It's become nearly impossible to grow your customer base and sales without a social media presence. Here are six tips to improve your social media presence in 2019.

There are 335 million users on Twitter, 1 billion users on Instagram and a whopping 2.23 billion users on Facebook. A lot of people who could become your customers are hanging out on social media.

You may already have a social media account, but are you getting tons of new followers each month who are interacting on your platform? If not, you need to step up your social media game.

Whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn, growing your social media presence is important to get your business in front of more consumers and make more sales. With some simple tips, you can turn your lonely social media accounts into popular communities bustling with activity.

Get ready for your popularity to explode next year. Here are six tips for improving your social media presence in 2019.

If you want to improve your social media presence, you need to post on social media often and at the optimal times. In fact, according to studies, businesses should be tweeting 15 times per day. But as a business owner, you don't have enough time in your day to constantly be logging in to all your social media accounts. That's why you need to use the right tools.

Editor's note: Looking for help managing social media for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you with free information.

Using tools to schedule posts will help you stay active on social media and save you time. With Buffer, you can manage all of your social media accounts in one place, schedule posts weeks in advance, post at preferred times when the most users will see them, and analyze how well your posts are doing. Using tools to help with your social media accounts will ensure you're posting often enough to improve your social media presence.

2. Focus on customer service.

Social media is the new platform for customer service. Instead of giving a business a call or waiting hours (sometimes days) for a company to respond to an email, many customers who are having issues now turn to social media to get help from brands. In fact, 54 percent of customers prefer social messaging channels for customer care over phone and email.

So, instead of focusing so much on selling, you need to focus more on helping people. Using your social media platforms as a customer service platform will send more users to your social media and make it easier for them to solve their problems. You can even create a Facebook chatbot that can answer questions when you're not around. Customers will also be more willing to buy from you when they trust that you'll help them with their issues quickly.

3. Promote your social media accounts.

Don't expect your customers to know about all your social media platforms and go searching for them themselves – you've got to tell them they exist. If you make it easy for customers to follow or like your social media profiles, they'll be more willing to take action.

Start promoting your social media accounts to your customers and ask them to interact with you on your profiles. You can add social media icons to your site, add your social media feeds to your sidebar, tell people to follow you on social media at the end of your blog posts, and promote your social media accounts in your email marketing. The more people are aware of your presence on social media, the bigger it will be.

4. Pay attention to what's trending.

One of the best ways to create a bigger social media presence for your business is to piggyback on popular social media trends. This will get your profile in front of a ton of users who never knew about your business before and could even help your posts go viral.

You can stay on top of trends just by taking a look at what's going on. For instance, on Twitter you can see the top trending hashtags on the left side on the homepage in the Trends for You section. Look at what hashtags you can use to get more views. While it helps to use hashtags that relate to your business, they don't have to be strictly relevant. If your accounting company can create a fun post for #NationalDonutDay, go for it.

5. Focus on eye-catching visuals.

It can be difficult to get noticed in crowded social media feeds, so you need to make your business stand out. One of the best ways to stand out on social media and increase your presence is to focus on using eye-catching visuals.

Try to avoid using too many boring stock photos. Instead, focus on sharing images that will connect with users. Share high-quality behind-the-scenes photos and people using your products. You can even share your customers' photos of them interacting with your product with their permission, which also creates social proof.

6. Actively engage with your audience.

Would you keep talking to someone who never returned your messages? Probably not. Users won't want to follow you on social media or interact with you if they get nothing in return. That's why it's so important to actively engage with your audience on social media.

If you want to create a social media presence, then your social media accounts need to become a community. That means when someone comments on your posts, you should reply to them or at least like their comment. You can also pose and answer questions in posts, and show appreciation to your followers and customers by thanking them and sharing user-generated content. Engaging with your followers will not only increase your social media presence, but help you develop real relationships with customers.

Get ready to have your best year on social media yet. Following these tips, not only will you get more likes and follows than ever before, but you'll gain more loyal customers too.