YouTube alone has almost 64 million creators, all vying for the audience's attention. So, how can you ensure your content is seen before anyone else? The truth is you can't! It's all down to the algorithm. However, you can speak to the algorithm using search engine optimization. SEO is scanned by bots looking for specific data to understand your content. Keywords, hashtags, and even image alt text will help the algorithms categorize your posts.

NEVER buy More Followers!

You've probably seen those X profiles of influencers with 1 million followers and two comments per post! That's because they have purchased followers. Yes, that's a real thing. As tempting as this is, it's the social media equivalent of keyword stuffing! It can help when starting. But it will destroy your profile when the platform’s algorithm notices something isn't quite right. As a golden rule, NEVER buy followers for your growing social media profile or channel.

Summary

You can use third-party services to help manage your following and growing social media profile. Consistency in branding, as well as posting, adds some authenticity to your online presence. Never buy social media profile followers if you want to climb the ranks correctly.

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