How to Attract New Customers on Social Media

Transforming your social media from a quiet shop into a bustling hub of new customers is the goal, but breaking through the noise can feel incredibly challenging. The secret isn't just posting more often, it's about a smarter, more targeted approach that turns passive scrollers into active followers and future buyers. This guide will walk you through actionable strategies to find your ideal audience, create content that grabs their attention, and build a community they’ll be excited to join.

Know Exactly Who You're Talking To

You can't attract new customers if you don't have a crystal-clear picture of who they are. Before you create a single piece of content, take the time to define your ideal customer. Going broad and trying to appeal to everyone is a recipe for appealing to no one. Instead, get specific.

Create a Simple Customer Persona

A customer persona is a fictional character representing your ideal client. Don't overcomplicate it, just answer a few basic questions to bring this person to life:

• Demographics: What's their age, gender, location, job title, and income level?
• Goals & Pain Points: What are they trying to achieve? What problems, frustrations, or challenges stand in their way? Your product or service should be the solution to one of these pain points.
• Online Behavior: Where do they hang out online? Are they scrolling Instagram Reels during their lunch break, researching B2B solutions on LinkedIn, or seeking tutorials on YouTube? Which influencers or brands do they already follow?

Example: Let’s say you sell handcrafted, eco-friendly candles. Your ideal customer persona might be "Eco-conscious Emma," a 32-year-old remote graphic designer who values sustainability and self-care. Her pain point is finding high-quality home goods that align with her ethical values. She probably follows home decor accounts on Instagram and Pinterest and is active in Facebook groups about sustainable living.

When you know you’re talking to Emma, every content decision becomes easier. You’ll know exactly what topics will resonate, what aesthetics she’ll appreciate, and which platforms she's most likely to be on.

Choose the Right Arenas: Pick Your Platforms Wisely

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, the next step is to figure out where to reach them. Many businesses make the mistake of trying to be active on every single social media platform. This spreads your efforts too thin and leads to burnout. Instead, focus your energy on the 2-3 platforms where your ideal customer spends most of their time.

Where to Start: A Quick Guide

• For Visual Products (Fashion, Food, Art, Home Goods): Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok are your best friends. Their visual-first nature lets your products shine. Short-form video is particularly powerful here for showcasing products in action.
• For Service-Based Businesses (Coaching, Consulting, B2B): LinkedIn is the undefeated champion for professional networking and authority-building. X (formerly Twitter) is great for engaging in real-time conversations and sharing industry news. You can also build strong communities in dedicated Facebook Groups.
• For Educational & How-To Content: YouTube excels for long-form tutorials, while YouTube Shorts and TikTok are incredible for quick, digestible tips. If you can teach your audience something valuable, they will follow you.

Remember "Eco-conscious Emma"? Your research shows she is all over Instagram and Pinterest. That’s where you should focus 100% of your energy initially. You can always expand later once you’ve built a strong foundation.

Create High-Value Content that SPREADs

Your content is the primary tool for attracting new customers. For your content to reach new people effectively, it needs to be what social media algorithms prioritize: content that people share, save, comment on, and spend time watching. Here are the primary types of content that accomplish this.

1. Teach Them Something New (Educational Content)

People love to learn. Creating content that teaches your target audience how to solve a problem or achieve a goal is one of the most reliable ways to attract a new audience. This positions you as a helpful expert, not just someone trying to make a sale.

• How-To Guides & Mini-Tutorials: A short video showing how to style a bookshelf (for a home decor brand) or a simple carousel post explaining how to read a nutrition label (for a health coach).
• Industry Tips & Tricks: Share a "secret" of your trade. A photographer could share a quick smartphone photo editing tip. A financial advisor could explain a common investing misconception.
• Checklists & Resources: Offer something people will want to save for later. A "Weekly Home Reset Checklist" or "5 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Contractor."

2. Make Them Laugh, Smile, or Feel Inspired (Entertainment/Relatable Content)

Education is powerful, but so is emotion. Connecting with your audience on a human level is what builds truly loyal communities.

• Behind-the-Scenes Peeks: Show your workspace, introduce members of your team, or share a blooper from a video shoot. This builds trust and makes your brand feel more approachable and less like a mysterious corporation.
• Relatable Memes & Humor: If it fits your brand voice, using humor relevant to your industry can be incredibly effective. A common frustration shared by your industry, turned into a meme or relatable Reel, can get tons of shares.
• Success Stories & Testimonials: Showing off your customers' wins is inspirational and provides powerful social proof. Repost their content (with permission!) or create simple graphics with their glowing reviews.

3. Leverage Short-Form Video

If there's one format to prioritize for reaching new people right now, it's short-form vertical video (Instagram Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts). The algorithms on these platforms are designed to push engaging video content to users who don't already follow you, making it the most potent tool for organic discovery right now. Tools from a few years ago struggle with video, as they were often designed for a world of text and photos. Today, planning is centered around video assets above all else.

A simple video of you packing an order, talking through your process, or showcasing a product from different angles consistently outperforms static photo content for reaching new potential customers.

Master Your Hashtag Strategy for Discovery

Hashtags aren't just trendy anymore, they are a critical tool for categorizing your content and getting it in front of the right eyeballs. Using them correctly is like putting your content on the right shelf in a massive library so people searching for it can find it easily.

The Niche-Down Method

Don't just use the biggest, most popular hashtags. Using a tag like #business (300M+ posts) means your content will be buried in seconds. A smarter approach is to use a mix of hashtags with varying degrees of popularity:

• Broad Tags (1–2): These relate to your industry but are very popular (e.g., #interiordesign). They offer a small chance of a big visibility spike.
• Specific Niche Tags (3-5): These are more targeted and describe your specific vertical (e.g., #scandinavianhome, #midcenturymodernliving). This is where your ideal customer is likely searching.
• Community-Specific Tags (2-3): These are often unique to a location or a sub-culture online (e.g., #sydneylocalbusiness, #womeninbusinessaustralia).
• Content-Specific Tags (2-3): These describe exactly what is in the post itself (e.g., #gallerywalldiy, #diyhomedecorideas).

This balanced approach gives your post a chance to be seen by a broad audience while ensuring it reliably reaches the niche followers most likely to convert into customers.

Engagement is a Two-Way Street

Social media is meant to be social. Simply broadcasting your content and walking away won't cut it. To attract and keep new customers, you need to actively engage and build a community. When people see that you're responsive and approachable, they're more likely to follow and trust you.

Your Engagement Checklist:

1. Reply to every single comment. Yes, every single one, even if it's just an emoji. The algorithm rewards posts with high engagement, and people feel valued when a brand takes the time to respond to them directly.
2. Ask questions in your captions. Instead of just stating a fact, end your caption with a question that prompts a response. "What’s your favorite weekend activity?" is much more engaging than "Have a great weekend."
3. Engage with other accounts. Spend 15 minutes a day commenting on posts from other creators or brands in your niche. Leave thoughtful, genuine comments - not just "Great post!" This puts your name in front of their highly relevant audience.

Collaborate to Multiply Your Reach

One of the quickest ways to get in front of a new, relevant audience is to partner with others who already have their trust.

Partnering with Creators & Influencers

Look for micro-influencers (creators with 5,000–50,000 followers) in your niche. They often have highly engaged and trusting communities. You could partner on a product review, a giveaway, or have them 'take over' your Instagram Stories for a day.

Brand-to-Brand Collaborations

Find non-competing businesses that share a similar target audience. A local gym and a healthy meal prep service, for example, could co-host a giveaway or create a joint piece of content. This introduces both brands to a pre-qualified pool of potential new customers in a way that feels organic and non-salesy.

Final Thoughts

Attracting new customers on social media boils down to a clear, consistent strategy: know your audience deeply, create content that serves their needs on the right platforms, and engage like a real person to build a community. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, but focusing on providing genuine value will always outperform gimmicks or follower-buying schemes in the long run.

Bringing all these tasks together - planning your video-first content, scheduling posts across Instagram and TikTok, and staying on top of all the new comments and DMs rolling in - can get chaotic. As a team that built our careers on social media, we created Postbase to solve this very problem. It's designed for how social media actually works today, with one clean space for you to manage all aspects of your strategy without having to fight outdated tools. This allows you more time to focus on creating great content and connecting with your new customers.