“Utilize community management on social media to help grow your business.” 

Tactics to effectively execute community management on social media

• Answer Questions – As more of your customer base (and potential customer base) participates on social networking platforms, small businesses must do far more than simply posting their own updates. Talking to and actively participating in online conversations with consumers builds brand awareness and loyalty. Be sure to answer back as quickly as possible: not only will this demonstrate excellent customer service, but it will also help to gain their trust.
• Bring People to Your Website Through Social Media – Oftentimes as small businesses work to design their posts, profiles and build their social media platforms, the most important goal for initiating a social strategy is forgotten: to drive customers and prospects to your company’s website. Although very few customers will make a purchase the first time they visit a website, you’ve captured their attention – this must also be balanced with gaining their trust and convincing them that your product is a better investment than that of your competitor.
• Cultivate Stories on How Customers Use Your Products and Services – Has a customer posted about your product or services? This is a massive compliment to any business, and one that you should acknowledge and utilize. Your small business should not only be sharing and reposting these social mentions, but your staff should be sharing customers’ photos and posts to demonstrate as your company’s ‘success stories’.
• Elicit Responses – At this point, it should be quite apparent that engagement is critical on your social media platforms. But how do you elicit engagement from your audience? A simple answer is that social campaigns should ask questions that make their audience stop, reflect, and respond. Look back over past posts: which ones generated the most response? Which ones elicited the most reflective and insightful answers? These are the types of posts that you should be focusing on repeating.
• Leverage Your Networks – Quality community management involves knowing what’s happening on all your social media networks, and staying on top of where and how your company is being discussed and represented on social media. A simple search of your company’s name in any of the platforms’ search engines will identify instances it was discussed by the public. Social media networks work hand-in-hand with one another – in order to be effective, you must be able to leverage each network and bounce them off one another.
• Shout-Out and Give Thanks –Word of mouth remains one of the most powerful forms of marketing, so when someone, for example, retweets one of your Twitter posts, never forget to show gratitude for this. A lengthy, intricate response is not required – a simple ‘thank you!” goes a long way already.
• Examine How Your Audience Engages with Your Competition – A great way to learn more about your potential customers is by tracking how they engage with your competition. What is your competition doing that you’re not? Does your competition have a consistent ‘voice’, tone, message, and brand? What are the weaknesses in how your competition is engaging with their audience and how can you use this to your advantage?

Social Media Marketing and Community Management are complex, interwoven job functions needing sound goal, strategy, and tactical plans in place to produce powerful results.