Are you eager to expand your online presence?
Does building your social media audience feel overwhelming?
In today’s fast-paced online environment, expanding your reach is critical. Not only will it establish credibility, but also professional relevance.
To grab the attention of your target market, you must create a group of raving fans committed to sharing your mission and vision.
But how can you do that without it feeling like a full-time job?
You learn from the best, and in my opinion, no one is more qualified than Peg Fitzpatrick. Peg is the head of social media for Canva and the social media “enhancer” behind Guy Kawasaki’s amazing online brand.
Peg manages a social community of over ten million followers. An incredible feat and one that she juggles daily with grace, wit and humor.
I know you’ll gain an enormous amount of insight from her post, so lets dive in!
Grow Your Social Media Audience
What Are Communities?
A community is a place where people can connect online to talk about things that they have in common. It can also be a tribe of people who long to be connected and want to communicate with others and share ideas.
An online community can be a Google+ community, Facebook Group, LinkedIn Group, Sub Reddit, Twitter stream, or any combination of the above. Building a huge social following can often lead people to long for a deeper connection and communities can fill this need.
From Seth Godin in Tribes,
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
There are many reasons that you may want to start a community. Your company may want to organize a fan base, talk with other people who love photography, or discuss work-related topics such as how to manage employees or keeping up with the latest regulations in your industry.
Communities can be purely social, but should have a foundation to keep the intentions of the group clear. Leadership is needed within a community and the goals of the community should be transparent to all the members.
Leaders need to be ready to make bold decisions. Changing things requires active thinkers who are ready to push the envelope and do something unique. Building a future something requires actions that haven’t been taken before. Get ready to step forward and build your social network with a community!
Navigating Social Media to Find Your Community
- Use social media listening to find your fan base. You are listening to people on social media, right?
- Keyword searches for relevant topics can help you find like-minded people.
- I use Social Mention, Sprout Social, Google alerts, Topsy, and Social Bro.
Starting and Managing a Group of Your Own
- Pick the best platform for your community: Google+ community, Facebook Group or LinkedIn Group. Each platform has a different environment and social base.
- A community is like a puppy. Cute and adorable but lots of work! Choose wisely before you start a community.
- Setup up guidelines for the community.
- Stick to the rules and be fair.
- Find other people who are passionate about the community to be co-moderators.
“Great leaders don’t try to please everyone. Great leaders don’t water down their message in order to make the tribe a bit bigger. Instead, they realize that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be.” ― Seth Godin
Why Finding or Building a Community is Useful
- Creating an online tribe or community helps people stay connected and interested online.
- Starting a community can build a sense of belonging with your blog or company.
- Build your area of expertise and thought leadership by offering valuable information to your community.
- Build relationships that could turn into future clients.
- Referrals from community members.
Engaging With and Participating in Community Discussions
- Leave notifications on for the community so you can monitor it closely.
- Get email updates from community but filter them into a Gmail folder.
- Post interesting and relevant content into your community.
- Allow conversations to flow in the community – don’t hop on every post.
If your goal is to build leads and get clients from a community, you don’t want to start a community of people who do the same thing that you do because this won’t lead to work. You’ll end up with the puppy to clean up after and a lot of time wasted on socializing without a goal.
This can be a problem for many entrepreneurs as they try to connect but aren’t building the foundation that creates lead referrals and future clients. You don’t want to end up fishing in the goldfish bowl, you need to be out in the ocean for new leads and future business.
Having a clear social media strategy is important to make sure that you’re moving forward and not spending time entertaining other people for the sake of leading a community.
Some Common Community Rules
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- No link litter.
- Short version: link litter is dropping just the link or only one sentence.
- Use the proper category when posting.
- Be respectful of the community and its members.
- Add value to the group by posting quality content and engaging with other posts.
- If you don’t follow the community guidelines, your post may be removed and you may be banned from the community.
- Don’t create off topic posts. Communities have a focus that you should stick to.
Community Tips: How to Manage a Community from Ronnie Bincer
Google has some advice for Community Owners and Moderators. An excerpt from what you’ll see when you visit the help doc:
- Tips for a successful community
- Promote your community as a place where people can have conversations and share ideas
- Participate in conversations by posting, leaving comments and +1’ing posts
- Celebrate and engage with your members
- Add moderators and invite them to manage content and share regularly
- Add categories to help guide discussions
- Listen to and learn from your community’s members
Final Thoughts
Communities can be a great place to build an online network of colleagues and friends. I hope this gives you some ideas for your community building strategies.
Communities are a lot of work but they can be worth it!
Many communities start well but end soon, in the constant work and energizing this secret. Btw, we’re thinking of launching a program to identify, acknowledge, and reward users that are the most active and contribute to our community forums. Do you have suggestions? Thanks!
Great post, Rebekah! I feel so sorry for bloggers out slogging their way online without the support of communities and groups and tribes to help them along and to give them moral support. How solitary and isolating that would be.
I have found a few great communities that I love and am looking for a few more to connect with. I love the value and camaraderie they bring into my day. After working on client work all day, I rarely have the juice to promote myself or work on my own projects. I need communities for that kick in the hindquarters to do it anyway.
When you and Peg put your heads together, great stuff like this come up. Aren’t you glad G+ Communities don’t require Authorship to be effective? There’s something for everyone under the sun. This piece was a good reminder on why its a good move to pop out of the Stream and engage with other like minded Plussers in the Community space.
So true Neil and you’re a great example of that. You are constantly interacting and staying top of mind. Great job practicing what you preach!
Hi Rebekah,
It’s so funny that I found your article today. Is there such think as luck? LOL…
Anyway, yesterday I signed a coaching agreement around the subject of community and how to use your website and blog as a hub and then define who you want your community to be.
Based on that will determine a lot about where you initially find them on social media, directories, blogs, forums, videos, etc.
The key is to connect, share, and help them build their community of raving fans.
That’s where you really nailed it for me. If we offer the right value to the right people and earn raving fans; they will help do the work for us. I LOVE that you mentioned that. So many leave it out and yet it is the most important thing!
I have never thought about creating my own social media community. I’m so busy and overwhelmed there is just no way I could pull that off right now. As my audience grows however I think it would be a really good idea.
I loved your post Rebekah. I hope you have an amazing holiday weekend!
~ Don Purdum
I love when the exact right thing shows up exactly when we need it Don!
Communities are an excellent opportunity, but running your own can be a big undertaking. You’re doing so much now, I’d say stick with what’s working.
Once you feel you can take on one more thing, then take that next step. Until then, keep doing what you’re doing!
Hi Rebekah!
Thanks for the great post! I am part of a few communities and have developed some wonderful relationships with people.
I am glad that you discussed Google Plus. I find that many communities on Facebook tend to get very spammy after awhile.
I am preparing to start a community and these tips are just what I needed!
thanks again
Lisa
Hi Lisa! I love Google+ communities and do agree that FB groups have become more than a little spammy.
There are still a few that I’m a part of that offer value, but for the most part, they’re one big marketing/promotional platform. Whereas, with G+ communities, I find the content shared is of enormous value to the entire community.
Hi Rebekah,
Thanks for this awesome post, really well described.
Personally, I find Twitter really engaging and it’s the most active community I believe. Need to work on G+ though
It’s all about finding what works best for you Dhiraj. There’s no one size fits all strategy in social media. If Twitter is where you’re finding the most success, stick with it!
Thanks for this great post RR & PF. I will be sharing this with my community tonight.
Awesome Debi – thank you!
Great post, and very helpful for those of us just gearing up and determined to do it “right” the first time.
Thank you!
Hi Krista! Communities are a lot of fun and very worthwhile. Enjoy yourself as you get started!
Hi Rebekah,
I think this is very smart. Communities are great and they can be a huge traffic boost. If you are in the branding industry, communities goes a long way!
Personally, I think G+ community is probably one of the MOST active ones I ever seen!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this dear friend!
They really do go a long way in establishing rapport and credibility Reginald. I agree on how active they can be. Great leaders = great content and a terrific group of people!
I absolutely love the idea of building an engaged social media following through Google+ communities. This is one of the surest ways to get more engagement on your social activities.
I’ve got my own community on Google+ and sometimes though, it seems that there is a lack of engagement there. I need to step up the game a bit with these tips.
I’ve been in love with Communities since their roll out Wade. There’s so much opportunity to meet and connect with other industry professionals. And of course, there’s always the opportunity to connect with potential clients.
They really are a veritable wonderland for businesses large and small!
Rebekah – Thank you for letting me share this with your amazing blog readers!
Total fun note: we met in a Facebook group! 🙂
Thank YOU Peg for sharing your super smarts with my readers. I love having you on the blog!
Hi Rebekah,
What an awesome post! Loved it 🙂
I think it’s one of the most comprehensive ones I’ve read about how one can grow our audience through communities. I’m not there on all of the ones you mentioned, but the few on Facebook and Google plus are awesome. Yes, you do need to take out time to interact and connect with others, rather than just link-drop and run, that’s the only way you build relationships, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing this with us. I’d surely be sharing this ALL over – have a nice week ahead 🙂
Hi Harleena! It is just one more thing to add to the “to-do” list, but it’s well worth the time in my opinion.
Thank you as always for stopping by and sharing!!