Once you have decided to get your community off the ground, you first need to identify the types of audience you want to attract.
Think of them as divided into different categories and work out what each type wants and what problems you can solve for them. Keep asking yourself the question: what do they really care about?
Next, identify your completion. This will help you to find where your target audience are already. Remember though that it is not about chasing numbers. You want a highly targeted group of people who will get together as a cohesive unit, not a generic mass that be larger but is too difficult to identify.
Now it is time to come up with a strategy for you or your team to follow. You need to decide how you are going to define success in building your community. For example, is it to get 10,000 Facebook likes or 2000 Twitter followers? You decide what your goals are, then agree to short-term, medium term and long-term goals, and then decide on the tools and strategy you are going to use to get there.
Once you’re doing the work of building a community, remember to be flexible. When you start producing (or outsourcing) great content, and getting it out there on social media channels, you might find that the community doesn’t go in quite the direction you expected. Your most popular posts might not be what you thought they would be, for example.
At this point, you might need to re-evaluate your plan or equally, you might need to stop being distracted by things that aren’t core to your business, despite being popular, and get back on track. It is all too easy to get distracted or lose direction on social media.
Slowly, Slowly Catchy Monkey.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that you need lots of patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your community won’t be either. Just like Rome, building your community never ends. Your job is never done. Don’t think of community building as a job to be done and ticked off a to-do list. Instead, think of it as a journey with no final destination.
Need Help?
If that sounds like too much commitment, bear in mind that there is help available. You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Companies like ours exist to assist busy business owners just like you to run successful social media campaigns as well as all other online marketing activities.
Why not talk to us and see what we can do to help your business.
Tips For Building Your Community
- Try to adopt the 80/20 rule – 20% of your activity should be promoting your products and services, while the other 80% is sharing engaging and informative content.
- It is not enough just to post – you need to engage your readers. Read what people comment and write, engage them in conversation and start making friends. It will only be good for your business.
- Identify key people you want to engage with and start replying to them, comment on their posts and keep at it. Be genuinely interested in them and eventually you will bring them into your community.
- Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Don’t get discouraged and give up if your initial attempts at engaging with key figures don’t work out. Keep at it.
- Make building your community part of your daily routine and get your whole team involved. Make it part of their routine too. To keep up the momentum, you need to have regular contributions. Don’t let the content dry up.
- Start each day with a bit of reading – use a news feeder (Feedly for example) to review your list of influential blogs, and when you find something goo, share it with your community. Remember to use the correct ‘voice’ for the social network you’re sharing on (professional for LinkedIn, short and snappy for Twitter etc.)