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How to Increase Social Media Follows from Your WordPress Site

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How to Increase Your Social Media Follows from Your WordPress Site

Creating a social media following should now be an objective for all online shops, blogs, and business sites. If you want new and returning readers, customers, and clients, then having a community of followers on social media is a must.

But building this fan base on social media is easier said than done. Social media can be time-consuming and labor intensive. Most frustratingly, there are no definite winning strategies, so returns cannot be guaranteed.

In this article, we will look at how to increase your social media follows from your WordPress site. From automating your social media content, to adding pop-ups, hello bars and content lockers, we will discuss the best strategies to get your website visitors to follow you on social media.

What You Should Already Be Doing On Your WordPress Website

There are some very basic fundamental strategies that all WordPress websites should adopt, and which if you aren’t already doing you should quickly set up today. These will not only help save you time, but will slowly grow your following over time.

Add Social Follow Buttons

Follow Buttons

Social follow buttons should occupy a prominent position on your site. Placing them in sidebars is a great way to make sure that they are constantly visible and easy for your audience to access.

Follow Buttons by AddThis is a free WordPress plugin that will let you add social buttons vertically or horizontally in your sidebar or header. Usable with numerous popular social networks, you can display the icons for the social media channels of your choice.

Display Social Share Buttons

Floating Social Bar

Your WordPress website should have social share buttons above or below every piece of content that you’d like shared. This will encourage your visitors to share your content on social media. Having your content shared by your readers means it will get viewed by a wider audience. This is a great way to raise awareness of your site, increase traffic, and gain new followers on social media.

Floating Social Bar from WPBeginner enables you to add a floating social bar to any pages or posts on your site. This free WordPress plugin is quick to set up, looks great, and will help you get your content shared. If you aren’t already using it, download it now.

Make Content Tweetable

Better Click to Tweet

The easier you make it for your audience to share your content, the more they will comply with this wish. Better Click to Tweet is another free WordPress plugin that lets you insert click to tweet boxes into your posts. Select stand out quotes from your blogs to make them tweetable. Making your best content super easy to Tweet in this way will help get your blog shared on Twitter, and gain you new Twitter followers.

Showcase Social Feeds

WordPress Social Stream

Showcasing social feeds on your WordPress website is another way to help increase social media follows. By demonstrating all the great content, discussions, and comments that are being shared on your social media channels, your website visitors will soon be keen to join your community of social followers.

WordPress Social Stream is a premium plugin that can be purchased on CodeCanyon. It allows you to create social feeds for each of your social networks. Or combine all your social network feeds into one social stream. With different layout styles available, this plugin will let you display your latest social media news in style. This in turn should help to impress your WordPress audience and encourage them to follow you.

So, now we have considered the basics for increasing your social media follows from your WordPress website, let’s have a look at what else you can do.

Automating Your Social Media Content

CoScedule

Consistently sharing your high-quality content from your WordPress website on your social media channels is very important. It keeps your social media networks active and interesting, which helps lead to follows.

However, regularly posting to different social media channels can be very time-consuming. Using social media management tools like CoSchedule enables you to automate all your social postings. CoSchedule allows you to plan, organize and manage all your posts from within your WordPress dashboard. You can even create social media messages and schedule them to be posted, all without having to leave your WordPress site.

Automating your social media posts in this way will not only save you time, but also keeps your social media networks up to date. When choosing who to follow, people will opt for those social profiles that are constantly present and continually posting new content. So automating your sharing will go a long way in increasing your follows.

Adding Social Media Pop-ups to Your WordPress Website

Using social media pop-ups on your WordPress website to increase your social media follows can be very effective. Pop-ups grab visitor’s attention, and encourage them to act in a specific way. On the whole, pop-ups are used to collect emails. However, if your goal is to grow your social media following, then it makes sense to use your pop-ups to do just that.

Creating Pop-ups with OptinMonster

Like Us

OptinMonster is a lead generation software that can help you grow your social media following by using pop-ups on your WordPress website. By using Canvas, you can design custom pop-ups, specifically for your site’s needs. Easily create a Twitter follow optin, a Facebook like pop-up, or a pop-up for another social media channel.

Always think carefully about where and when to display a pop-up. People will follow a site because the content adds value to their lives in some way. Visitors need time to engage with your site and connect with it, so when they are given the option of following you on social media, they will jump at it.

Consequently, showing a pop-up as visitors arrive on your site is usually not the best way to gain followers. Ideally, wait until they have been on your site for a while, or read a certain amount. You can then display a well-timed pop-up, or one that appears after a reader has scrolled down a page to a certain point. Alternatively, you can use an exit pop-up.

Using Exit Intent Technology

Exit Intent

A different style of pop-up that you can implement on your WordPress website is an exit pop-up. This type of pop-up uses exit intent technology to detect when a user is about to leave your site. A pop-up is then displayed before the visitor is lost.

An exit pop-up can be particularly useful for collecting social media follows. By the time a visitor is ready to leave your site, they will have a good understanding of what you offer. Therefore, by showing an exit pop-up just before they leave, you have a high chance of turning them into a social media follower.

Always be careful not to use too many pop-ups. Numerous pop-ups will upset your audience and also can affect your rankings with Google. Trial different pop-ups and monitor the analytics to see what your audience best responds to. Then run the pop-up with the highest conversions.

Displaying a Hello Bar

Smart Bar

Displaying a hello bar on your WordPress website is another easy automated way to promote your social media channels and encourage follows. A hello bar sticks to the top or the bottom of a web page, or can move as a user scrolls down the page. As it is constantly visible to your audience, it is a great place to display an important message, like a reminder about joining you on social media.

SumoMe is a free WordPress plugin that enables you to add a hello bar, or smart bar as SumoMe calls it, to your website. The SumoMe smart bar can be customized to display a message to encourage either a Twitter follow or a Facebook like.

You have control over when and where the smart bar is displayed, and if you upgrade to SumoMe Pro you can add both tracking and conversion pixels to your bar. This enables you to track how successful your smart bar is in converting your WordPress visitors to social media followers.

A hello bar works in the same way as a pop-up but is less intrusive. However, it is more visible as it is constantly in the eyesight of your visitors. Consequently, it can be a very effective way of increasing your social media followers from your WordPress site.

Content Lockers and Social Media

Content Locker

Using content lockers on your WordPress website can greatly help to increase your social media follows. A content locker keeps content hidden from your audience until they perform an action of your choice, which in this case would be to follow you on one of your social media networks.

Ninja Popups is a premium WordPress popup plugin that, amongst many other features, allows you to add social media content lockers to your website. Ninja Popups includes a drag and drop visual editor, making it easy to customize your social content lockers to suit your site’s specific needs and display the social media channels of your choice.

The key to a successful content locker is to hide information that your audience wants. Lock away your most popular and best-performing blog posts, scandalous images, interesting videos or discount codes. The more sought after the hidden content is, the more people will follow you on social media to access it.

Final Thoughts

Monitoring your site’s analytics is an important way to know what is working and what needs re-thinking. Trial different strategies then track the outcomes so you can see which ones are getting the most conversions. Although all of the methods in this article can be effective ways to increase your social media follows, ultimately you need to find what works for your audience.

Which strategies are you going to implement on your WordPress website to increase your social media follows? Please share in the comment below…

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5 Comments

  1. Ahsan Parwez

    I like the idea of using OptinMonster to display your social media channels and subscription.

  2. MUKESH MAJUMDER

    awesome article. I am totally new in this field, your article helps me to understand me about it…

  3. Megan Jones

    Glad you find it helpful!

  4. Vishwajeet Kumar

    Hello Megan,

    Social media sites are really a great place to promote your stuffs online. Building your Social media presence is a very important part of today’s marketing strategies. Thanks for sharing these great tools.

  5. Priya Sharma

    I am definitely going to try one of these plugins for my socials. Thanks for this wonderful guide.

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