At first glance, social media marketing may appear to be a numbers game. The more followers you can build, the further your campaigns will reach, and the better your results will be. And while there’s certainly truth in that idea, raw numbers aren’t the full picture: the quality of your followers counts for just as much or even more.

Over time, most accounts pick up their fair share of fake and inactive followers, simply as a natural feature of the social media landscape. The situation is only worsened if an account owner is tempted by services promising to boost follower counts for a fee. But no matter how your fake and inactive followers entered the scene, cleaning them up is essential for any brand that wants to market effectively over social media. Here’s why.

1) Increase Trust Scores

If a large proportion of your following is made up of fake or inactive accounts, your average engagement rates are going to take a huge hit. And when your posts seem to generate little traction, social media platforms will start to treat your account with greater algorithmic suspicion. Your content will be less likely to appear high in people’s feeds, making exposure harder to gain.

Cleaning out the fakes from your follower count will increase the trust the platform has in your account, making your marketing life much easier.

2) Better Partnerships

It’s not only the social media platforms that rely on trust. If you’re looking to partner with another brand, either through influence or via mutual cross-marketing, large numbers of fakes in your audience will discourage any company that notices them.

The brands that are savvy enough to spot fakes are likely to be those who make the best use of social media and would therefore make the most lucrative partners. High fake numbers will close off these growth-producing options quickly and effectively.

3) Brand Tarnishing

Not all fake followers sit quietly in the background. Advanced bot networks attempt to simulate lifelike activity to fly under the automatic detection radar, but their interactions are clearly inauthentic to human eyes. If your brand’s timelines are packed with these poor-quality contributors, the negative impact on your customer credibility can be immense.

4) Clearer Measurements for Stronger Campaigns

Accurate measurement of a campaign’s results is vital for effective social media marketing. Having a legion of fake followers makes it much more difficult to measure the true impact of your work. And when you don’t know in detail what’s working well, it’s much harder to reliably repeat your successes.

5) Guilt By Association

There’s no argument that fake news and manipulation have stormed social media in recent years. Most platforms are now taking active measures to reduce the number of click farms, fake accounts, and other undesirables polluting their networks.

If your brand is connected to high numbers of dubious accounts, you could easily be caught in the crossfire, and become collateral damage even if your content is of impeccable quality.

How to Remove Fake Followers

Finding fake accounts by hand can be time-consuming, but thankfully there are apps and tools available to automate the process on nearly every social platform. Try searching for phrases like ‘remove fake followers on Facebook’ or ‘identify bots on X’ to get a feel for what’s out there.

Once you’ve found the right tool for your needs, you’ll be given a list of suspicious accounts to evaluate. For each clear fake, block the account from your feed, and if you want to be thorough, report it to the platform as a bot account. It’ll take a while to fully clean your follower profile, but the long-term effects will be worth it.

All brands want more followers to produce better social media results, but quality is more important than sheer quantity. Taking the time to weed out and block fake followers can be just as effective for your bottom line as growing your roster of genuine, human followers.

Your next job offer could arrive on your Facebook News Feed. You probably didn’t consider the ability of your Facebook profile to help you find jobs when you first created your account, but it’s real.

Facebook isn’t the newest social media platform out there, but it does attract an enthusiastic crowd – there are five new profiles created on the platform every second of every day (zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/). Millennials, those born in the two decades leading up to the year 2000, make up the largest part of the workforce, and are a generation that grew up on social media. While LinkedIn is more directly aimed at career-related social networking, it’s important to not ignore what Facebook is capable of in the employment arena.

If you like using Facebook, and if the idea of taking advantage of it to further your career seems interesting, consider the following tips.

Spring-clean your profile.

Your first step to using Facebook to advance your career should be to conduct an audit of your profile to ensure that the content you have on it is well-suited to your career plans. It’s common for recruiters to go on Facebook or other social media to try to learn more about job applicants than they can from their resumes. As far back as 2015, according to a Jobvite Recruiter Nation survey (jobvite.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/jobvite_recruiter_nation_2015.pdf), more than 50 percent of recruiters reported using Facebook to research candidates. The state of your Facebook account matters a great deal to any plan to grow your career.

If your Facebook account has embarrassing old college photos or odd status updates from years ago, they won’t likely endear you to recruiters. You need to set aside time to work through your profile post by post to hide or delete anything that would appear out of place in a professional setting. You don’t need to take out everything that expresses your fun, personal side; it would just be a good idea to take aim at anything that you wouldn’t be comfortable having your grandparents see.

You can, additionally, make use of the privacy settings on your Facebook account to help ensure that content you’d like to keep private is only visible to friends.

Reach out to anyone you wish to work with.

People tend to avoid mixing personal social media with their professional lives. In reality, however, recruiters usually feel better about doing business with people that they like on a personal level. It’s important to stop seeing it as a risky venture to mix your personal Facebook space with your professional life.

Once you are done cleaning up your profile, you should be comfortable using Facebook to make connections with clients, or the professionals that you meet at the networking events that you attend. Subscribing on Facebook to receive the latest updates from professional contacts through text messages can be a good idea. While it can seem like excessive engagement, it can be a quick and effective way to establish relationships with select people who are important to your career. Staying updated through text messages can be far less effortful than making your way into the Facebook app and scrolling to find updates from important contacts.

Being a part of groups frequented by professionals in your niche is another way to stay tuned in to people who are important to your career.

Start a Facebook group.

Starting a group on Facebook can be a powerful way to reach out to other professionals who share your interest in a specific topic. In general, creating a group on Facebook is a better idea than creating a Facebook page. Facebook groups have a more robust presence on Facebook’s algorithms, compared to pages. When you create a Facebook group, you’re more likely to have Facebook’s algorithms push your content until it is seen by others.

To be meaningful to others, a group on Facebook needs to directly speak to the interests of the people on it. Thinking of topics that are likely to appeal to professionals in your industry niche is a good plan. You need to bring up interesting questions to draw industry professionals into a conversation, and do your homework so that you’re able to add value to the discussion — through posting relevant thoughts, or links. The more value you bring to a group, the more likely you are to build your professional reputation on Facebook.

In general, it makes sense to choose to post in the afternoons; this is the most common time for people to be on Facebook.

Get on employers’ pages on Facebook.

Many employers post information about open positions they have, in just the way that they post status updates. When you’re in the market for a new direction in your career, it can help to look at the Facebook pages of the employers that you most admire. Facebook is home to about 80 million businesses, and they often post information about career openings. If a position opens up with an employer you like, you can apply directly on their Facebook page. Unlike some job posting platforms, applying on Facebook is free.

It may seem like you need to make a huge commitment to Facebook to make use of it for your career, but it doesn’t actually take much time. All you need to do is to set aside a couple of hours each week to look at your group, make meaningful posts, reach out to important contacts, and look for jobs. You’ll network effectively this way, and lay a meaningful foundation for the future of your career.

LinkedIn is more than just a social network – it’s a tool that can help you grow your business. If you are not using it to its full potential, you are missing opportunities to connect with new people, expand your network, and learn from other professionals who share similar interests or goals as yourself.

Why should you take advantage of what LinkedIn has to offer? Here are five reasons why you should use LinkedIn to promote your business:

• It helps you connect with potential customers
• It helps you find employees
• It can help you establish credibility as an expert in your field
• It can help you get free publicity for your business through influencer endorsements and recommendations.
• It can help you find new opportunities for partnerships

Now let’s look at some steps you can take to promote your business on LinkedIn.

Create a LinkedIn page for your business.

If you have not already created a business page for your brand, this is the first step to start building an audience on LinkedIn. Once your company has its own independent presence on the site, encourage others within your field or industry to visit it and “follow” the content you share there. You can do this using any number of promotional tools, including email marketing campaigns or even posters in local office buildings where potential clients might pass by them every day (and therefore see them multiple times).

Build a community of followers.

Every business needs a community, and LinkedIn can help you build one. You can connect with people you know, people interested in your business, people who have a connection to your business, or people who have a connection to other businesses relevant to yours. For example, you can connect with:

• employees of companies that use the same software as you.
• employees of companies that supply the materials you need for your products or services.
• employees of companies where customers commonly visit or shop (for example, hotels).
• individuals whose skills align with the skills required for your job openings.

LinkedIn is all about connections and building relationships with others with similar interests and goals. Use this to your advantage by creating groups based on topics relevant to your industry and encourage people to join them. These groups will help you build a community around your brand, which could lead to new partnerships or opportunities for growth down the line.

Build relationships with employees, leaders, and customers.

One of the most important things you can do as a business leader is build relationships with your employees and customers. Linkedin allows you to connect with people from all over the world with similar interests. This can help you find new customers for your business, or even find new employees for your company. How can you do this?

Get active in groups. Groups are one of the best ways to meet new people and engage with them. Join groups relevant to your industry and share content from other members in your feed or comment on other people’s posts.

Follow people who are influential in their field and you’ll have access to their updates and news, as well as their insights on topics related to your industry. If they follow back, you can send them direct messages with questions or comments about what they posted.

Network with people who work in different departments at your company. You might not have much in common with someone from finance or human resources, but there may be some overlap between what they do and what you do, which makes it easier for both of you to understand what each of you does for a living.

Document your company’s history.

Documenting your company’s history is an important part of presenting your business as a reliable partner to customers and suppliers. You can do this with a timeline, which you should include on your website, or with short stories about the milestones in your company’s history. For example, if you were to write about how product X came to be, who was involved in its creation, what challenges they overcome during development, etc. Such content gives people an idea of what it took to get to where you are today (and also helps them see that you’re not just another fly-by-nighter).

Cross-post content from your blog to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a professional network, so it’s not a good idea to post content that isn’t work-related. You can post content related to your business, but it should be professional. It’s also okay to share content related to your personal life or hobbies, as long as it doesn’t compromise your professionalism in any way.

You can even use LinkedIn to highlight what you have accomplished in the past and how it has helped shape who you are today. Post content that solves problems, too. If you create quality posts relevant to your followers (and their followers), they’re more likely to share them with their networks than if they were just being posted onto their profiles alone. This means more people will see it and engage with it

Post job openings.

Posting a job opening on LinkedIn is a great way to reach more people who may not follow you on other social media platforms. You can also use it to find the right candidates for your open positions. LinkedIn offers free tools for posting and reposting jobs, including a “jobs” tab that allows you to customize how your ad looks and where it appears (e.g. career sites, company pages). As a bonus, LinkedIn sometimes offers discounts when hiring through their platform. Just be sure the position is eligible before signing up!

Tracking down people on LinkedIn is not as easy as on Facebook, but the people on it are typically more engaged and have more professional success, so the payoff can be worth it.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is a powerful tool that allows business owners to connect more personally with their staff and customers. It’s also an opportunity for companies to share what they do and how they do it, giving insight into their culture.

As of 2021 more than 4.5 billion people utilize social media. This represents tremendous potential for your brand to interact with. Practicing good social media engagement is the key to effectively tapping into that audience.

Social media engagement includes comments, likes, mentions, clicks, and shares. Many people believe that their success is determined solely by their number of followers – but the most important metric of social media success is actually an engaged audience. (Quality over quantity.)

Using this method of communication and outreach, you can overcome many of the obstacles that traditionally impede outbound marketing efforts, allowing you to reach a much larger audience of potentially interested individuals – many of whom could turn into leads and customers.

Creative Ways To Increase Social Media Engagement

You might cross your fingers and hope that your followers spontaneously begin to engage in conversation, but most will require some encouragement. Fortunately, there are a variety of tricks of the trade which can be used to increase interaction and make your digital platform a success:

1. Make Your Own Hashtags

Hashtags can help you organize your posting strategy and give interested subscribers a method to follow up with things that pique their interest. They can also help you attract new subscribers. Additionally, other brands may follow suit and tag you in comparable posts that use the same hashtag, which can increase interaction among your fans. Hashtagging is a unique and fun way to reach out to both existing and new audiences.

2. Create and Join Q&A Sessions

Participating in Q&A answer sessions is a great approach to provide users with value while also establishing your brand as a helpful one. If you’re able to provide appropriate responses to questions and initiate dialogue with prospective consumers before your competitors do, you can establish yourself as the go-to service provider or supplier in your industry.

3. Organise Online Competitions

Competitions on social media have been around since the inception of the digital revolution – and are one of the most effective techniques of increasing participation. Contests, on average, can contribute to a 34 percent increase in the size of your fan base. Keep these considerations in mind when orchestrating a competition:

• Clarify the Rules: Ambiguous or hidden rules can frustrate users, leading some to believe they’ve been duped.
• Give Yourself Adequate Time: Too much time is just as bad as not having enough time. To ensure that your content remains at the forefront of your audience’s minds, keep the length moderate. See what others are doing before finalizing your contest’s timeframe.
• Choose a prize that is appropriate for the situation: Generic showy prizes attract leads that aren’t interested in your product, so try to find something that uniquely appeals to your target audience. You may get fewer participants, but those that do participate are more likely to stay for the duration of the event. For example, giving away an iPad will almost certainly garner a lot of attention. But if the prize has little or nothing to do with your company, the attention you receive is unlikely to translate into qualified leads.

4. Connect With A Social Cause

Emotional content is significantly more successful than logical and dry content. A social cause is the ultimate emotional motivator, and may help your business stand out from the competition. Here are a few tips to help get you started:

• When researching potential causes, look for those that align with your brand’s principles. Choosing a social cause doesn’t necessarily have to be directly related to your industry, but it’s easier to fight for something that you are passionate about.
• Tap into your customer base for advice on which cause to take on. Utilize a poll or quiz to find out which issues resonate with your audience.
• Once you decide on a cause, create a list of ways that you can make a difference. Fundraising is a popular method, but caring and raising awareness might have a greater impact in some situations. Invite individuals to share personal stories on your channels. Demonstrate your support for the organization. Promote acts of goodwill. These will all help you reach your goals.

5. Host a Social Media Takeover

Sometimes the best way to breathe new life into your social media feeds is to hand them over to someone else. Partnering with an influencer or celebrity who has a large, engaged audience is a great approach to get your brand in front of some fresh faces while also injecting a new voice if you’re running low on post ideas. Make a list of business partners and industry contacts that you think might make ideal candidates. Takeovers are intended to increase exposure, so it’s best to partner with someone whose target audience is similar to your own.

With approximately 240 million people using social media nationwide, there’s a good chance that your niche customers and clientele are using at least one social network platform. Having a presence on these platforms is a great opportunity to get your brand in front of them.

Let’s look at a few of the benefits of marketing your business in a continuously growing digital community.

1) It establishes credibility.

With a whopping 81% of shoppers researching a brand or product online before making a purchase, it’s important that your business has an established online presence. When a potential customer or client sees an active social media platform from a company that regularly posts updates, it reassures them that you’re a legitimate business and not another internet scam. If you haven’t updated your website or social media platforms in a while, customers or clients may think you’ve gone out of business, or lacked legitimacy from the start.

2) It builds brand awareness.

The U.S Small Business Administration states that there were 31.7 million small businesses at the end of 2020, proving how competitive it can be for a business to thrive. Social media can communicate your brand’s distinguishing factors that set your business apart from the competition. There are multiple formats of content you can share on your business profiles, including images, videos, and blogs. Social media platforms typically operate with similar features that allow users to share your content, thus exposing more potential customers to your brand. If creating content for your brand seems overwhelming, hiring a social media coordinator could be worth looking into.

3) It encourages engagement.

Interacting with your clients across social media platforms allows you to strengthen your customer relationships and build a loyal base of followers. Personalizing your responses to questions, concerns, and comments can show that your business genuinely cares about their experience. Once your customers feel connected to your brand, they will be more likely to use your service or shop your store.

73% of marketers have found that social media has been either “somewhat effective” or “very effective” with their brand. If you haven’t thought about integrating social media as a functioning tool of your business strategy, today is a great day to start.