Social media can be intimidating, especially if you're just getting started. You might feel like the only person in your industry on social media or wonder what role it plays in your business's success. But with some planning, you can build an engaged community that will help grow your brand and provide valuable feedback. Here are some tips for creating a solid and engaged social media community:
Plan a strategy
Planning a strategy is essential in building a solid and engaged social media community. It's the difference between success and failure, so you want to ensure that you're putting the proper steps in place to ensure that your company has a fighting chance against its competitors.
Here are five tips on how to create a strong strategy:
- Identify where your audience hangs out online. Where do they spend their time? Where would they go for information about what makes your business unique? You can use tools like Google Alerts or SocialMention to find out where people are talking about topics related to yours within various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). This will help you determine where it makes sense to engage in conversation with them online.
- Pick channels that best match what your company does and its customers—and stick with them! Don't hop from platform to platform trying different methods; instead, focus on using the media that work best for both parties involved (the brand/company vs. consumer)
Reach out to your audience
- Ask questions. Think about what you enjoy seeing your friends and family do on their social media accounts, and then do it yourself.
- Respond to comments. If someone leaves a comment on one of your posts, make sure to respond to them on time (or, even better, before they have a chance to ask). You want to make certain people understand why they're not being heard by you or anyone else managing your account!
- Respond to questions. If someone asks you something through DM or comment, try replying as quickly as possible so that they don't think you ignored them or don't care about their question/comment enough...even though the opposite is true! We all know how frustrating that can sometimes feel when someone doesn't get back to us right away...and we all hate feeling like our time isn't valued either! So always reply as soon as possible if someone asks anything important - even if it's "thank you!" (especially if it's just "thank"...) :)
Communicate with your audience
So what does it mean to communicate with your audience?
- Respond to comments and questions. If a customer has a question or comment, answer it! A simple "thank you" or "I'm sorry that happened" is enough. Be bold and ask for more details if the customer leaves something unclear; other customers may have similar questions that they're too shy to ask.
- Use hashtags in your posts and replies when appropriate, but don't go overboard—you don't want your brand associated with negative conversations related to hashtags like #depression or #suicide (unless, of course, that's something you do).
- Use emojis sparingly; they should rarely appear more than once per post (for example, no more than two smiley faces per tweet). Emojis are fun and playful ways of communicating emotions through images rather than words alone—but they shouldn't overtake our language entirely!
- Use pictures whenever possible when sharing news about upcoming products or events—the visual aspect makes it easier for people who aren't following closely on social media platforms such as Twitter, for example, where there may be thousands of new tweets posted every day by different individuals across many other businesses/organizations etcetera...
Reward your followers
Reward your followers with something that they can use. You may have a blog, give away freebies, or be a business owner who puts on events. Either way, when people are following your social media accounts to learn more about what you're doing and how they can get involved, it's essential to reward them with things that help them be better at their jobs.
Giveaways are always fun! Hosting a giveaway is one of the best ways to build engagement on social media because everyone loves free stuff! You could run a contest where users have to follow specific steps to enter (like subscribing) or allow anyone who follows the account into the competition automatically. After all, entries are collected for judging purposes, announce who won by posting another image/video update on your profile page showing off the prize(s).
If running giveaways isn't something that interests you—you may also want to consider giving away tickets as rewards instead (or as part of) prizes for contests/giveaways mentioned earlier in this post; this will encourage more people not only to attend but also share their experience through social media once they're there!
Insert yourself into the community
- Participate in the community. Don't just post content and then disappear for weeks on end. To build a solid social media community, you must be active consistently. Make sure you respond to comments, even if it's just saying thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
- Interact with other users in the community by replying to their posts and comments or liking their photos or videos. This will help build relationships between your company and other community members (and can also help build trust).
- Be open and honest about your brand so that people know who they are following without surprises (for instance, make sure there aren't any typos or grammatical errors). You should also avoid overly promotional language when talking about yourself—be genuine!
- Use hashtags when posting content so that you can get involved in conversations outside of just those explicitly related to what you posted (e.g., if there is a hashtag associated with an event like The Academy Awards™, then try using it when talking about what happened during last night's show).
If you build it, they will come.
The first and most crucial step is ensuring you're doing the work. Don't expect your audience to come to you; instead, go out and meet them. This means responding to comments, correcting misstatements, and interacting with your community members regularly. Your goal should be to have a conversation with them—not just broadcast messages at them—and this will take time and effort on your part every day.
Once they've engaged with your brand (through commenting or otherwise), it's up to you as an organization to respond in kind by engaging with them in a meaningful way. If someone posts about how much they love one of your products, thank them for their feedback! If someone posts about how their experience was subpar because of an error on your end, acknowledge their frustration and commit yourself as an organization to fixing whatever went wrong for them immediately so that other customers don't experience the same problem in the future
Conclusion
If you can follow these tips, you'll be well on your way to building a solid and engaged social media community. And remember, it takes time to build up a following—so don't get discouraged if things don't happen overnight!
