Social media is all about interaction, engagement and building relationships with different communities online. When you learn how to properly nurture these communities, it improves your marketing strategies, and makes for a loyal readership of long term buyers. Today we're going to explore how to strengthen these ties within your various social communities.
Behave Like a Friend
Your goal when interacting with your community, is to behave like a friend. What I mean by this is that you need to treat your fans less like objectives, and more like real people, who are in your life for a reason. Friends are always available to help, they're easy to talk to and quite frankly - you want to hang out with them.
If you can become a friend to your community, then it will go a long way. Friends are more likely to buy from friends, because they want to show their support. Eighty percent of the time, your interaction with your communities needs to be from the standpoint of an educated friend.
The Personal Factor
When you publish content, and assist your community with problems, you need to illustrate your point with stories, drawn from personal experience. Your fans will eventually get to know more about you, because you are actively infusing your content with that 'personal' factor.
Some of the best blogs in the world became successful, because the person behind the content approached it from a personal angle. You want to interest your fans in your advice, and advice is better received from a real person, with real experiences.
Be Present and Interactive
Constant presence is important to social communities. It's vital that you spend as much time as you can with each community, so that it can grow and gain momentum. That said, interaction is equally as important. Follow your fan's businesses or pages, and be active on them as well.
Continually come up with new ways to engage your audience. A community will only interact with you, if they have a reason to do so. This means interesting content, multimedia and social apps are all part of your long term strategy. They want to DO things on your pages, so give them things to do, and be generous with your time.
Every social community is different, so don't approach them all in the same manner. Your content will need to change according to the platform you're using. Focus on your core social media pages, or alternate between them. Get to know your Facebook community better for a few weeks, then switch to your Youtube community, for example. Fans love to know that you are available because you want to be, not strictly because it's your job and you exist to make money.
If you've been struggling to build your social communities, then you need to adopt the 'giving' attitude. The more time, effort or free stuff you give away to your communities, the more they will give back to your business. Whether it results in interaction, sales, word of mouth marketing or widespread content sharing, is up to them.
How do you build relationships with people in your social communities? We'd love to hear more about your social strategy, below!