This post forms part of our ‘5 Days of Social Media’ contest, helping you to get more out of social networks as well as giving you the chance to win lots of great prizes!

Before we get on to the links and resources, it is important to emphasise you should never chase a follow count number simply for the sake of having a high number, that is why we have included the important ‘engagement’ in this post’s title. Quality will always beat quantity.

I’m in no way arguing you should purposefully throttle the number of followers you have or keep them low for the sake of it. If you can get 10,000 followers and they are actively engaging with you, then that is amazing. Nor am I saying you shouldn’t track follower counts at all. A sudden rise suggests you have done something popular you should repeat, and a decline suggests you need to re-think your strategy.

The point is there is no benefit to chasing large follower numbers simply to report large follower numbers. It would be like booking a branded blimp and flying it at night in the country side. No one will see it and it’s an action for the sake of taking an action, without thinking ‘why am I doing this?’

So, if you are ready to put in the hard work to increase the number of social media followers who are engaging with you, read on…

Articles

• 15 tips to increase twitter followers for your local business

• Social media action plan template

• 21 creative ways to increase your Facebook fan base

• 20 ways to increase your Facebook likes and engagement

• 5 ways to increase your Facebook fan engagement

• 6 ways to grow YouTube subscribers and your exposure

• How to build your Twitter tribe

• A sample social media strategy

Case studies

• 50 social media case studies worth bookmarking

• The ROI of social media: 10 case studies

• Zappos social media marketing example

• How social media drives new business: Six new case studies

• 15 case studies to get your client on board with social media

WordPress plug-ins

• 25 social media plugins for WordPress

• 5 must have social media plug-ins for WordPress

• 35 social media plug-ins to increase traffic on WordPress

• Tweet old blog posts automatically

Automation tools

• https://twitterfeed.com/: Publish your RSS feed directly to your Twitter and Facebook

• https://hootsuite.com/: Schedule messages and tweets

• https://www.socialoomph.com/: Automate your Twitter activities

• https://ifttt.com/recipes: Link actions on one channel to actions on another

Tracking and monitoring