Building Community with Social Media For Small Business?

community in metal type

Is social media working for me?

It all depends on the community that you build and the strategy that you make. If you focus on these two items I’m sure the return of investment will be more than noticeable.
I always get those emails and Twitter followers that try to sell me on purchasing likes, shares and followers. These bug the living daylights out of me because I see so many small businesses with over 200 thousand empty followers with little or no engagement. These are empty hollow relationships that do absolutely nothing. It really is very sad when I see this happen. Why bother at all when you take this rout?

Strength comes in numbers but only when those numbers are real individuals. The definition of community really defines social media at its core.

community pic

A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

Building Community is the goal in social media and is surprisingly very natural for us to create as individuals. For a small business they are often already part of a living community so most of the time it’s about reaching out to their local community. Being actively part of their local community and inviting them into your social community is a healthy way of building a healthy presence on the web.

I encourage you to read this article from PeerNetBC that helps explain “What is Community Development”. This is the core of your future prosperity on social media.

What strategy should I take?

The social strategy is defined by your community. As groups we all respond to different things at different times. Think of the AMC show the Walking Dead, Rick and his team are a community with different individual strengths and on their struggle to escape hordes of zombies they come across others that have built communities often they are different and far from similar. Because of this the way they communicate with them is so different from the rest.
I know that this doesn’t answer the question but I have less than an hour to write this but to help me out answer the question I have a PDF I encourage you to read  the Federal Emergency Management Agency handbook. They really help prove point of communication.Click here for the PDF

There are many technical points that we have to be aware of when creating a strategy such as content schedule, trend research and more. Understanding who your community is and communicating with your community will ultimately help you figure out how to technically create a strategy.

 

[schema type=”person” name=”David Mackenzie-Kong” jobtitle=”Social Media Guru” url=”https://beanstalkim.com/” description=”I love everything about social media, content marketing as well as helping small business and non profits thrive. It’s not easy trying to figure out this thing we call the web but I’m here to help you. I like to take educational marketing content and make it understandable to the everyday person. Give me a call” city=”Victoria” state=”British Columbia” phone=”877-370-9750″ ]