There’s a lot of talk these days about community building as marketing strategy. One of the main components is growing a social media following. The same marketing and community management best practices hold true for most every social site from Facebook to YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, and beyond.
Here are our 6 community management tips for your social media accounts.
1. Create a Community Persona
Social media is personal and as such it’s important that your customers feel they are interacting with real people. Let your social media team members show a little bit of their own personalities – real or cultivated. Depending on the company voice they could be professional experts, a fun friend, or anything in between. You may want them to sign off posts with their name or a team name.
2. Maintain Company Branding
While it’s great to have fun with social accounts, it’s important to maintain branding throughout. Never post something that doesn’t fit with the company mission. Don’t misrepresent the brand or post something publicly that wouldn’t be sent privately.
3. Be Responsive
Community management is actually customer service in disguise! It’s vital to respond to every comment, good and bad, every time someone posts on your social accounts. Thank customers for praise, ohh and ahh over their photos and videos, respond to any needs just as you would if they contacted the company directly. Stick strictly to customer service policy when it comes to negative comments.
4. Deliver Exciting Content
This is why you have social accounts in the first place! Mix up videos, photos, links, product/service information, and interesting internal or external content that fits your brand and community. If you generate your own content like videos or blogs (and you should), this is it’s time to shine! But don’t be afraid to post content from other companies or sites. As long as they’re not a competitor!
5. Encourage Community Engagement
This may be the most important aspect of community management. Ask questions in posts. Ask for help or opinions. Set up calls to action for photos and videos. Host contests and post polls. Every time someone interacts with your page or posts it will show in their own feed and is spread to their friends and contacts. It’s essentially free advertising, and it’s vital in growing your following.
6. Try New Things
Don’t be afraid to mix things up! Try a new hashtag, change cover photos, sign off posts differently, play with post length, timing, and frequency. Social media is always changing and it’s easy to get left behind. Staying creative and new will energize your community and your employees.
Good stuff right? We hope you learned a bunch and encourage you to get out there and apply these tips to your own network. Feel free to leave a comment with your own thoughts or tips on how to best manage your accounts.
As always, if you are feeling inspired to get out there and build your own community, we encourage you to check out SocialEngine. Let us help you make your dreams of building your own social network a reality.
