Every company can be seen as a car with various parts internally and externally that keep it running smoothly. Without certain parts, the operation of the car itself is suffice; however, there are certainly specific parts, such as the engine, of the vehicle that are crucial and necessary. For each company, that essential part would be its audience's loyalty. Customers can be loyal to a company simply by following them on their social media pages supporting their service or product, and staying up to date with their post.

If you're currently reading this article, this must mean that you're interested in buying a new engine for your car- metaphorically speaking of course. You want to transform potential customers into loyal customers. In doing so, you need to build your following organically. Small Business Trends teaches us to utilize your main website, incorporate email marketing, create effective landing pages, and productively use subtle repetitiveness.

Related: How to Increase Value For Your Marketplace

Subtle Repetition

The first step of growing your social media following is to be sure that it your platforms are noticeable on your main website. When someone first hears of a company, what is the initial thing they do? Google it. Typically the first link would be the company website, and that is the only first impression that this customer is ever going to get with this company.  And yes, first impressions are just as impactful in the online marketing world as they are in the real world. Social media is such a huge ordeal with audiences that range from all ages. It's extremely important to have a following on all social media platforms.

If your goal is to drive up your followers, emphasize your social media accounts on your website and lead your customers in the direction that you want them to go. Include your social media buttons on the fold and in the footer of your pages; this will effectively utilize repetitiveness and will drive up the chances of your audience visiting the platforms. Also, be sure that the site as a whole is alluring to the eye and aesthetically attractive.

If you already have your social media platforms linked on your company website, you might possibly need to take another route. Experimenting with website builders and their pre designed templates would be a start; they are easy to tailor, making it so that you can create it while being consistent with your pre-existing branding, and they are all modernized. This will take more off your plate so that you can focus on more important tasks rather than designing an entirely new site.

The main factors that will directly impact the success of people following your social media platforms is: always list your social media pages on your contact page; put a call to action after every blog or press page encouraging more people to follow you. Repetition is definitely necessary in the world of online marketing, it's the key to success.

Once your social media followers are up to new standards, the next step in flourishing in the increasement of followers would be to take advantage of email marketing. After you have your site turning visitors into SM followers, do the same thing with email subscribers.

Email Subscription

The next step after you've successfully converted your website visitors into social media followers, is to then transform them into email subscribers. Pushing a tweet or a facebook post into the large realm of the internet decreases the chances of your targeted audience actually seeing your post; this is what makes emailing your customers a much more effective way of grasping their attention.

Small Business Trends states that "58 percent of adult Americans prioritize email over any other form of communication. 77 percent of people prefer email for receiving promotional messages." The only way to successfully track your audience and gather accurate data about their preferences is to ensure that they actually receive your message. Email definitely gives a certainty to that opposed to a post on social media platforms, and is what makes it reliable.

It is also important to take advantage of landing pages and its ability to capture email addresses of your audience. This is a very easy way for companies to gain more email subscribers without externally marketing. With this landing page, you can post or link it in your blog posts, press pages, home page, and various locations in your company website to direct them back to becoming a subscriber. Again, repetition is very key in all departments of marketing.

Small Business Trends also lists examples of what you can do with email marketing to build your followers on social media. They suggest that you place your social media buttons in your emails. It would be best to put your best foot forward; as in, always link your most popular and active social media platform first. This is a very important call to action.

Related: Email Drip Campaigns: 5 Steps to Set Up and Execute

Play the Jealousy Game

Another pressing tip is to use jealouys in its best form. In order to persuade people to follow you on your social media accounts, tease them of what they are missing out on in your social media platforms. Include bits and pieces of it in your email newsletters such as "most liked post on Facebook, most retweeted tweet, most re-pinned image on Pinterest", in order to bait them into signing up. There has been proven statistics that this raised ratings 71% when including social media content in email newsletters.

Offering various types of awards or incentives is also a great eye-catcher when wanting to boost up your followers. Giving people motivation and a type of enticement they cannot get anywhere else, is definitely a way of making them feel unique to reel them into your subscriptions. This goes along with building anticipation giving them a time limit to use or buy a product or service and giving "hype" to what your company is trying to sell.

Whether you company is successfully rising to the top or just starting from the bottom, these tips will help you go a long way. The ladder to success in online marketing never stops; there are always more followers to gain, more enhancements to create on your web pages, and more creativity to be shown in your work. With these tips from Small Business Trends, we definitely find that many companies can gain a great deal from them.