1. Content is Key:
People get bored insanely easily, especially Generation Z, who has an attention span of less than a goldfish. If you want to organically grow your channels you need to make sure you keep posting content that people want. Notice the "want," if you consistently post a certain type of tweet, Instagram, or YouTube video that gets good responses keep those up and cut things that get less attention.
Additionally, never fall behind on posting. I have managed probably a dozen different social media channels over the past few years and there have always been points in time where I just did not post because I was overwhelmed with work. These time frames always saw a slight decrease in followers. We live in a realm where follower ratios matter and so if you are not providing quality content, even if that means no content at all, then you get unfollowed.
2. A/B Test all of your Content:
You will never know what content does the best for your audience if you never try new things. If I am aiming to boost Twitter followers, I will try several "types" of tweets, whether it is quotes, inspiration, business thoughts, links, etc. and see which perform best, at what times, with what mixture of other content. Getting the perfect mixture of content is all about trial and error until the winning recipe is found.
3. Know your Demographics:
I will never be able to run a women's fashion or make-up social media channel for the obvious reason of my lack of domain experience. Running social media is just like running a company or restaurant, you have consumers with specific tastes and you need to make sure your supply matches that demand. If you do not know what is demanded, no amount of A/B testing will find you the right material.
4. Know the Limit of Fake Followers:
Most people will have the same two first gut reactions when looking at a social media account: number of followers and ratio. If your startup has 3k likes on Facebook I will initially think you are decently respectable, but if you never get a single like on anything you post then that is a glaring red flag. Same with Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and all of the rest.
According to social media expert Deep Patel, "Engagement is the only real metric and so if you overload yourself with fake followers it becomes apparent if your engagement numbers are not even plausible." Furthermore, with more of the social networks moving towards only showing the best content to followers, if your engagement ratios are unnaturally low because of too many fake followers than less of your content will be pushed to your real followers.
5. Uniformity helps:
All of your accounts ought to have the same profile picture and banner photo. Most of your content should be shared on most of your platforms (where applicable). This does not have as many express benefits as the other points, but it helps users immediately know any other channel also belongs to you and ensures that all of your followers will see generally the same content. Overall, it leaves for a much cleaner follower experience.
6. Reverse Engineer your Content:
If you want to target X demographic, think about what X demographic wants to read or see. If you are selling boat shoes, more than likely an educational blog all about boat shoes will not be getting you the right fan base. However, if you flip this and talk about bourbon, preppy clothing, frat life, etc. I am sure the user engagement stats will boost tremendously.