10 Ways To Boost Your Reach On A Budget

With social media becoming more and more monetised, and organic reach getting smaller, targeting your market and making your voice heard can often be difficult. However, you can still reach a large audience, for free, if you do the basics right.

1. Utilise contacts to enhance reach

Be proactive. Use people you know, staff, connections, or even approach relevant cold contacts who have influence to extend your reach and share your message. The more people you can get to share, the further your message will travel.

2. Use images to increase shares and reach new people

Show your work, share your story and bring to life your business through images. They don’t have to be professional photos, often it’s the more authentic, in the moment or behind the scenes shots that gain the most attention.

3. Share stories from a customer perspective

Share your supporters or customers positive experiences of your business, their own story. Peer reinforcement is the strongest selling point you could wish for.

4. Connect people to your cause – bring them on the journey

If you’ve launched a campaign, give people options to get involved early on, if you allow them ownership or a sense of place you’ll bring them on the journey with you. Make people feel involved and connected and along the way they will share your campaign, enabling it to be much more successful whatever the aim.

5. Keep it simple and shareable

Create sharable content on all networks – do the simple things; make sure you use eye catching images, and make them the correct size for each platform, use custom short links, create a campaign hashtag for people to get involved with and always try to include a call to action.

6. Don’t be afraid to try new things and new tools

For non-profits and community campaigns, free tools such as Thunderclap, which sends out a message on multiple platforms at the same time creating a wave of attention, can really take your social media marketing to the next level. Look for new tools to make a splash and reach that new consumer.

7. Ask for what you want

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. It may sound simplistic, but make sure to ask for RTs, shares, comments and link clicks. You get much higher engagement where you ask, compared to when you don’t.

8. Leverage what’s happening now

Social media isn’t 9-5. If your cause, business, brand, topic or product are mentioned on TV, dualscreen. Mentioned on a blog or news article? Highlight it, comment on it, share it. This third party content can give you an easy in to new audiences – make sure you are there to talk to them about what you have to offer, your cause or product.

9. Reach out to bloggers

Find the best blogger niche for you; it could be anything from tech to mummy bloggers, and give them something special. You could create a blogger toolkit with all the information they need to talk about a campaign or product, always with something exclusive, such as a special graphic, pre-launch product, infographic, interview or Q and A access.

10. Build on previous great content – don’t reinvent the wheel

Review your analytics, look into your Facebook insights, and see what works. If you have a piece of content, a blog, photo or graphic that has worked well, remodel and remarket it. There will always be an audience that hasn’t seen it before and it will save you time, making your campaign more efficient and effective.

Bonus tip –  Be authentic and enthusiastic

Social media is the ideal place to show your own or your brand persona, building real, human connections. Remember to be authentic and enthusiastic about your product. Enthusiasm is infectious – if you are, others will be too and could spark a conversation, lead, or even get you a brand ambassador.

When you combine these methods, you really can deliver cut-through campaigns that increase engagement, create new leads and reach new audiences. If you have any tips that you think should be added to the list let us know.