Sound the alarm. It’s another know it all telling you all the secrets on how to up your social media following, right? Well, not exactly.
Social media is important of course, especially if you are in charge of getting a club here at CMU more of a following. However, the people who promise you how to be a social media icon in just a week have no place here.
For the last four years, I’ve been the social media manager for CMU-TV and spent two years as the online editor for The Criterion.
What I’ve learned won’t work for anybody, so this isn’t another one of those articles promising that you’ll be racking up thousands of likes on your Instagram.
Instead, these are just practical steps you can take to raise the online presence of the company you work for and in turn improve your following as well.
- Humble Yourself
The first thing you have to do in any project is set goals. Where people goo wrong, though, is when they set their goals too high.
If you are starting a new page, do not try and compete against pages with thousands of followers. Those companies have had years to build their following and more importantly years to fail with projects you simply haven’t had the time to try.
Look at yourself in the mirror and realize you are in Grand Junction. Odds are you don’t have a revolutionary plan to change the game, so setting a goal of increasing by 100 or even 200 followers every year isn’t bad.
If you think about it, that means you’re aiming for 10% of CMU’s campus to follow you every year.
That’s not a number to be ashamed of. Every year getting 100 more people to follow a campus television station or a newspaper is a good return ratio.
Start with realistic goals, and don’t blame anyone but yourself if you set the bar way too high only for it to come crashing down on you.
- Tag People. Often
Here’s the fact: no one cares about what my TV station is actually doing. Have a new show coming out? Odds are 99% of the campus won’t care about it.
But, if a new show is coming out that specifically highlights the CMU football team, they are most definitely going to want to watch it.
It’s human nature, if you are tagged in something positive, aren’t you going to share it with your friends? If you answered no, then congrats on lying to yourself.
Tag the people who you are putting a spotlight on. Even if it’s one person they are bound to share it, meaning more eyes are on the product.
I tag the anchors in all of the show we put on social media and more often than not, family members and friends like our page and our post.
They don’t care about anything but their friend or daughter, but since someone they care about is tagged, they become invested in our page.
- Follow Back
“Our product will speak for itself.”
Partially that’s true. It’s always good to have confidence in your work and faith other people will like it too. There’s one issue at this stage, though.
You are in college. You are still learning, meaning that my shows won’t be anything near ESPN or NBC quality. Again, humble yourself and follow some random students back. Sometimes it helps to just let people know you have a page.
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent just following random CMU students on my pages and most of them follow back.
It’s not a 100% success rate, but it’s an easy way to give your following a quick boost. Follow your audience and let them know there’s a platform there for them to follow you.
- Take Chances
Being a student at CMU is a great blessing. Having this job for the last four years has given me a taste of the real-world job experience without suffering a lot of the consequences that come with it.
Obviously don’t do something so outrageous it doesn’t have a prayer of working, but you’d be remiss not to take some chances. Start some hashtags, put fun things your club does on you Instagram story or tweet about it.
You’ll see if it doesn’t work based on how many people interact with your projects. I’m not saying you’ll revolutionize the wheel here, but doing something fun and out-of-the-box might give you that boost you’re looking for.
- Reap Personal Benefits
I can write a whole thing about how to get more follower for yourself too, but I’ll leave that to the experts. I will say this, don’t be afraid to take credit for your work.
Serious about getting a following? Put your job title in your social media bios. After some newspaper stories or video shoots, I’ve had people follow me because they know where I work at.
Make sure while you are helping the organization you work for, you’re also allowing that organization to help you in return.
