Most people who have their businesses on social media are looking hard for answers to solutions for more traffic, engagement and conversions to build their brand. While great social media strategies don’t simply fall off a truck in front of your doorstep, you don’t have to make it any harder than it should be.

Nathan Pirtle, social media/digital marketing specialist and founder of Work With The Coach, is one person who snatched his success from the hands of fate. Pirtle became a hard core marketer because he wasn’t looking for someone else’s answers, he was looking for his own. These five important tips from his personal strategy can help your brand on social media.

1. Stop being a robot.

There’s a program and an app for everything you want to do with your social marketing, from analytics data to auto posting and direct messaging. While these are important aspects to your digital marketing business, at some point you need to make sure these robots aren’t the primary source of your social media activity.

One thing Pirtle is direct in announcing is his approach to being personal with people on social media. Sure, your auto-posting social media tool is helping you stay relevant and seen, but it’s not replying to people, nor is it responding to someone’s questions in real time. In short, these are mistakes which can share negative messages to your audience.

People want conversation and engagement from your brand — from the real you. Don’t allow your brand to be controlled by these automated sources because it doesn’t portray your true personality. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to use these tools because you’re a smart marketer. However, because you are a smart marketer, you will understand when to pull back on the reins and allow a more personal touch.

2. Provide real content.

Your brand pages and accounts need to understand what your audience enjoys. For Pirtle, it was a plethora of motivational, helpful and funny pictures or memes to get his audience engaging with his brand on a continual basis. He also advises the best way to attract more people with real content on your social account is by keeping your house (your social account) clean and orderly. If it is, people will want to stick around and listen to what you have to say.

The rule of sharing is 80/20. This means 80 percent of the time, you’re sharing content to either help, entertain and/or motivate your audience. The 80 percent has nothing to do with your brand at all. It’s all about your customers and what they enjoy.

If you’re having a hard time finding out what your audience is into — let’s use Facebook for this example — you can take a look at Facebook Audience Insights. Simply type in a couple of interests you’re looking for, and it will supply you with other brand pages, like yours, who are killing it with real content. Take some tips out of their playbook, and offer some similar posts on your page.

3. Learn to follow in order to lead.

Most people want to have a million followers, but they don’t want to follow multiple people or accounts. It just doesn’t work that way. To create a large social media following with real results, you need to be both a leader and a follower of people. “You have to know how to follow in order to be able to lead, so follow everyone who is relevant to your business,” Pirtle said.

Don’t reject the idea of engaging with people. This is going to help your business in the long run because people will always remember a helpful conversation. Once you learn to follow the most relevant people to your brand, and you consistently give them help and guidance, you will soon find yourself leading these people. Don’t be shy to follow.

4. Measure success from engagement.

There are lots of ways to measure your success on social media. Stats from analytics to learn different things about your social media accounts is a great way to build your business. However, Pirtle always measured his success based on the social engagement his brand was acquiring every day on social media.

How many people are interacting with you on a consistent basis? Learn who the key players are and who always seems to be there when you share. Anytime anyone likes, comments, retweets, etc., you should take notice, and respond to those people.

One great way to measure success within each campaign is to set a specific goal within your brand. Perhaps you want to set a goal of 50 signups on Facebook or Twitter. You also would like to see 25 comments and at least 15 shares. These are personal engagement goals you should make for each update your brand does.

KISSmetrics shares a very helpful article on how you can measure each step of your engagement, and they include metrics of engagement like awareness, engagement, drive traffic, finding advocates and fans, and your brand’s voice measurement.

It’s important to understand and establish a set of goals in which you can measure your engagement success on your social platform of choice. Not all social networks are the same. The people may be the same, but their behaviors on each platform are different. You want to understand the behaviors of each person on your social platform of choice. It will help you provide the best possible content for them in the future.

5. Build the relationship.

There is no social marketing tip any stronger than this — build the relationship. This is pretty much self explanatory, and while it seems pretty hard to do, most people are susceptible to your brand on social media, providing you’re not trying to hard sell them right out of the gate.

Relationship marketing creates brand loyalty and an avenue for other people like the one with whom you just built a relationship with. You spend the time, build the relationship, and establish the trust. In turn, this builds a bridge between someone who doesn’t know you and your brand with the person you just created this with. You see how important it is? The reach of relationships is powerful marketing within your social community, and you should be taking advantage of it every day.

There are all kinds of social media strategies you should want to try out, but these five are the most important ones to always remember to do consistently. You have a brand name to protect and an audience who wants to learn all they can about you. Just like Pirtle, when you invest your time, money and knowledge into your audience, you will reap superb results with these strategies.

Article written by Jennifer Spencer