Creating a community of followers is one of the basic steps to growing your brand on social media. It brings together a group of people who share an interest in knowing your business offering. Managing an active social media community has become an integral part of social media strategy these days. An active community of followers offers valuable data and insights for improving the products or services.
Why Should Businesses Focus on Building An Online Community?
Having a dedicated online community brings multiple benefits to businesses. It improves the engagement rate significantly and establishes a personal connection between the brand and the customer. It offers an opportunity to learn about what your customers expect from your brand or whether your brand can meet their expectations. You can listen to the conversations about the brand and make changes wherever possible in your business strategy for further growth.
Furthermore, online communities help to humanize the brand by having personal and real connections with the customers. They will stay closely connected to your brand when you can provide instant customer support through communities. Many times, the community members will help each other in understanding the products or services better. They will try to provide support to each other and resolve issues related to using the product which will ease up the task of your customer support team.
5 Tips For Building An Online Community Organically
Given its various benefits, building a thriving and engaging community is at the top of the minds of marketers these days. When it comes to small businesses, their social media strategies would often be restrained by budget. The good news is you can build a strong online community organically with focused efforts. If you are looking for ideas to build a community of followers, here are a few tips to consider.
Choose The Right Platform
There are multiple social media platforms with different features. Mostly, businesses are tempted to build a strong presence on all these platforms to reap the benefits. That’s not the right strategy, especially if you want to build your brand reach organically. Pinpoint your target audience and identify which platforms they are spending time on. You can dedicatedly focus on specific platforms and optimize the brand’s profile for maximum visibility.
Have A Strong Content Strategy
For increasing your organic reach and build a community of followers, you need to develop a well-thought-out content strategy. You can even ask your audience what type of content they are expecting from you with relevance to the business. Once you know more about your target audience, you can develop engaging content accordingly. A proper content strategy that is interesting, relevant, and engaging to the target group is sure to boost the brand visibility and broaden the community.
Respond To Comments
Customers feel connected to your brand when they know their opinions and suggestions are heard and recognized. When you post interesting content, it will create engagement from the target group. By responding to the comments and suggestions of the followers, you can uplift the social media community. Not only it motivates them to engage with your brand further but also increases the visibility and organic reach.
Be Approachable And Accessible
Another strategy to strengthen the social media community is by being accessible and approachable to your customers. They feel more confident about your brand which further helps to build trust and authenticity. These days authenticity is one of the major factors that customers look for while making a buying decision. Moreover, your followers will more likely stay connected to your brand if they get timely responses and resolutions to their concerns.
Listen To Your Customers
Social listening is all about tracking the mentions of your brand on social media. Not only it helps to gain relevant business insights, but also allows you to grow your online community. Regardless of positive or negative comments, you can respond to the mentions about your brand and invite the users to become a part of the community. Furthermore, identifying negative comments quickly and resolving them can help you build the brand image as well.
If your business is contemplating building a social media community organically, our experts can help. Get in touch with the team at Fresh Content Society today for further discussion!
