Building Your Online Community Through Social Media
We have spoken in past about the importance of relationships, establishing trust, genuine interest, etc and in turn, these things should contribute to building your online community. I get questions all the time, “How do you have so many people on your Facebook Live”? or “How did you become successful solely using online methods?” or “How was your lunch at Chipotle?” ( I love the place! Can you blame me?! ) All jokes outside, building your online community is the ultimate marketing weapon for network marketers and direct sales consultants.
Building Your Audience, Building Your Online Community
Most importantly, there is a big difference between building your audience, and building your online community. An audience is a one way conversation, minimal or even zero interaction. An audience could even be considered passive, no real commitment to you or your message for that matter. This might come across with advertising, or those spam posts people should stay away from. Sure, an audience engages eye balls, and helps extend a wonderful reach, but you won’t receive the same outcome as building an online community for example.
On the flip side, building your online community is interactive, it’s a two way type conversation, allows for relationships to develop and flourish, that underlying trust makes its way more visible. People are liking, commenting, sharing – THIS is where we see our audience, become community.
My Top Three Tips In Building Your Online Community
- Consistency – Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean posting the same thing every day and expecting a different response. What I mean by being consistent is delivering regular, value, content. If your strength is videos, be consistent in creating and posting them. Perhaps writing is your strength, shift your focus there and consistently post value, tips or fun facts about your business even. There are multiple mediums and platforms that your content can be delivered on, pick one and stay consistent – your online community will thank you.
- Designed To Share – Pictures are great tools to use in posts and messages, Facebook especially rates them as one of the highest shared media outside of Facebook Live presently. Be intriguing in your titles, but don’t over think them! Catchy, not salesy. Have a great quote? Turn it into a picture or meme, perhaps have your name or website on the picture – a signature even. And, seems simple enough but tell people what to do – “Like and Share this picture”.
- Be Enaging – A habit I always believe in is that if someone has taken the time to interact on your content, return the favor. Thank them for visiting, reach out to them personally. Bring them from the audience category to the community category – a two way street remember? Be a person. A robot can’t be responsible for building your online community – that’s you. Now yes, there are certain things we can develop for our communities that are automated, courses for example, but when it comes back to why people should join your community, your tribe, that’s YOU.
Evaluate what your customer or rep means to you. Have you created a culture worthy of building your online community around? Have you created a space for value, strategies, a place to learn from others?
Our online community on Facebook has grown so much in less than a year. The feedback and testimonials are just so warming, and a reminder of why I committed my time and efforts to develop a place for network marketers and direct sales consultants to reach new potentials, goals and bests.
If you do not currently have a coach or mentor that is teaching you HOW to be successful on social media, click here to join our private coaching community now and connect with me on Facebook.
As always, if you got value from this information, please comment below and share on social media and with your teams.
Brian Fryer’s Network Marketing Blog
Facebook: Brian Fryer
YouTube: Brian Fryer
