Editor's Note: Tess Pajaron works in business management for Open Colleges. Today, she joins us to explore how brands can build an active and engaged social media community.
While consumers have been using platforms like Facebook and Twitter for over a decade now - beginning with the raging success of MySpace in the early 2000s - brands have only begun to catch on in the last five years and realize the full potential of social media for marketing.
Social media not only makes people better, but offers plenty of amazing opportunities to businesses of every shape and size.
Instead of using social networks solely as marketing platforms to advertise products, companies can now use social media to build customer experience and create engagement. The ability to connect and communicate directly with a target audience allows brands to build a solid fan base and grow their community easily.
Here are 6 tips to help you create an engaged network of followers that will support your brand -
1. Make sure your business is easy to find
You can't grow your social media community or spread the word about your product unless customers can easily connect with your business.
Here are a couple of tricks you should use to make sure that your brand is accessible to customers and prospects:
- Your social sharing icons should be prominent on your website
- Feature the URL of your website and social media handles on business cards and other print media
- Include a link to your brand website in social media channel descriptions
- Personalize your email responses: don't solely rely on automated messages
- Track all associated hashtags and mentions to know who is talking about you and your product. Engage with those who are!
2. Know your audience
Your social media community is not a homogeneous gathering of people who behave in the exact same way. Rather, it is comprised of individuals. Each one of them has unique reasoning and behaviors that predict how they will interact with your brand. Segment your audience, and target these smaller groups with the right messaging in order to reach them more effectively.
To create a strong social media community, good communication is vital. And in order to communicate well, you need to get to know your family. You will have a completely different relationship with different segments of your family. Your engagement with followers will differ on the basis of what you know, resulting in better responses.
3. Solve the problems of your followers
Use social media not just to directly promote your products, but to interact with your customers and learn what their key pain points are. If you want more results from your marketing, you need to do your best to solve problems for your customers.
Most likely, there are plenty of businesses out there that offer similar products to yours, so you need to stand out. That's something you can achieve by building trust in your community and helping your followers with issues unique to them.
Invite your community to join you in helping others deal with such issues. Promote user-generated content on your social media channels as well – that's how you build loyalty and offer real value.
4. Be generous
Motivate the members of your community to share their own content and spark exciting conversations on your social profiles. One way to do this is offering incentives, like coupons, or giveaways. Another way is by sharing user-generated content, and bringing valuable contributors into the spotlight.
Analyze your social media data to find out who your top contributors are. These will be the people responsible for engagement on your website. The more feedback signals you get – like shares or comments – the more likely the social platform is to show your posts to a higher percentage of your followers.
Create content for your top users. Be generous and add a personal touch to all your communications. That's how you build relationships and help fans feel connected in the community surrounding your brand.
Don't forget to keep the communication lines open and instantly respond to your followers if they reach out to you.
5. Listen to your audience
To build a social media community, you need to produce content that your audience wants to consume. That's why your first step is finding out what they want, and there are many ways to go about doing this.
Create a quick video and ask your fans what they want to talk about. When your community provides you with answers, follow through by implementing new initiatives based on what they requested.
Put your followers and their needs or desires at the center of your social media strategy. Actively listen to their social chatter to build further engagement.
Instead of asking your followers to share photos of the products that they purchased, ask them to share content that shows what your products have enabled them to do.
Make your social media channels focus on lifestyle, not just on products or services. You can be sure that purely promotional content will reduce engagement. Offer your fans behind-the-scene content that shows the inside of your company or how your product is developed. That's how you take your brand to the next level and develop a community of people who share a sense of purpose.
6. Be honest
People like to deal with businesses they trust. A smart way to build trust in your business is admitting to your mistakes when you make them. No company is 100% perfect. And some forget that it pays to be open and honest.
If you admit your faults and offer transparency in the face of criticism, you will win big among followers by showing your willingness to listen and your ability to adapt. On the other hand, if you try to mask a bad situation or avoid the problem, you will be on your way to destroying that trust. Show the human side of your business to win loyalty among your fans.
Conclusion
Social media is a great opportunity for brands, but building a community is about much more than just promotion. With a little bit of effort and creativity, you stand a great chance of engaging existing customers and raising your bottom line in terms of prospects and exposure.
Get started with any of the methods listed above, and watch your community grow!
Learn more with these related OMI classes:
How to Perform Segmentation Using Google Analytics
Content Marketing Implementation: Executing a Winning Content Program
Crisis Management with Social Media
Visit the Online Marketing Institute to browse over 400 classes in the digital and social media market