How To Build A Community On Social Media

Having 10,000 followers means absolutely nothing if those 10,000 people wouldn’t swipe up, comment, or actually buy something from you/ convert. A lot of social media “gurus” won’t tell you that building a following and building a community are two completely different games. A following is transactional. It’s “here’s my content, consume it, bye.” A community is relational. It’s people who recognise each other in your comments. It’s inside jokes, regulars who show up every time you post, and that weird but wonderful energy where strangers start defending your brand from trolls before you even wake up to see the notification.

Community is the only thing that actually cuts through the algorithm noise anymore. When your engagement is high because people genuinely want to be there, the platforms notice. They show your content to more people because apparently, you’re “interesting” now. But more importantly, when you have a community, you’re not starting from zero every time you launch a product or ask for support. You’re not begging. You’re just… letting people who already love you know that there’s something new to love.

The problem is, you can’t buy community. You can’t hack it. You can’t run an ad that says “please form emotional connections with my brand.” It has to be built, slowly, awkwardly, authentically, one reply at a time. It means actually talking back. It means creating content that starts conversations instead of just broadcasting announcements.

While bigger, well-known businesses might have the power and the budget to be able to get a lot more visibility on digital platforms, small businesses can level the playing field with their content, personal touch and how well they know their target audience.

How, you ask? By building a community on social media of course. Keep reading to find out how you can use your community to create a successful business:

Stay Consistent

It’s so easy to get disheartened by social media when things don’t go your way. There will be a test and learn phase with your content but once you know what works for you, you just have to remember to keep up with it. Stay consistent with the frequency of your posts, your brand tone of voice and the information you share with your followers. The more people get used to it, the more likely they’ll develop a sense of loyalty to your brand which is the first step to building a community.

As a small business, you might have less time on your hands to spend on social media but your biggest advantage is that you are your brand. So tell your story, be yourself and people will love seeing the personal side to your brand.

Communicate

Start communicating with your audience by listening to them. Listen to their questions, problems and worries to be able to understand them better and create more customised content. By creating relevant content that answers your customers’ questions, gives them advice, shows them you appreciate them, you’ll be encouraging them to keep following you and engaging with your posts.

The ongoing communication you’ll have with your audience will build trust, which will eventually lead to loyal customers.

Add Value

Your promotional post that only talks about how good your product is, is not the reason people want to follow you. Sure, you need to do that too, but remember people will only keep following you if you’re providing them with value.

If you own a small business, this should be pretty easy since the business you own would most likely be around something you’re passionate about. Let’s say you own a dog grooming products business, if you keep posting how good your dog shampoo smells or how natural your paw balm is, people will unfollow you at one point because it’s not a piece of information that helps them care for their dogs. However, if you were talking about what would help certain skin conditions, or giving people advice on how to cut their dog’s nails, you would be giving your audience a reason to keep following you.

Once they start asking for advice from you on certain subjects, that’s when you know they look at you as a credible source and that is one massive step towards building a community.

Get your audience involved

The quickest way to get people to start feeling loyal to your brand is to get them involved. You can do this by asking them for ideas or creating a competition that requires them to create and share their own content. This would firstly lead to you having free re-shareable content created for you but also when you share user-generated content, that user automatically becomes involved in your brand and even start advocating for your brand.

This is such a simple thing to start doing. Just tell people to tag you in their photos if they’d like to be featured on your page. Once they start doing this, re-share these posts on your stories or simply re-post them to your timeline. This will not only make that specific user have positive feelings towards your brand, but it will also encourage other people to do the same as they’ll know they have a chance of being re-posted by you.

As a small business, if you used to rely on physical events like trade shows to grow your business, you might want to start thinking about switching to the biggest virtual event there is, social media. The good thing about it is that this event can’t be cancelled.

Start building your community on social media with these quick tips, because that community can be worth 1000 events if you use it properly.