Many of us are involved in social media. Some do it full time, others devote an hour or more per day, while others just do it for fun. If you use social media for your outsourcing or other type of business, there is a lot to consider.
It takes effort to grow
Social media offers the opportunity for anyone to grow their presence. A high school student could acquire a Twitter profile and accumulate a million followers in a few years with some hard work and good content. But, growth is hard. You either grow by using pay-per-click which is not always cost effective. Or you could grow by following lots of others, and unfollowing them if they don’t follow you back. The last growth method is really more for larger accounts which is growth simply by publishing really good content that people love to share! I suggest mastering all three growth methods because you never know which one will be the fastest or the most cost effective.
A fourth way to grow
One thing I noticed on social media is that even passive accounts grow. Some accounts or communities have several thousand followers. They don’t publish often, and don’t really do much of anything. The miracle is that on Google+ and Linked In, passive accounts can really grow. The key is to get your account large enough so that it will show up on search results for keywords. Then, people can join the group on their own without you doing any PPC, outreach, or even much posting. The trick is to figure out how to get big, and then ride the wave (or the tide)
Personally, I have grown my Google+ group to about 600 and my community is about 300. I think that one day my community might be 10,000 and then people will find me everywhere. By that stage the key will be doing a great job moderating the community so that we post the highest quality posts so that new people will want to follow us.
Rising with the tide is my long term social media strategy.
I want to get the majority of my followers passively just by being found. I want to get even more by posting good content which only takes minutes per day. Outreach takes more than an hour per day to do if you have multiple accounts. It is time consuming. I hope I get my accounts to the point where I get gain thousands of followers per month with almost no effort at all. Wish me luck, and consider this strategy for your own social media strategy! It could pay off if you take it seriously enough. But, in the beginning it is nothing but sweating away! So, good luck!