Social Media and Growth Hacking

As a growth hacker, social media is a great tool to have at your disposal. The key to a really successful growth hack is to find the best combination of all mediums and tools and put them together in a way, which ensures the best outcome. That’s to say, which produces a self propagating cycle of growth in the quickest and cheapest way possible. Social Media and Growth Hacking go hand in hand.

Growth hacking is usually associated with growing your business and revenue using the AARRR or Pirate Funnel, which leverages the 5 metrics of the funnel. The 5 metrics being Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. However, growth hacking can also be used to grow your audience and followers on social media. Growing your follower base on social media and increasing revenue can work conjointly. A main goal in growth hacking is to create a self sustainable cycle and social media is a key tool in creating this.

Social media is great for increasing awareness and preparing your followers to become eventual customers. It is also a very useful tool for acquiring new customers. Social media is also extremely useful in leveraging your existing customer base through retention and referral. Reward your loyal followers and encourage them to share offers and rewards and refer to friends and family. Competitions are a good way to engage with your current audience and also to generate new leads for your business. Encourage them to get involved, start conversations, there are so many possibilities..

Traditional advertising:

In the past it was almost impossible to reach a large audience without the benefit of a large budget. Traditional advertising was prohibitively expensive. It still is. TV advertising and print advertising require a considerable team working on them. The cost involved is well outside the reach of most businesses and start-ups. In the past it surely put off and deterred many a would be entrepreneur. Even if someone had the most brilliant idea, how on earth would they get it out there and make the world aware of it?

Thankfully…

Things have changed considerably since then. Of course, it still helps if you have a reasonable budget to get your product to market. But it is no longer a barrier, if your media budget is small or even non-existent. Growth hacking is a much more cost effective way to market and the intention is always for it to become a sustainable cycle to create new business and growth. Growth hacking uses social media in various stages of the AARRR funnel, which we define in detail here. It is a proven and effective method to grow a business.

Many successful brands have launched and then grown with help from savvy social media practices. And by creating fun and interesting content to share via various social media platforms. Below we share some examples of how social media can be incorporated into a successful growth hack.

Quality Content

As we have outlined and emphasised in previous posts, good quality content is essential when devising a plan to increase your SEO. It is where it all begins. People want to read content, which is interesting and informative (just like this :). If you can make a name for yourself and be known for this, then you’re well on your way. Make yourself an expert in your field/business. We all know that ranking high in Google is seriously competitive, so your content should be as good as it possibly can be. It’s really worth the effort. Social media doesn’t directly affect your SEO, but it is the perfect vehicle for getting your content out there to share. Any links to your website, that you have shared in your posts will improve your online visibility and organic traffic, which will in turn improve your SEO.

As we have mentioned before, a growth hack works in unison with all digital marketing elements and quality content and a good social media account go hand in hand. See your role as educating the world and highlight issues and points that are important to you as well. Social media, as part of a growth hack is a perfect tool to get your message out there. There is a lot of rubbish content and this article is directed at people with a passionate message to get out there. This is what engages people.

Blogging

Following on from the quality content heading above, we all know that a good blog, with regular, quality posts is essential for SEO. Most of us put a lot of time and effort into writing a notable blog for this purpose. Another route to driving traffic to the blogs, is through social media. Having a bank of quality blogs is really useful when managing a successful social media account. It is perfectly acceptable to repost a link to a blog. It allows you to keep your posts regular, even when you don’t have any new content. This will ensure you maximise output from your hard work. Again, make sure what you are writing is of the highest possible standard. Growth hacking is about getting to the desired outcome as quickly and cheaply as possible, so having content you can re-use and rework, is just good sense.

Hashtags #

Hashtags are a brilliant tool for anyone looking to increase their online visibility. They help us to become discoverable to those who don’t yet know we even exist. Once you find those hashtags, which really fit your brand and conversation, there’s a whole audience out there waiting to be engaged. It is worth spending some time researching the various social media platforms, to see, which ones fit your brand and identity. As with SEO the obvious hashtags will have more posts associated with them and your brilliant Instagram, Twitter or Facebook posts will disappear. Dig a little deeper and be more specific and your posts will find a more niche audience. Look for related hashtags, rather than the ones with the most competition.

Hashtag tools

There are various tools out there, some of them free, to help you find the right hashtags. A good hashtag tool can help you find the best hashtag for your posts. Based on keywords, images and urls. For example Instagram hashtag finder tools include: HashtagsForLikes, Kicksta, Flick, Keyhole, Ingramer. Here are some Twitter hashtag finders: Hashtagify, RiteTag, SocialAlert. For Facebook you could try tools such as Agorapulse or Talkwalker. Finding the right Hashtags should form part of your growth and social media strategy. It is important that they are relevant and that they are unique. Make sure that you have a number of hashtags as part of your strategy and mix them up depending on the relevance to your post.

Social Media Influencers

What is a social media influencer?

A social media influencer is someone who has a certain amount of knowledge and clout within their industry or area and has amassed a significant following. Influencers are generally defined as either nano, micro, macro or mega, depending on the number of followers. A mega or celebrity influencer can have 1M+ followers and has a huge amount of influence.

Even nano influencers, although not professional “influencers” are definitely worth interacting with. Their audience numbers may not be as large, but their followers are often engaged and responsive. If you can develop a real relationship with one of these nano, or micro influencers, your brand could really fly.

Find your influencer

Finding relevant influencers in your niche is a sure fired way to increase your following and brand awareness. Of course, these usually don’t come for free and would require some sort of budget.

The benefit of an influencer is that their audience truly trusts them and are already engaged. A successful collaboration with a social media influencer can be a really positive boost for your brand and ultimately your sales.

If you can identify strong influencers within your niche, you can also use them for a little bit of research into your sector. What conversations are people having around your product or industry? If used correctly, then a social media influencer, can be a real boost to your brand and sales..

If you’re lucky enough to have the budget then forming a relationship with an influencer, is something worth considering when putting together your social media strategy.

Test and Analyse

As with any aspect of growth hacking, social media needs to be constantly assessed and tested and analysed. With growth hacking we are always checking our results to see where we can improve and maximise our efforts. There is a very general rule that posting mid morning, mid week is best. However, this will no doubt vary depending on your industry, where your followers/customers are based. Many of the tools mentioned above to find hashtags, can also be used to analyse posts and posting. If you can work out when your posts get the most likes, click throughs etc, this will help you to make the most of posting when devising your social media campaigns. Really dig deep and work out what engages your customers/followers the most. Ultimately, you want to drive sales and revenue so try and establish what you are doing, which is influencing these factors.

As with all elements of the growth hack we look at the whole AARRR sales funnel, to see where we can maximise success. Are referral programs successful for your business? Are you better at retaining customers? There are so many platforms nowadays to choose from, it can be overwhelming, but there will be a place for your niche. A little bit of research early on, can pay dividends later. Different platforms have very different audiences and are better suited to different types of companies. It is crucial you are very clear about your customers profile and who they are.

Go Viral

As we keep mentioning, great quality content is key. “Going viral” is something which all brands, influencers and even your every day social media user, aspires to. In our first paragraph we referenced budget and going viral is something anyone can do, even with no budget at all. If the content is engaging & funny enough. In other words, it’s a great “growth hack”.

Some tips

There are some things you can do to give yourself the best chance of your video or post spreading rapidly. Post across several platforms to ensure as much exposure as possible. Always be authentic. It is tied up with the importance of great content. People will connect with you on a deeper level if you are passionate and engaging. Just be yourself. Follow influencers and experts. Connection is key.

Inspiring Examples

Dollar Shave Club, is a great example of viral marketing. Their first video posted in 2012, generated 4.75 million views in three months. Engaging and funny, it led to 12 000 orders in 48 hours. An unbelievable feat of brilliant social media content and distribution. Another often quoted example of social media and growth hacking is Dropbox. We have looked at their simple but great referral programme in a previous blog, which gave away free space to new users as well as referrers, developing a sustainable and independent cycle of growth. They tapped into the referral element of the AARRR funnel and set themselves up for massive growth. Their use of social media and sharing buttons, ensured their referral scheme was easy to share and their example is now legendary in the growth hacking world.

The Right Partner

If you want some help in marketing your brand or business, partnering with the right digital growth agency can be a pivotal decision. Your authentic voice and message supported by a good technical digital growth agency, such as Veksa, will maximise your reach. At Veksa, our team of experienced digital marketers as well as technical geniuses with masters degrees in internet of things, AI and machine learning can help you optimise your social media accounts. We are happy to have an informal chat. Click the link below to arrange some time with Jonathan and Aleem: