Since everyone is fixated on increasing their audience online, I thought I’d run through some of the general methods with their advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, there’s always a trade-off between time, money and effort, as well as how the methods can affect your brand image down the line. So while you may be able to pay for 1,000 new fans in a month, none of them may care what you have to say. Just be aware of what you’re getting yourself into…
1. Organically
Organically to me, just means using social media to engage and converse with people, provide great content and generally let word of mouth (and a bit of SEO) increase your awareness. This way can be pretty cost-effective, but takes time, patience and devotion. In terms of long-term advantage, if you can keep up the engagement, you’ll really do a great job increasing your brand reputation and awareness for the long term.
2. Advertising & Promoting
Most small businesses and startups have to start with at least some advertising and promotion. It’s difficult to build an audience if no one even knows you’re there. Running advertising and promotions can be effective, but you’ll probably get a percentage of people who are only interested in your offer, and may not be interested in your products for the long term. Still, this can be a good way to get a boost to begin with, and certainly works well to promote certain products or events.
3. Networking
Most of us have some sort of network that we’ve built, either offline or online (or both). Reaching out to people you already know can be a really effective way of increasing your audience. Plus, if you tie it in with some sort of referral bonus, you’re giving a bit back. People are much more likely to listen to people they already know, so reaching out through your network usually is one of the most effective methods for increasing your audience.
4. Purchasing
The fastest and probably most costly method for increasing your audience is just to buy it. Whether by buying fans or followers or paying for an email list, only a small percentage of those people will probably care about what you’re selling. So you may have an impressive amount of followers, but very low interaction. This method can be costly because a large portion of the money spent either won’t give you any sales, or won’t help you in the long run. And people really do notice if you’re buying followers, which can really affect your brand reputation down the line.
What are your thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of these methods?
(photo by OakleyOriginals, on Flickr)