Social Community: Tips for Building an Active Online Community

Most companies would love to have a strong social media community built around their brand. Having a community of people who are fans of your company and are actively engaged with it online can be invaluable, as they then become your allies in spreading the word to their friends and bringing in new customers.

Few companies have this kind of following, though, because they do not put forth the time and effort to nourish it.

Providing Value
People will only join and engage in an online community if that community provides some kind of value to them. That value could come in the form of useful information, entertainment, relationships or savings. The value threshold is not necessarily very high, as the cost of participating in an online community is just a little bit of time and attention. But, it does have to compete with everything else that is clamoring for that time and attention.

So how can you provide value to customers through the social media community?

• Don’t focus on selling. Don’t make it appear that you are only interested in their immediate value to you by turning the community into a sales trap. People do not join a community to be sold to, and will quickly tire of it and opt out. The one exception to this is if you are providing discounts or special offers that they cannot get anywhere else, as that provides a real and tangible value to the community members. 
• Provide valuable content. Content is valuable if it helps them save time or money, is entertaining, or is inspirational. You know that your customers are interested in whatever it is that you sell, and you are an expert in that field. So share the latest news in your industry; provide tips or tricks that can help them in their job, hobby or lifestyle; and start discussions on related topics of interest. 
• Be responsive. When someone does engage with you through social media, respond to them in a timely manner. Social media can be used to resolve customer complaints or serve as a help desk. These are functions you need to provide anyway; doing them through the online community can actually save time and provide public answers for common questions.
• Don’t censor. Or at least, keep it to a minimum. If you want people to engage in the community, they have to feel free to speak their minds. 
• Have a personality. That doesn't mean you have to be quirky or funny (unless your company is quirky or funny). But your company does have a culture or a public persona, and your customers want to engage with that personality. 
• Make it personal. Be a part of the community, and build some actual relationships with the people there. 
• Be seen. You won't even have an online community to engage with if people do not know about it. So promote it. Encourage visitors to connect on social media and share your content with their own networks. And make sure you are easy to find online by optimizing your pages for the search engines and social network search.

Provide value for the community, and the community will provide value for you--working on your behalf through referrals and recommendations, or even coming to your defense when others are critical of your company. And by being actively engaged with you in the virtual world, they will most likely become regular, long-term customers in the real world as well.

*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net