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Category: Social Media Tips and Tricks
Building A Community Around Your Brand
Community and Social
Community and social media have been tied together since the dawn of the social media era. However, the more I look at the social and social media landscape the more I believe that building a community around your brand is going to be an essential part of all businesses strategies in the upcoming year. According to Hootsuite in their Social Trends 2018 Webinar real customer communities, micro-influencers, and ‘people like me’ take center stage as consumer trust continues to decline. So now is the time to put the ball into play and make sure you are nurturing a customer community that will advocate for your brand in 2018 and beyond.
The Decline of Consumer Trust in the System
The decline in consumer trust is a major indicator pointing to the increased importance of building a community around your brand. The lack of trust in authority figures is shockingly low according to Edelman’s 2017 Trust Barometer. Only 37% of the public trust CEOs. 29% trust government officials, and 85% of the public lack faith in the entire system. So, with this incredibly low level of trust in the system who are people looking to for advice and guidance? They are looking toward peers. A peer is considered by 60% of people asked to be very or extremely credible (the same as experts). “People like me” are the experts, the people they trust. They have the same likes, experience the same problems, and use the same products. This change alone has thrown marketers for a loop.
The Uber Mega Influencer Lacks Authenticity
Influencer marketing is a key part of community building. An influencer is a “person like you” they are just the coolest friend of the group. But the key to influencer marketing is having someone who does actually use the brand they are representing. 2017 marked the end of the celebrity influencer era, 2018 will mark the rise of the mini and micro-influencers. Consumers are looking for a more authentic spokesperson. For today’s consumer a peer to peer review, and employee testimonial or a customer’s story can carry more weight than the celebrity endorsement. The rise of the mini-influencer is another reason it is important to build your community. Tapping into the feedback from your community will lead to the discovery of these key assets and personas. It will also provide invaluable insight into a customers journey and what customers are looking for from your brand.
True Belonging
The third reason I believe that building a community around your brand will be an essential step is based on Brene Brown’s research on shame, vulnerability, and true belonging. Brown states in her book Braving the Wilderness, “Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” To get a fuller understanding of the concepts she studies check out TED Talks for two phenomenal thought-provoking talks. But for my purposes here, the concept is simple, humans want to belong to a community. An idea larger than ourselves. If a brand is able to provide that, you have a win on your hands.
So we all agree, community building around our brand is essential, right? Okay, good! Now, how exactly do we build a community, where will we build this community, and what does it really look like. The answer is simple yet complex, it is different for everyone! But I believe the following are must have parts of the formula…
Defined Brand + Engaging Story + Inspiring Leadership + Focus on Consumer + Goes Above and Beyond Daily
Define Your Brand, What it Is and What it is Not!
Want a little guidance on brand identity v. brand check out this post…
You can not build a community around a brand that is not defined so your first step of community building is defining what your brand is and is not. Is your brand representative of something? What does it sound like, taste like, feel like, and how does it look on paper (logos etc)? How do you want your followers to feel when they use your brand or product? Is it exclusive? What do you include and what do you make sure to leave out? What would your brand post about on social media?
After you define your brand you explore your differentiators. Are you different from your competition? What is different about your product? Why will people choose you over another brand? Taking a deep look at what makes you different from all the other brands. This will help you define what makes your brand special. And it will help you be able to define and communicate key differentiators to your followers.
Tell Your Story
If you are not telling your story, you are not doing your job. Your story sells. Stories win over customers. A story is the difference between success and failure, Your story is your golden ticket. Make sure that you feature your real, authentic brand story. Whatever your story is it is essential to your business and your brand. It is how you got to where you are. It is the basis for what you do. And your story will continue to develop as you continue to learn and grow. Your story is human, unscripted and real and it what allows you and your brand to connect with the community at large.
Give Members A Reason to Join
What will members get for being a part of your community? Inside information, special discounts, cool swag? Not ready to take a hit on the bottom line to encourage community membership and engagement? Then encourage the development of an inside language, inside jokes, memes, or other member exclusive items that set them apart from non-members, just make sure that you have a plan in place to get new members up to speed.
Make Sure Your Focus is the Customer or Follower
Real engagement and meaningful interaction should be the focus of your brand community. What questions do your followers have? Why did they join your community in the first place? What information can you provide them that can help them in their everyday life. Your goal is to have real relationships with these followers not just see how many followers you can quickly add so that you can boast about the numbers reached.
Don’t be Afraid to Engage and Inspire
You have a great brand, people like you, some may want to be like you. It is likely that some of your followers look up to you, and that is okay. Engage in the conversation when it’s appropriate and lead the conversation if you see a chance to inspire someone. Your followers want to be inspired and they want to feel like they are part of something (your brand) important!
Speaking of Being A Part of Something Important
Ask your community questions and listen listen listen listen to all of the feedback that you get. Your followers and community members want you to be successful and they have ideas! Listen to the ideas that they have, listen to the feedback they provide, listen to the chatter amongst group members. Then after you have listened to what they have to say make sure that you take some action based on the feedback you are provided. Every single person counts and listening to all the ideas, taking the time to really understand the feedback and then acting on it shows that you value your community members and that alone can be the win for your company.
Let Your Brand Ambassadors Be Ambassadors
Let your brand ambassadors be ambassadors and let them speak to your story, your product and your brand in their own words. If you think this is crazy then you are fucking insane! Brand ambassadors are employees, influencers and regular customers that like and support your brand. They believe in you and support your company. These people have actually spent time activating people. Encouraging them to try your offerings. Brought you new followers. They do this because they are passionate about something that you do. Let them share that passion in their own words. Allow their passion to show. How they choose to speak and what they choose to say should be up to them. Don’t fill their mouths with your uninspiring quotes, and perfectly word-crafted statements. Those statements are bullshit and your followers see thru them.
Go Above and Beyond All Day Every Day
It does not matter if you are dealing with your best customer or the browser that never buys anything. Your goal should always be to surprise and delight your customers and followers. All Day! Every Day! It is never a good idea to discount your customers or followers, you never know what that breakthrough moment for one customer could be your breakthrough moment, period! Read Discounting Your Customers
Over the course of my 18-year retail career, my proudest and most impactful campaign was not a campaign at all it was a crazy bet. I challenged my team to ask everyone if they wanted their gifts wrapped, and to wrap each and every item they wanted wrapped at the counter as part of the checkout process. And that year we wrapped every present bought with us, some presents bought at other stores and that year we destroyed our sales budget for Christmas and had delighted hundreds of neighborhood customers and followers. People came throughout the year and asked us if we would be doing that again, or if we could wrap a birthday present for them, of course we could it was a little niche we had won simply because we were the only ones doing it.
What is Your Little Niche?
Whether it is on social media, or something that you can do at your storefront, what is your niche and how can you do a little something that will surprise and delight your customers? Can you figure out how you and your team can go above and beyond to exceed customer expectations everyday?
In my opinion this is the make it or break it moment for your business and for building a brand community. Nail this and you win!
Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for 2018
Tips for Planning Your 2018 Social Media Content Calendar
It’s not too late to make a plan
Have you started planning out your social media content calendar for 2018 yet? Don’t worry it is not too late, despite what everyone may be saying to you. It is not too late! Yes, it would be great if you had started 6 months ago, but I am a realist. I run my own small business, I know that doing things 6 months in advance is a pie in the sky dream that we almost never can reach. And I am the first to say, that is okay! To help out I am letting you in on some great ways to plan your content calendar that will actually alleviate stress, streamline projects, and fit into an overall business plan. The best part is these tips are useful for planning a week of content, or a year of content.
Where to start?
In order to get the most out of your social media, your content calendar should be closely tied to your overall business goals for the year. So the first thing you should do is define your goals for 2018 (or whatever time period you are planning content for). Then define the who, what, when, where, why, how and how much for each of your goals. After that, decide how your social media can help you reach those goals and that will be the basis of your content calendar.
Next up, decide what tool you will be using to keep your calendar, as a social media manager I utilize Hey Orca to manage the calendars of multiple clients and gain approvals, but you can use a spreadsheet, a handwritten calendar, or tools like Hootsuite or SproutSocial its all up to you.
Once you decide on the tool you can begin mapping out your content step by step. Make sure you are keeping your business goals in mind throughout the process. Here are steps I take with clients when planning content calendars.
1) Holidays
Don’t miss a holiday in 2018 and have your social media posts ready to go by marking all the key holidays down on your calendar right from the start. If you are using HeyOrca or Hootsuite you can even schedule last year’s posts as placeholders or update them with the appropriate year and info if they were successful. Want some help with planning for the Holidays? Check out this infographic from “Social Media Today”
2) Review Last Year
Review 2017 and look for the successful promotions, themes, and sales. What did well and will “anniversary” in 2018? What will not anniversary but you have sales numbers that you will need to compensate for? Mark all of these instances on the calendar. For those that will not anniversary what opportunities do you have to build on successful promotions or create a new one based on the parameters that lead to success last year.
3) Monthly Themes
Now that you have the Holidays and successes from last year penciled in, its time to look at what content you will be adding to the calendar. A great way to do this is by creating themes for the months. In my past life as a Bookstore manager, our general book department would live by the monthly themes, we would have an overarching theme each month i.e. African American History Month or Banned Book Month or Valentines Day. Followed by sub-themes like for Valentine’s Day sub-themes like Romance Novels, Books About Love, Teen Angst etc. This is a great way to divide your content calendar as well, as it gives you direction and focus. Themes can be a great guide if a post doesn’t fit into the theme that doesn’t mean you don’t use it at all. Themes can also help you plan your blog content, write one blog a month based on the theme you have for your content. 12 blog posts a year should seem do-able, right?
What’s Next?
So you have your themes laid out, now what do you do next? It is time to start laying down your campaigns. Take a look at all you have compiled and begin to lay in the campaigns that you are going to run this year. Your campaigns should be tied to your themes but they do not necessarily need to just be the theme.
An example of this is with the garden center I work closely with our theme for January is New Year, New Items. The theme for February is Valentine’s Day. However, the campaign that we will be focusing on the three weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day is our “Say I Love You Longer” campaign! So, on the calendar for the garden center, I penciled in this campaign. I also added a campaign leading up to St. Patrick’s Day “Plants Behaving Badly”
Pro Tip:
Add links to the best and worst posts of these campaigns from the previous year. These provide some guidance on what worked and what can be eliminated.
After The Campaign Lay Down!
After the campaign lay down it is time to start filling in the specific posts. Here are a few things to keep in mind when filling in the specific posts, even if you are focusing on a single campaign.
- Consistency is key to social media plan to post at least once a day on all platforms
- Make sure all posts are reflective of your current brand standards. Update posts that were used in the past to reflect current brand standards.
- Only schedule approximately 75-80% of your monthly content in advance leaving about 20% of your posts unscheduled. This allows for flex, reposting user-generated content, and posts that are timely or ultra-local in nature. This 20% allows you to be current and timely while still having a majority of your content ready to go!
- Remember the 80/20 rule still applies to all your content posted.
- Vary your content. Make sure it is edutaining in nature! Need suggestions on what to post? Check out the 9 Suggested Posts for every Business
- Evergreen Content is your friend, don’t be afraid to build a library of it. If you want some direction on this check out the HubSpot article I linked to above!
- Schedule your 12 blog posts now and begin writing them when you have the time.
- Don’t forget about video content and social selling opportunities.
- Are you collaborating with other businesses? Make sure to leave space in the schedule for cross-promotional and collaborative posts. Hop on over to the shop to get your hands on the collaboration toolkit to start planning your partnerships now.
- Take into account the social media trends we are expecting in 2018. Review this awesome article from Entrepreneur Magazine about the 10 Things to Plan for in 2018. Chances are this will be the subject of my next post!
And then…
So now you have the tips and a few extra minutes! Go start the process of planning your social media calendar for next year now! If you have questions or concerns please feel free to ask and check out the Social Media Tools in the Shop as well!
Ah yes, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!