How to Show Love to Your Community | Pt. 3
Let's take a minute to learn how to build authentic online connections.
We’ve talked about how to show up online and ways to show your work, now it’s time to show the love!
Community can mean many different things, but in this case, I’m talking about your target audience ie: the people you are trying to reach or serve.
People often think a lot of social media followers automatically means community. That’s not always the case. Many accounts have a large following, but when they’re ready to hit up their community to take action or buy their product/service — *crickets*
Repeat after me: “Followers do not equal Funds.”
The number of followers you have will increase your reach but the personal connection is key for conversion.
Start building authentic social connections with these steps:
Engage via the basics - like, comment, and share
Meet your audience where they are! Take 30 minutes each day to reply to every comment and/or DM. Utilize your explore page to find similar accounts in your niche/space to like and share their content. Not only do you want to engage with your people, but you also want to connect with peers who have similar interests. As the amazing Issa Rae says, “It's really about networking across.”
Understand their wants and needs
As you post content consistently, pay attention to what your audience responds to. Utilize engagement tools such as polls and Q&As to understand what their needs are. Review your analytics on each platform to determine what content performs best. This will help you better understand and meet the needs of your community.
Find ways to connect off social
Remember, you don’t own these social media platforms. So if you only build your community on social, then the fate of the community you worked hard to build is in someone else’s control. & that’s no bueno.
Social is a great way to engage with your community (and in this day and age, it’s almost a requirement if you want to build an audience); however, use social as a tool to engage and then send them to your own platforms such as a newsletter or website.
Need tools on how to create your first website? Check out last week’s newsletter.
Now you have all the keys to kickstart your digital presence! This is the last newsletter for this series, but stay tuned for a new topic next week.
Have you started using some of the tools or tips I’ve mentioned over the past few weeks? Let me know how they’ve been working for you!