By Kent Huffman, Author of 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success
Building a loyal community of fans and followers is not a snap-your-finger deal. You have to put the “right stuff” out there to attract and grow an audience, and you’ll have to continually nurture the crop before it bears any fruit. But the payoff for that investment can be significant.
Where to begin, you ask? Start by identifying key influencers and cultivating individual relationships with them that you can later aggregate into a group of people who share common interests. This is your foundation—the heartbeat of your social media marketing activity. These relationships will become the core of your community and will help you expand its reach and contribute to its growth and influence.
The key to aggregation is providing quality content to your community that interests your target audience—content that’s informational in nature, not a sales pitch. And make sure that content is always relevant to your strategy and your followers. Effective connections with your audience are built when you provide information that’s based on understanding your market segment and your community’s needs, and by presenting those relevant morsels in a concise, easy-to-digest way.
And make it easy for your community members to share your content with their other communities. This will help dramatically expand your reach. Also, you don’t have to create all the content yourself; instead, promote the submission of user content from within your community, so everyone who wants to get involved is able to do so.
Yes, community building can be difficult, mainly because it requires determination, dedication, and grit—and a lot of time. But it’s key to your longevity in social media.
(This is an excerpt from Kent’s new book, 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success.)
Next: 8 Mandates for Social Media Marketing Success—#7: Ensure Value
