As creators find their voice and brand through content creation, there’s a quick realization that other than content, the community is the core to being successful in social media. While creating unique content is one of the most important steps in this guide, growing your community and finding your audience is also essential if you want to work in social media.
After you’ve created a brand for yourself, and have a constant schedule and unique content, all that is missing is having people to support you. This is how you accomplish that:
Target People who Align With Your Brand
You can’t control who will watch your content once it’s posted, but you can choose the people you onboard and outreach to do it. When building your community, we encourage you to look at a school structure as an example. When taking elective classes or joining school clubs, you often want to join those communities that align with your personality and interests. If you are a musician, you would join the school band. If you are into pottery, you would join a pottery club. You get the idea.
Find the key elements of your content we challenged you to finalize on parts one and two of this guide and reach out to the communities that fit your niche. These are some ways to do it:
- Go to the explore page and search key words that match your brand. Start following people that have the same interest as you and interact with their content.
- When live-streaming, ask who would be interested in specific content and note their feedback
- Look for influencers who are focusing on the same topics you are focusing on and follow their community.
- Look for the trending hashtags that align with your brand and use them on your videos. Note: Don’t massively hashtag a video just because it’s trending. It should have to with your content. Overusing hashtags usually have the opposite effect.
Get to know your audience: Polls and Research
When we were talking about creating content, we told you to create a schedule. A common question we get asked working on social media is “how do I know the best dates to post or go live?” The answer is: There is no magic date. Social media is always catered to each specific creator.
Don’t be afraid to include your community in your schedule decisions. Make a video or go live and offer a few dates and times where you can recurrently Livestream or host a radio show. With the feedback, you’ll have a clear idea of when your main audience is available.
Answer Comments, Thank Follows and be Engaged!
It’s very important for a creator to keep up with their community. A common mistake creators make is to create a lot of content, but not really interact with their audience. If you have the best content in the world it won’t matter if you don’t take care of your followers. Our ultimate interaction advice to grow exponentially is:
- Comment or like every single comment. If they same somthing nice, say something nice back. If they have a question, clarify. If you are unsure on what to say, you can always just like their comment.
- Someone new follows you or supports them, send them a message and welcome them into your community
- Comment on other friends and creators posts, and support as many people as you can. That’s how you build real friendships.
- Be authentic. We don’t want you to be “Fake nice”, do and say what feels natural to you. Be yourself and the right people will come to you.
Utilize Your Groups (Clapper Focused)
For Clapper users, the group chat feature is a perfect way to have direct communication with your community. Make sure that you utilize your group chats daily. Send updates, ask questions, and chat with other creators. The most value you share in your group chat, the more people will want to join. For example, you could offer special benefits to the people in your group chat, or create fun activities on certain days of the week. Some ideas might include:
- Q&As
- Truth or Dare
- Collective song writing
- Book Club
- Get To Know Me
Let us know how this strategy works out, and always make sure to stay authentic to your brand.