There are four important elements involved in marketing that determine how successful a content-creator can become: Incentives, Capitalizing, Hashtags, & Maintaining a Theme. 

Let’s begin with an example: Perhaps you are a graphic designer who designs graphics and illustrations for fun across all your social media platforms. Your accounts all roughly have about 1,000 followers but don’t gain a lot of attraction, likes or shares. These four elements are steps you should be taking correctly in order to both rapidly grow and make profit.

Incentives

An incentive by definition is “a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something”. In the instance of creating content, an incentive could significantly affect the growth of your platform if done correctly. This starts by giving a little bit of your own in terms of time and money. Consider it a “spend money to make money” mentality. 

Let’s take a video-game content creator for instance. A great incentive to boost your follower and view count would be to do a few giveaways of in-game currency in exchange for a follow or engagement on some of your videos. Being that you are doing a giveaway on a game that your viewers find interest in, they will more than likely continue following your platform, especially if your content is of high quality and entertainment. 

However, if done incorrectly, this could lead to you giving too much of your time and money away for very little in return. To avoid this, make sure that the quality of the services you provide is significant and that you are active with your followers, so that they perceive you as someone who is not successful only through giveaways and requesting for followers.

Capitalize

Videos, social media posts, or even the things you say have the potential to go viral at any moment. Whether it be because of how funny it was, the way it resonated with people, or how inspiring it is to others. If you hit viral status, it’s important to know to have a follow-up for it in which you can turn to profit or a way to boost attraction. This is what is called capitalizing. 

Capitalizing is the act of quickly following-up on a recent social media post, video, or quote of yours that has gone viral online. Having an immediate response is important because you have now garnered the attention of many people that are now aware of who you are and your recent post, video, or quote. While the opportunity to capitalize may not be possible anymore because it came out-of-the-blue or because it’s been a while, you can follow-up with something similar or in the form of merch.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way for active users on social media to come across your posts or services. A social media site like Twitter has a section for topics that are currently trending and most of the time, it’s a hashtag that’s trending. If you have a service or slogan that is true to your business and identity, consider adding hashtags every time you post something related to that service. 

Simple hashtags go a long way such as: #tech, #produce, #music, #fashion, #realestate, #organic, or #film. If anyone searches those hashtags they will be greeted by hundreds, if not, thousands of posts to search through. If a user stumbles across your post amongst the others and enjoys what they see, they will more than likely leave a like, comment, a follow, or possibly want to collaborate.

It’s important to remember to not flood your posts with too many hashtags. While having more hashtags increases your reach to people, having too many can make your account look disingenuous and all about wanting likes, followers, and fame; and not so much about your product or services.

Maintaining a Theme

The last topic to discuss is about maintaining a theme. This is very important in order to maintain your hard earned followers.

Let’s say you’re a fitness guru who gives tips for people who are into fitness, are new to the gym, a proper diet, or anything gym-related. As a result of doing so for a year or so, you’ve garnered 11,000 followers, you receive high engagements on every post, and you even have some of the top fitness gurus in the business following you and respect your work. If you suddenly find a new passion (Real Estate for example) and start posting that to your followers, you will more than likely lose everything you’ve been working years to achieve. It is understandable that interests can shift and you may get tired of doing the same type of content over and over, but know that your followers know you as ‘this one thing’ and drifting away from what they know and love will cause them to unfollow and find someone else to go to.

It’s always best to reach out to your followers and ask them how they would feel if you posted about your new passion first before just switching entirely. That way they can decide if they will give it a try first and understand your perspective. This is also a great way to see who your true loyal supporters are, as they tend to be those who stick by your side no matter what you provide!