You have great content. Your message is clear and you want as many people as possible to see it. Here’s the problem, your follower count isn’t where you want it to be. If you’re finding yourself in that situation we have a few handy tips for you.

Ignite your Base

It may feel awkward to ask your family and friends to ‘like’ your Facebook page and follow your company on Twitter, but it’s a critical first step. When your friends like or follow you it shows up on their profiles. This first step also has long term benefits if you post information on your professional pages and streams that you don’t on your personal. The ability to re-tweet and share posts means that those friends and family members can promote you to a wider audience just by sharing the information that you have already published.

Make Yourself Easy to Find

Have you claimed your custom url for your page yet? If not then don’t delay. If you don’t want to type in a bunch of numbers to get to your Facebook page yet then neither do your customers. Get a short, memorable url to make it easier for your clients to find you without relying on search functions.

Actively Promote

Facebook and Twitter offer all sorts of tools to help you promote your page. You can embed widgets onto your website to show active feeds and allow people to follow you without ever leaving. You can also use icons on your page to link back to your social media profiles. Have business cards? Email? Flyers? Grab the icons and put them on your print media and in your email signature box. Let your customers know where they can find you.

Rally the Troops

Every once in a while consider using the magic words “Re-tweet” or “Share”. You’ll be amazed that if your content is something useful to your followers it will actually happen when you ask. While you don’t want to overuse your calls to action, strategic use will help new people see what you have to offer, and that just might garner a few more long term fans.