We reached out to different community managers to pick their brain. We received a variety of information and were able to pull a few key things out.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what we found<\/h2>\n
We wanted to know what people are doing to get engagement within their communities. So we decided to ask a few questions to help us understand how people are being successful and on which platforms.<\/p>\n
So we asked things:<\/p>\n
- \n
- What social sites are you actively using to interact with your community?<\/li>\n
- Which site do you have the most followers?<\/li>\n
- Which site do you see the most engagement on?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
We also asked a series of ranking questions in which we wanted to learn what marketers felt was most and least important in using their social platform to achieve different things. We asked 7 ranking 1(least)-10(most). An example of one, \u2018How important is your community in retaining customers?\u2019.<\/p>\n
Through all of our questions, we got some pretty clear answers. Let\u2019s dig deeper into our findings.<\/p>\n
Facebook produces both high followers and engagement<\/h3>\n
We asked respondents which platform has A) the most followers and B) the most engagement. It\u2019s no surprise that Facebook tops the list in both followers and engagement.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, while 32.3% of respondents said that Twitter had the most followers, only 19.4% said that it had the most engagement.<\/p>\n
The takeaway? Ranking platforms by their engagement\/followers yield the following outcome:<\/p>\n
![\"engagement](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/engagement_followers.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nWe found that Instagram users are by far the most engaged, while Twitter lags in engagement, likely due to the number of bot and dead accounts on the platform.<\/p>\n
A business\u2019s community is the most valuable asset<\/h3>\n
A company\u2019s community of users and customers is a valuable asset beyond the revenue they directly provide.<\/p>\n
We asked respondents to rank (0 to 10) how important community is to various functions of their company\u2019s marketing and operations, and received the following information:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Community is most important to brand awareness and word of mouth referrals<\/a>, with average rankings of 8.87 and 8.52, respectively. Most respondents agreed, with a low standard deviation in responses, especially in regards to brand awareness.<\/li>\n
- On average, community was ranked least effective at helping to recruit new employees, with an average rank of 5.48. That said, responses had one of the highest standard deviations, meaning companies are likely to find their community either very helpful or not helpful at all when sourcing new talent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
See the entire list below.<\/p>\n
![\"important](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/moretoless.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nInstagram & word of mouth<\/h3>\n
Interestingly, there is a moderate positive correlation (+0.46) between those that use Instagram to interact with their community and a recognition of the importance of community for word of mouth referrals. Combined with what we learned above about Instagram\u2019s much higher than average engagement, this makes sense.<\/p>\n
The takeaway here is that companies that build and manage communities on Instagram are rewarded with deeply engaged brand advocates. In addition, Instagram is moderately negatively correlated (-0.26) with the use of mass email for community management.<\/p>\n
Social media can help you reach your audience<\/h3>\n
Encouraging participation by utilizing social media in addition to mass email to reach your community is a great first step. And if you aren\u2019t already, it\u2019s time to start a company Instagram account. Just ensure that\u00a0you first test and refine your messaging and voice against a younger, and more internet savvy, audience.<\/p>\n
Most brand\u2019s however (17 of the 31), rely on one or more full-time community managers to do the job. Only a few of which rely on other resources like a part-time employee, or community moderators.<\/p>\n
![\"how](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/staff.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nNote that some respondents were able to choose multiple options.<\/p>\n
What community managers had to say<\/h2>\n
We wanted respondents to give us their juicy details on how they get an online community going. They definitely delivered. We learned quite a few things from how to engage and what to post in order to have a successful community.<\/p>\n
Our question was simple, and it turned out to be open enough to allow a variety of responses.<\/p>\n
The question: What’s your best strategy on starting a community from scratch?<\/strong><\/p>\n
We\u2019ve organized them by theme, and broke them into 10 sections. Here\u2019s what these community managers had to say.<\/p>\n
1. Understand who your audience is<\/h3>\n
This is imperative to getting your entire strategy right. You can\u2019t come up with content, or even a plan if you aren\u2019t sure who you\u2019re talking to.<\/p>\n
Levi Olmstead of G2 Crowd<\/a>\u00a0explains, \u201cCreate a specific niche you want to target and grow your audience from there\u201d. \u00a0He mentions that they have seen success with this strategy, \u201cWe’ve had a lot of success building an audience around social media marketing, and how you can use different platforms, like Snapchat, to grow your authority over the topic\u201d.<\/p>\n
He goes on to say, \u201cGiving unique perspectives and use cases from our expertise in software platforms, we’ve been able to grow into a significant community with noticeable engagement that’s been valuable to the company\u201d.<\/p>\n
Andrew Lacomba from MDG Advertising<\/a>\u00a0adds in, \u201cWhen starting an online community, it\u2019s critical to understand your target audience and make sure your brand comes across as an expert\u201d.<\/p>\n
He adds that \u201cRegardless of your industry, community members want a place where they can connect with other users who share the same passions and interests\u201d. \u00a0So \u201cby sharing expert knowledge and engaging with users in a relatable voice, you\u2019re encouraging an open space for conversation, learning, and sharing. This strategy ultimately increases brand awareness, attracts potential customers, and nurtures relationships with existing customers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Juicer.io’s<\/a>\u00a0Shawn Pillar makes it seem pretty easy. He says, \u201cDo your research first. Know your target audiences, stick to your brand guidelines across all platforms for consistency, create amazing content, promote your content well, and be as human as possible when interacting with followers and members online\u201d.<\/p>\n
Monina Wagner from Content Marketing Institute<\/a> agrees that \u201c You can’t start building a community until you know who you want to serve\u201d. \u00a0She says \u201cBefore you try to figure out what sites you should be on or how to get people to participate, you need to understand the needs of your target audience\u201d.<\/p>\n
She brings up a great point saying that, \u201cHow can you help them on their journey? Find a core group of people that fit your ideal. Then *ask* them what you can do. Do Skype interviews, nothing more than a handful of questions. Validate their concerns. Applaud their suggestions. Then set your community’s foundation upon that\u201d.<\/p>\n
2. Invite your friends too<\/h3>\n
Chances are you have a few friends that are interested in what you are. You can use them to further your community. As they probably have good contributions to add.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Tran from Love Eat Travel<\/a>\u00a0explains that her best strategy \u201cis to add your friends and have them recruit others\u201d.<\/p>\n
She says that \u201cWhen you start a group, make sure you lay down the ground rules so that everyone understands your brand and purpose of the group. I have a travel group on Facebook that has over 4k members. I have two moderators and we meet monthly to discuss member involvement plans and events\u201d.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t feel like you have to add everyone, she explains, \u201cIt’s always beneficial to recruit people who are invested in the same topics as you are. My moderators and I all love to travel and this has made them a great additional to Love Eat Travel\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Brilliant Team’s<\/a>\u00a0Nikki Klein adds to that with, \u201cThe most important goal in starting a group is that your mission is to add value and give back to the community, with that in mind you begin by adding your sphere and ask them to add their friends\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nikki explains, \u201cIn order to create community, you have to have a dialogue within the group and to make people feel comfortable voicing their opinions you should start conversations and ask questions about local vendors, events\u201d. A pro tip, \u201cAvoid negativity on any level from reviews to experiences. It is really important to have rules established so that there are standards and expectations for your members.<\/p>\n
3. Be sure to offer something of value<\/h3>\n
Whether you\u2019re running a business page or a fun niche page, offer something of value to followers. By providing such insight you\u2019ll gain followers simply because they want to learn about your topic.<\/p>\n
Jamie Cheng of Digital Alpha Agency<\/a>\u00a0says \u201cThe hard part is getting the people to join. You’ll have to give them a reason to join, stay, and engage\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jamie\u2019s two-step plan is this, \u201cSo first, come up with the purpose that is highly beneficial for your targeted community. The second step is to add in people who are the most active on similar groups that you’re in. These individuals are going to make your life easier and the budding community have more activities going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everywhere Agency’s<\/a>\u00a0Danica Kombol adds that \u201cCommunities come together around a need, a cause or interest\u201d. Danica explains that \u201cSelf-serving communities never work\u201d.<\/p>\n
She adds, \u201cThe same thing is true for communities designed to promote something. When launching a community, start from a zero knowledge base. Don’t assume you know what’s best for your community – ask questions. Get feedback. Experiment. Throw things up on the wall and see what sticks\u201d.<\/p>\n
Anamaria Scuric from \u00a0Travelpreneur Tribe<\/a>\u00a0agrees that \u201cYou need to create valuable content that is adjusted to their problems, so they can start seeing you as a leader\u201d. She also mentions \u201cuse attraction marketing and shows people how they can benefit from our products and services\u201d.<\/p>\n
Her last piece of advice along with understanding your audience and being consistent is \u201c You must serve your audience daily. The more they see you, the sooner they will build a trust with you\u201d.<\/p>\n
Anne Patterson of Digital Opportunity Trust<\/a>\u00a0gives insight on how to create value. She states \u201cDeveloping a digital engagement framework\/strategy is key – making sure activities are designed across reach, interest, engage, and activate cycles and that you are meaningfully connecting your audience to your assets (and co-creating value) strategically throughout all engagement activities. Providing value to your audience is the most important part of this\u201d.<\/p>\n
4. Engage in your niche<\/h3>\n
Kris Hughes from \u00a0ProjectManager.com<\/a>\u00a0explains that engaging behaviors should have a pattern. He says \u201cYour engagement behavior should be very similar from one day to the next to cultivate a loyal, and dedicated following who are primed for your message\u201d.<\/p>\n
He adds that finding your niche is essential \u201cThe most important element is identifying a laser-focused niche. All social media – but Facebook in particular – are so saturated with communities and groups from every interest under the sun, if you don’t have this focus it would be far too easy to get lost in the noise\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lastly, he explains, \u201cOnce you have identified your niche(s), it’s important to have guidelines which outline acceptable and desirable behavior from your communities. Once this is laid out, there’s nothing more important than consistency\u201d.<\/p>\n
SimScale GmbH’s<\/a>\u00a0Jousef Murad\u00a0adds on that \u201cEngagement is the key factor for successful communication\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says, \u201cIt is important to make users spend as much time as possible with the platform and interacting with your site and other community members to deepen the relationship between each other\u201d.<\/p>\n
And that \u201cAnother factor deeply influencing the community activity is gamification in the form of badges, likes, and other features. It allows you to track the most influential users and recruit them for programs to help others\u201d.<\/p>\n
Museum Hack’s<\/a>\u00a0Hayley Milliman says that \u201cThe key to starting a cohesive community is to create a place to have needed conversations. At Museum Hack, our job is both to listen to our audience AND to direct conversations. We’re not passive observers, we’re participants – albeit, participants that respect differing perspectives.<\/p>\n
Hayley says \u201cOn our social media platforms, we work to provide content that stimulates discussion\u201d. \u00a0She says \u201cWe want to make people think in new ways – whether that’s by making them laugh through a meme or posing a question that they haven’t thought about before\u201d.<\/p>\n
She even adds \u201cWe teach museums how to facilitate these types of conversations on their own platforms\u201d.<\/p>\n
5. Focus on your relationships<\/h3>\n
Stacy Caprio of \u00a0Stacy Caprio Inc<\/a>, says \u201cLeveraging relationships with and opportunities to post in other large, successful communities in your niche\u201d. \u00a0She goes on to say, \u201cYou can do this through outreach to other community owners and trade shoutouts, ask for shoutouts or pay for shoutouts, or you can take the initiative to comment and post in other successful communities\u201d.<\/p>\n
Her pro tip is, \u201cStart by posting the highest quality content out there that people are hungry for and missing in other communities\u201d. That way you can attract people, \u201cThis is a way to organically attract followers and grow your community to be full of people who actually want to be there\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lesley Lykins from Customer Experience Professionals Association agrees that connecting with the community is key. Saying, \u201cReach out and personally get to know as many of the community members as you can\u201d.<\/p>\n
She says \u201cAs a community manager, you are the one that will connect community members with one another and the more you know about each individual the more successful you’ll be when seeking to find sources for thought leadership, volunteers and just helping your community members build and strengthen their networks\u201d.<\/p>\n
Repsly’s<\/a>\u00a0Victoria Vessella gives a good tip on how to build your relationships. She says, \u201cIn terms of social media, go on a following spree for relevant accounts including customers, publications and journalists, and vendors you do business with\u201d. She adds, \u201cShare insightful content on a consistent basis. Try to incorporate a mix of your own content and content from trusted third parties. Join conversations online that pertain to your business\u201d.<\/p>\n
Victoria mentions, \u201cUse your community as an outlet to share any major company announcements or to provide a glimpse into its culture\u201d.<\/p>\n
6. Provide authentic advice<\/h3>\n
It\u2019s good to remain loyal to your niche, but you don\u2019t have to blend in. Alycia Yerves of Alycia Yerves Creative<\/a>, explains, \u201cNiching is good! Don’t be afraid to be different, because this is how you will find your authentic voice, and authentic followers\u201d.<\/p>\n
Delivering good content and advice is something Jesse Nieminen from Viima<\/a>\u00a0says is vital. Jesse mentions, \u201cWhat we’ve learned is that the most important thing is to just focus on delivering value for others, as simple as it sounds. As long as you’re creating brilliant content that creates value, you’ll build an ever-growing audience\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says \u201cOnce you have that audience, you can engage with them in a myriad of different ways to really boost the community. Here the key is to relinquish some control to the community. It can be scary, but that’s where the true potential of communities lies\u201d!<\/p>\n
7. Be personable and relatable<\/h3>\n
\u201cOne of the top things I advise clients to consider when building a community engagement strategy is this: if your business was a real person, how would you want to be perceived in the market\u201d? asks Kelly Jameson Werner of Werner and Media<\/a>. She mentions, \u201cThis is because social media, when used correctly by brands, should come off as an interpersonal conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n
She further explains, \u201cWe like to say that the media used to be a one-way conversation that was institutionally controlled\u201d. But adds, \u201cNow, it’s not just a two-way conversation, it’s a MULTI-way conversation. Brands talk to consumers and media, media talks to consumers, consumers talk to each other\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stephanie Baiocchi from Impact<\/a>\u00a0further explains that using video can be a great way to be personable \u201cUse video to build trust with your community\u201d. She explains \u201cVideo, whether live or recorded, creates trust with your community by showing that you\u2019re willing to be vulnerable by being on camera. Plus, members will benefit by being able to put a face and voice to your name\u201d.<\/p>\n
She finishes by saying \u201cIt also reminds all members that they are having conversations with other human beings and not just computers. Including an intro video where you welcome members to your group can also be a great way to set the tone right away\u201d. All of which seems like a nice personal touch.<\/p>\n
8. Do a little digging<\/h3>\n
Stuart Ridge from VitaMedica<\/a>\u00a0reminds us to do a little research. He says, \u201cSpending time researching the communities of your competitor’s is a great way to figure out how you will differentiate your community\u201d.<\/p>\n
He adds, \u201cFigure out what you don’t like about their communities or how you think they could be improved, and then act on it. If you are able to make an even better community, chances are people will recognize it\u201d.<\/p>\n
elMejorTrato.com’s<\/a>\u00a0Sophie Miles provides insight on how to do a little research before settling on a strategy. Saying \u201cActive listening is the key to a successful social strategy. By monitoring the activity in networks in real time, we will know what is said about our brand and our keywords\u201d.<\/p>\n
Without doing the research, you might miss your best influencer. She says \u201cYou have to be able to identify the influencers of your sector and approach them. The listening process, essential throughout the life of your brand in social networks, is even more important in this initial moment because it lays the foundations of the entire strategy to be followed and defines how we should begin to connect, discuss and interact with the public objective, interpreting the data and acting according to them\u201d.<\/p>\n
9. Don\u2019t forget to send a formal invite<\/h3>\n
A good way to build a community might just be by inviting people to join it. My Best Wallets<\/a>, Jacob Seiter says a community is all about \u201cContent creation with lead generation\u201d.<\/p>\n
He says \u201cOnce gained a good number of email subscribers, sending an email inviting everyone to join the community to get things starting\u201d. \u00a0There are a few tricks he mentions, \u201cMaintaining engagement through the constant publication of relevant content; once the community is open, I would also continue my lead generation campaign, giving away free quality content while inviting people to join my community\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nicolas Straut of Fundera<\/a>\u00a0breaks it down into two steps before notifying customers to join. His steps are as follows \u201c A) learning the rules of the platform you plan to use and B ) learning what your competitors’ communities are doing well\u201d.<\/p>\n
He provides the example, \u201cif you plan to create a subreddit, make sure your plans are all above board and don’t break Reddit’s rules for self-promotion and engagement. If you plan to create a Facebook group, covertly join a competitor’s group and see what types of posts yield the most positive interaction\u201d.<\/p>\n
He ends by saying \u201cWhen you create the community, make sure to notify your customers and users and learn what they’d like to get from the new community\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ogletree Financial’s<\/a>\u00a0Doug Mitchell chimes in by saying they focus on a specific group before email blasting everyone. He says \u201cStart with your core group of followers and find a few that are as knowledgeable as you are that can also be moderators. We then email blast invitations to our entire group and encourage them to join\u201d.<\/p>\n
10. Make sure your brand is consistent<\/h3>\n
Consistency is another big factor in creating and managing a successful and thriving community. \u00a0Gabe Perez who social media director at Japan Crate<\/a>\u00a0simply states \u201cTake a deep breath, and tackle each medium one by one\u201d.<\/p>\n
He adds, \u201cYou’ll often find that a lot of things such as profile pictures, bio descriptions, initial content posted, etc. transfer over to each platform quite easily\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gabe also discusses that \u201cIt’s easy to get lost in the mindset of \u2018have to post across all platforms\u2019 but if you give each social site the time it deserves, you’ll be able to dig beyond the matching profile pictures and discover the true power and potential that each medium can bring to your community\u201d.<\/p>\n
- On average, community was ranked least effective at helping to recruit new employees, with an average rank of 5.48. That said, responses had one of the highest standard deviations, meaning companies are likely to find their community either very helpful or not helpful at all when sourcing new talent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Community is most important to brand awareness and word of mouth referrals<\/a>, with average rankings of 8.87 and 8.52, respectively. Most respondents agreed, with a low standard deviation in responses, especially in regards to brand awareness.<\/li>\n