Building a Community on Social Media

While consumers have been using platforms like Facebook and Twitter for nearly two decades, beginning with MySpace’s raging success in the early 2000s, brands have only recently begun to catch on and realize the full potential of social media by Building a Community on Social Media.

Social media not only improves people, but it also provides numerous amazing opportunities to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Companies can now use social media to build customer experience and engagement rather than just as a marketing platform to advertise products.

The ability to connect and communicate directly with a target audience enables brands to easily build a strong fan base and community.

Here are six suggestions to help you build an engaged network of followers who will support your brand:

1. Make sure your company is easy to find.

You won’t be able to grow your social media following or spread the word about your product unless customers can easily connect with your company.

Here are a few tips to ensure that your brand is easily accessible to customers and prospects:

• Your social sharing buttons should be prominently displayed on your website.


• Include your website’s URL and social media handles on business cards and other printed materials.


• Include a link to your brand’s website in the descriptions of your social media channels.


• Personalize your email responses rather than relying solely on automated messages.


• Keep track of all associated hashtags and mentions to find out who is talking about you and your product. Participate with those who are!

2. Understand your target audience

Your social media community is not a homogeneous group of people who all act the same way. Rather, it is made up of individuals. Each of them has a distinct set of beliefs and behaviors that predict how they will interact with your brand. To reach them more effectively, segment your audience and target these smaller groups with the appropriate messaging.

Good communication is essential for building a strong social media community. And, in order to communicate effectively, you must first get to know your family. You will have very different relationships with various members of your family. Your interactions with followers will be different depending on what you know, resulting in better responses.

3. Resolve your followers’ issues

Use social media to interact with your customers and learn about their key pain points, not just to directly promote your products. If you want to get more out of your marketing, you must work hard to solve problems for your customers.

There are probably a lot of businesses out there that sell similar products to yours, so you need to stand out. That is something you can accomplish by instilling trust in your community and assisting your followers with issues that are unique to them.

Invite your community to join you in assisting others with such problems. Promote user-generated content on your social media channels as well; this is how you build loyalty and provide genuine value.

4. Give generously

Motivate your community members to share their own content and start interesting conversations on your social profiles. Offering incentives, such as coupons or giveaways, is one way to accomplish this. Another method is to share user-generated content and highlight valuable contributors.

Analyze your social media data to determine your top contributors. These are the people in charge of driving traffic to your website. The more feedback signals you receive – such as shares or comments – the more likely it is that the social platform will show your posts to a larger percentage of your followers.

Make content for your most active users. Be generous and personalize all of your communications. That’s how you cultivate relationships and make fans feel included in the community that surrounds your brand.

Don’t forget to keep the lines of communication open and to respond to your followers as soon as they reach out to you.

5. Pay attention to your audience.

To create a social media community, you must create content that your target audience wants to consume. That’s why your first step should be to figure out what they want, which can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

Make a quick video and ask your fans what they want to discuss. When your community responds, follow up by implementing new initiatives based on what they requested.

Put your followers and their wants and needs at the forefront of your social media strategy. To increase engagement, actively listen to their social chatter.

Rather than asking your followers to share photos of the products they bought, ask them to share content that demonstrates what your products have enabled them to do.

Make your social media channels about lifestyle rather than just products or services. Purely promotional content will, without a doubt, reduce engagement. Provide your fans with behind-the-scenes content that reveals the inner workings of your company or how your product is developed. This is how you take your brand to the next level and build a community of people who share a common goal.

6. Be truthful

People prefer to do business with companies they can rely on. Admitting your mistakes when they occur is a smart way to build trust in your business. There is no such thing as a perfect company. And some people forget that being open and honest pays off.

If you admit your flaws and offer transparency in the face of criticism, you will gain a lot of followers by demonstrating your willingness to listen and adapt. On the other hand, if you try to cover up a bad situation or avoid the issue, you will be destroying that trust. To gain fan loyalty, show the human side of your company.

Building a community on social media is a great opportunity for brands, but it is about much more than just promotion. You have a good chance of engaging existing customers and increasing your bottom line in terms of prospects and exposure with a little bit of effort and creativity.