How to Build an Engaged Community Online #3 #cong19

Social media is not about blasting out ads and posts. It’s about building relationships and using your knowledge to add value to drive traffic to your website and show you are the expert in what you do. Building a community around you is a powerful way to get an army of marketeers pushing out your content. People buy from people. If they know like and trust you they will share your content and recommend you.

1. People buy from people
2. Surprise and delight your community
3. Use Twitter lists to drop in and engage with people you want to keep in your community

Samantha is a leading social media strategist, speaker and trainer. Samantha owns and operates Tweeting Goddess and the Women’s Inspire Network. With the support of her team, Samantha plans and delivers effective social media strategies to businesses and entrepreneurs, harnessing the power of social media and the online community.

She is passionate about teaching businesses how to leverage social media effectively and add real value to their business. She works with clients to progress brand growth, defining social media strategy with clear and precise targeting. Ultimately, increasing the correct audience reach for business.

She is a dynamic and engaging speaker and trainer, and has been sought after to deliver training courses to many businesses including Hewlett Packard, HSE and Microsoft. She has spoken in New Zealand, USA and Hong Kong.

Samantha is the founder of the Women’s Inspire Network, a support network which connects and empowers female led businesses. It’s an online support network, which supports Women who work from home mostly or feel isolated where they work. The community is a subscription model with weekly webinars where women can learn social media skills, sales skills, self care, etc. Women’s Inspire Network now hosts bi-annual national conferences for female entrepreneurs and female led businesses.

By Samantha Kelly

Anyone can build a community. It takes time though. There are a few simple ways to start. Social media, especially Twitter, is about building relationships and using your knowledge to add value to drive traffic to your website and show you are the expert in what you do. Building a community around you is a powerful way to get an army of marketeers pushing out your content. People buy from people. If they know like and trust you they will share your content and recommend you.

Have a plan – What do you want to achieve? Do you want a small group or do you want a global reach? If you want a global reach then you need to know how to use social media.

Get to know your members individually. Make time for every single one when you can. This means not ignoring anyone and sharing THEIR content.

Create a group that you want to hang out with. No point in just adding members without actually liking them and what they are doing. Decide who are the audience you want. Are they a certain age group? Are they on a certain social media platform? Do they need you and can you learn from them also?

Create opportunities offline for them. e.g. webinars and video calls. Take the relationship offline as much as possible.

Social listening: Keep an eye out for opportunities that they might not be aware of e.g. awards and #Journorequest

• Give them a call on their birthday or when they achieve something like winning an award – They definitely won’t expect that.
• Keep your community engaged by including them in tweets and photos as much as possible.
• Share their content and recommend them.
• Be kind and assist them when they reach out for help.

Building an engaged community takes time and passion. Keep it simple by assisting others, sharing your knowledge and think about how you will make that person reading your tweet feel.