Creating Community On Social Media

Social media is meant to be just that, social.

It sounds simple, but more often than not, businesses view and use social media as just another channel to sell something to someone.

Social media is so much more powerful than that. It’s a place to communicate your company's voice, story and values. It’s also a place to build and engage with an authentic community. The most impactful and engaging posts we create for our clients often have nothing to do with selling a particular product or service and consist of community impact, local partnerships, or giving the audience a greater insight into a companies’ story.

The key to social media is consistency and frequency.

To start, define the three core components of your business that you want to communicate.

For most businesses this includes:

• Their product(s) or service(s).

• Their employees and company culture.

• A community impact, involvement, or partnership.

Your core business components may vary, but those three are what we’ve identified to be effective for most businesses. The most powerful posts are ones that incorporate all three of those elements. You won’t hit all three with every post, but having guidelines for your company to follow, will more effectively tell your company's story and help to develop brand recognition. Having guidelines also helps to set the standard for anyone managing your social media.

As part of your social media guidelines, you should also identify the voice of your company. This can be done by identifying what your business offers, its values, and its philosophy and determining how that will be conveyed through social media. Do you want your business to be fun, carefree, and quirky? Or does it make more sense for your business’s voice to be serious and professional?

We recommend posting two to three times per week, incorporating a mix of posts that include the core elements you’ve defined.

If you’re a restaurant, for example, you don’t just want to post pictures of food day after day. Instead, post a picture of your special, then a post highlighting one of your employees, then a post talking about a partnership you have with a vendor or a way you're involved and giving back to the community.

View work we’ve done for Ginger to get a sense of how this can look.

Include a call to action as frequently as possible.

As often as possible you want to include a call to action in your posts on social media. A call-to-action directs people to do something; visit your website, share your post, tag a friend, get involved, etc.

Include high-quality content.

There’s absolutely no substitution for high-quality photos and videos on social media. Studies have found that people only spend 1.7 seconds on a piece of content before moving on. You have to catch people’s attention first, before they’ll take the time to read what you have to say.

You’ve posted on social media, now what.

Engage! Social media is a two-way street and the algorithm on most platforms (the thing that decides what content other people see and when they see it) rewards back and forth communication. Your foremost goal on social media should be to create an authentic community around your business or brand. Respond to comments and messages, show people you’re active on the platform and that you appreciate that they’re engaging with your content.

How to measure a successful post on social media.

There are several Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that you can glean from social media posts. The most common are Likes, Comments, Shares, and Reach.

The most important indicator of a successful post on social media is engagement. Engagement is any action that a person performs on your post, including; Likes, Comments, Shares, Photo clicks, Link clicks, etc. All of these KPI’s should be considered when evaluating a social media post.

Likes - The number of people that pressed like on your post.

Comments - The number of comments on your post.

Shares - The number of times someone shared your post.

Reach - The number of unique users that your post reached.

Overview

• View social media as a way to create a community.

• Identify your business’s core competencies and company voice.

• Develop Social Media Guidelines.

• Maintain consistency and frequency by posting a minimum of 2-3 times a week.

• Include a call to action.

• Engage with your community.

• Evaluate your efforts.

Have questions or want to discuss your social media strategy?