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Nowadays, social media appears to be a highly competitive space for building media presence due to its wide popularity. At the same time, social media is a valuable asset in driving quality traffic and attracting new customers to your business.
Growing and managing a successful and thriving social media community is a hard nut to crack. If you are just pumping up content and there is no engagement in response, you might be doing something wrong.
The real solution is to develop a strategic approach and to apply all the possible tricks beginning with email signature software up to community management automation tools one by one. Furthermore, a deep understanding of the target audience is what frequently allows you to build valuable relationships.
Here we`ll go through 6 easy to follow steps to growing and nurturing your online communities.
Choose a social media channel depending on your target audience
Any social media community starts with a clear understanding of an audience. It should unite. Developing a detailed customer persona is the foundation of future community success. As it is essential both for attracting the right people and creating compelling content.
A key question for you to answer in this respect ‘How to optimize the marketing investments, content, and business impact by reaching the right prospects via the right channels?’
Here are five simple questions you should start with:
- Who is your target buyer?
- Where is your target buyer?
- Where are your competitors?
- Are there any geographical factors you need to take into account?
- How many channels can you do well?
Sometimes the answer to which social media you should use to build your community is right in front of you. If you are in the position of giving multiple social networks a shot at the same time, just look at how many visits your website gets through each one of them. This small trick helps to narrow down and concentrate on the most promising social network.
Invite to the community through your other marketing channels
The social media community is a powerful marketing tool bringing new prospects to your brand every day. The average ROI that online communities are generating is 6,469%. Just imagine turning this number to the benefit of your brand.
To achieve these efficient and valuable results, your online community needs promotion. Promoting your online community is like promoting your product. Therefore the following opportunities will work well in this case:
Your website is your brand’s face. Inviting people to your social media community, you want your face to be appealing and demonstrate hospitality. Therefore, consider adding a social interaction CTA to your website.
The email marketing campaign is another excellent opportunity to reach your old contact and invite them to the newly created community. Furthermore, you can use emails to keep your clients updated on the community news.
Invite people who may be generally interested in your business via appealing email signature. A handwritten signature piece crafted via the draw signature app and a clear CTA button can bring numerous new members to your community as well.
Set community rules
As the community’s primary aim is to ensure proper communication with your customers and reinforce your brand authority, community operation rules and norms are a must. Having an inconsistent moderation policy or failing to resolve some miscommunication issues may negatively affect your brand reputation.
Therefore the introduction of clear guidelines and moderation rules is essential to prevent controversy. To make everything clear from the beginning, start with outlining your community purpose in line with your brand values.
Besides stating what is not allowed in your community, don`t forget to mention what is permitted and even encouraged. Active communication and interaction with the audience can guarantee you a front seat to audience suggestions and complaints. Make sure you are an active listener and open to change.
Engage with your audience
Natural sharing platforms encourage active interaction between brands and community members. Furthermore, they provide a wide range of opportunities to facilitate this interaction and make it more engaging. This engagement may include likes and favorites, comments, replies, shares, republications, saves, click, and mentions.
Respond to all comments and questions
Direct communication via response to comments, questions, and requirements is the most time-consuming part, which requires a strategic approach. However, it is quite worth the effort, as answering a complaint on social media can increase customer advocacy by as much as 25%.
It may seem intimidating to respond to various questions or feedback, significantly negative, publicly, but if you manage to do it correctly, your customers will appreciate it.
Post regularly and high-quality content only
Having identified your target audience and social media platform that would work best for your brand, you need to work on your content strategy. As we all know, content is king.
Your social media calendar should be well-planned in advance to ensure a constant information flow for your customers. Furthermore, your content encourages community members to buy first and buy again and again.
As you work and post, do not forget to evaluate what works best for your audience. Your social media analytics has valuable insight for you. Keep in mind, what is scheduled gets done, what is measured gets improved.
Choose community management automation tool
Managing and growing your social media community is a complex and time-consuming process. Along with efforts, it also requires the performance of multiple tasks and tracking metrics simultaneously.
Fortunately, there is a wide choice of community management software and tools that cater to social media activities and customer experience. Among key benefits of the online automation tools there are:
- Sustainable customer retention
- Improved brand reputation
- Reduced support costs
- Real-time customer feedback
To purchase the automation tool that would suit your brand community perfectly, keep in mind the following factors: integration capabilities, ease of use, privacy, security, and price.
Conclusion
Social media communities play an essential role in brand awareness building, leads numbers, and conversion increase. With the right channel, clear policy, and moderation, they can be a valuable tool for direct and informal communication with your audience.
Growing social media community encourages active interaction, collaboration feedback, and trustful relations between the brand itself and the community members.
