With social media, customers are given closer personal access to businesses than ever before, expectations for what constitutes a great customer experience has changed. This change in expectations of great customer experience is rewarded with sales and loyalty. Because of this, community management has become a popular buzzword in marketing circles.
Community can bring a sense of belonging for customers and provide a space for them to get their questions answered and build authentic relationships with businesses. As you start to build your own social media community management for your business, keep these do’s and don’ts in mind.
Do keep the bigger picture in mind
Community management is all about the bigger picture of your customer’s experience. This means accounting for things like customer support, transparency, customer engagement, and creating valuable content.
If you’re not seeing immediate results, don’t let that deter you from continuing a strong community management approach.
Don’t make it all about you
The biggest difference between social media marketing and community management is the shift of focus from your business to your customers.
With this in mind, it’s important to remember to not make it all about your business’ offerings. Instead, focus on your customer’s needs and desires by providing value through your content. Post things like helpful tips, fun facts, and of course, user-generated content.
Do post regularly and interact with your community
Being consistent with your posts and interactions with your community helps to build trust and eventually that sense of loyalty we all strive to obtain. Answer questions, respond to comments, and ask your customers for their input.
To keep up with regular postings, create a marketing plan and schedule your content ahead of time.
Don’t focus too heavily on sales
As we said before, community management is different from social media marketing and it shouldn’t feel too salesy. Not only can this leave a bad impression with your customers, it can actually push them away.
Balance sales-focused marketing approaches with posts that focus on customer appreciation (like giveaways and contests) as well as customer outreach (like questionnaires, AMA's).
We always recommend focusing on the customer first by pairing great content with community engagement to help your business stand out and grow online, so building a community management strategy might be what your business is missing.
To learn more, get our customer service tips to enhance your customer experience.
