By Caroline Forsey

Over the past year, we’ve seen a major shift when it comes to the importance of building social communities. And, as of 2024, 86% of social media marketers say building an active online community is crucial to a successful social strategy.

Active social communities can establish your brand as an industry expert and provide additional value to your consumers. But understanding the importance of online communities and successfully building one are two different things.

That’s why I spoke with six social media marketers and creators who have worked with Vimeo, HubSpot, The Product Boss, Success Story, and Online Marketing Made Easy to learn tips for building and maintaining effective online communities.

Let’s dive in.

Building Brand Communities [Expert Tips]

1. Make sure your community-building tactics are unique to each platform.

Alexis Nash, Vimeo’s former Social Media Lead, believes that tightly-knit communities should be built across each platform your brand uses — as she puts it, “communities put the ‘social’ in social media!”

However, to effectively build strong communities on each platform, you need to adhere to the best practices of each individual channel.

Nash says amplified user-generated content with TikTok’s Duets feature in 2023. The company posted question stickers on Instagram Stories and reposted answers, sparking reciprocal dialogue.

Furthermore, they reward their most engaged followers by sharing exclusive material through Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature.

Nash explains, “[Adhering to the best practices of each channel] yields a nuanced experience reflecting audiences’ natural behavior on each network.”

Jacqueline and her former co-host Minna of The Product Boss, a top-rated podcast that provides strategies and tips for product entrepreneurs, have cultivated more than 97,600 followers on Instagram alone.

They agree that one of the most critical components of building and maintaining a successful online community is by diversifying your content for each platform to fulfill the needs of that audience.

As they put it:

“We’re really proud to say we’ve built a really strong global community of product bosses around us. We love to show up socially in different ways.

We keep it pretty dynamic, whether it’s LIVE’s, IG stories, Reels, FB Group posts and events, and above all, we encourage them to show up WITH us and often thank them for doing so.

We are generous in our information and conversations, so we make it a fun, relatable, positive community to be a part of.”

Mat Cruz, former Community Management & Growth Specialist for the HubSpot Social Media team, agrees with this sentiment.

“You would never try to grow a plant in an environment that does not suit it,” he says. “Similar to plants, communities grow best when they are nurtured in environments where connection is easy and needs are not only met, but exceeded.”

Take the time to evaluate what types of content perform best on each platform, and what types of conversations happen on each.

Over time, you’ll want to create community-building strategies that are unique …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron