Community Management on social media is much like maintaining connections within your group of friends. Whether you are just starting out with just a few hundred followers, or balancing thousands of fans, the premise is the same: focus on what makes your audience unique and demonstrate genuine care in your posts and interactions. Here are the top five Community Management tips to get you on your way to better social networking and marketing practice:
Listen
If you want to effectively communicate with your audience, then you must know your audience. Social Listening is a monitoring process to find out what is being said on the Internet about your company. Understanding your audience’s interest in your brand helps tailor your interactions to better meet reader needs. There are several free tools available for brands looking to listen to their audience; some include Google Alerts (regular, keyword-relevant updates via email), Mention (keyword alerts, activities dashboard, and influencer review), and Addict-o-matic (searches multiple platforms including search engines and social media, aggregates results onto a dashboard).
Tone
While studying your social listening results, try to get a feel for your audience’s discussion tone. If you want your message to translate, you must speak their language. Mirroring your audience’s tone can also help encourage engagements!
Show Appreciation
Use your manners when your fans and followers share your content. If you get a retweet on Twitter, it only takes seconds to say, “Thank you!” This is important for small communities because it keeps you relevant and grows your reach, but large communities will also benefit by appearing engaging and more approachable. A follower who feels appreciated is a follower more likely to return.
Share
Your fans follow your community because they are interested in your brand, product, or mission—right? Yes. But, as you will learn from your social listening, your fans are also interested in other, ideas and discussions relevant to your business and industry. Grow your content community by following and sharing from industry influencers. Your followers will appreciate the additional information, and you will be further defined as a knowledgeable resource—which is great for when you share your own marketing campaigns!
Bring it Home
Make sure your social media communities are always an open door to your website. Fill in all profile fields with contact information, set up calls-to-action wherever possible, give your readers direct links and content from your site, and keep them abreast of site changes. Managing your social media community is a lot of work, but if you are passionate about your brand, it will be a true labor of love. You will get to meet new people, and you will soon discover that your audience is a great resource for content inspiration and business reflections!
Thanks for reading! If all this talk of community building has you excited, we’d encourage you to check out SocialEngine. The best way to build your social network.
