From Likes to Loyalty: Cultivating an Engaged Social Media Community
In a recent HubSpot survey, 90 percent of social media marketers said that an active, online community was critical to brands in 2023. Ninety-percent! You can't get 90 percent of marketers to agree on a pizza order.
An engaged community on social media is crucial for brands and individuals looking to establish a strong online presence. A community that feels seen and heard fosters brand loyalty, drives traffic to your website and increases your visibility and reach by a significant margin.
An Engaged Community Is Bought in to Your Brand
Engagement isn't just a number. It goes way beyond how many followers you have.
Followers who aren't actively engaged aren't hearing your message. They may see it, but if they're scrolling past without clicking or commenting, they're not thinking about it. It hasn't really penetrated the scalp.
It's background noise.
An engaged member of your community is sharing your posts, they're "liking" them, they're composing comments and leaving them on your doorstep. They're interacting with other comments. They're engaging in a dialogue.
Think of it like a town hall meeting. If your brand is standing at the podium talking to the residents, but the crowd is napping or looking at their phones, if they're never asking questions or cheering, how well is that town running?
We're inherently social creatures and the runaway success of social media is one of the clearest bits of evidence. We want to share, to communicate, to interact; it's a built-in urge. An engaged social media community is one that bolsters trust in a brand, attracts new customers, and adds credibility and awareness.
Identifying Your Target Audience Is Easier Than You Think
An interested community is an engaged community. Brands that struggle with keeping their followers engaged and clicking and liking and reposting are brands that haven't fully honed in on what their audience wants.
There's no shortcut here. Identifying your target audience requires research on every channel.
Leverage demographic data. Who's buying your product or service, and who do you want to be buying? Your CRM, your sales team, and any surveys you've done are great sources of information here.
Use market research. Who's throwing money at your competitor? Who are the people who want and/or need your brand the most?
Utilize social media analytic tools. Almost every social media platform has analytics of some kind, from Meta's extremely granular tools and ad systems to, well, less robust tools. Whatever social channels you're on, you need to regularly check these tools. Repeat what's getting big clicks and toss what's laying fallow.
And of course, there are third-party tools like those provided by Semrush to help you find your audience. Once you've established who your audience is and what they want, you'll want to start tailoring your social media content to them.
Create Engaging and Valuable Content
Communities form around great content; ask any Star Wars fan. On social media, content is what keeps people coming back to you. It also keeps them sharing, hearting, and making content out of your content. When a brand's social media presence is just a catalog, there's nowhere for a community to gain purchase.
Content entertains, it educates, it even (gasp) may have nothing directly to do with your business on the surface.
Create content across multiple formats. The internet is a wide, vast place full of diverse people who absorb information in different ways. Your content should reflect that (and cater to it).
Text, blog, and long-form content help those who learn by reading or those who like to return to an idea at their own pace. Images are quick and easily digestible and are often memorable snapshots of what you're trying to get across. Videos are hugely popular, and your clips and Reels have a chance of truly going viral on Instagram or TikTok.
Identify topics that align with your target audience. Once you've established your target audience, keep digging. What does that target audience enjoy? Surveys and studies are available everywhere online for your demographic. Read them, absorb them, internalize them. If your demographic also loves cars, or fashion, make content relating to that and connect it with your brand.
The next step is to court discussion.
Encouraging Meaningful Interactions
Now that you know your target audience and you're making engaging content, you're going to want to encourage interaction. As any good dinner party host will tell you, sometimes conversation needs a little push to get going.
Add captions that call to action. For your images, videos, and posts, include a line addressing the audience directly. Ask them to leave a comment, to share their opinion, to offer an alternative to an idea or a process you're talking about.
Say things people can disagree with. Now, this doesn't have to be clickbait or ragebait. In fact, we don't recommend that, as it can go off the rails quickly. But, allow your content to make a statement, to push one idea over another, to take a stand within your comfort level. Middle-of-the-road content may not offend anyone, but it won't engage them either.
Monitor your feeds and respond to your followers. Social media audiences crave interaction with those they follow, be it comedians, meme accounts, politicians, or brands. The best part about social media is that it gives anyone a voice, and that anyone has a chance of grabbing attention and being heard.
You should monitor the comment sections where you post your content and engage with the people commenting. Make jokes, ask questions, answer questions, clarify when people seem confused, link them to useful resources, etc. A community is formed when everyone has a seat at the table, and that includes you.
The Basics of Community Creation
Let's recap. So, when creating an engaged audience on social media, you want to:
- Find and learn about your target audience.
- Create the kind of content they love, using that data.
- Encourage conversation by asking questions and taking a stand.
- Engage with your community by answering questions.
- Monitor and adjust your strategy as you go.
All these tactics help find and create your brand community. And these communities are invaluable for boosting your brand advocacy, for expanding your reach, and for building and retaining customer loyalty. Everyone wants to be heard: It's our job as brands to listen.
The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the ANA or imply endorsement from the ANA.
Inspira Marketing Group is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. Inspira Marketing is a purpose-driven brand activation agency, driven by EQ x IQ. Delivering scalable, results-driven, creative solutions for a diverse roster of clients in the automotive, CPG, financial, technology, food and beverage, fashion, beauty, and quick-serve restaurant markets, Inspira Marketing specializes in Brand Storytelling, Experiential Marketing, and Field Team Activation, and devotes a portion of its profits to finding a cure for pediatric cancer. This combination of excellence and purpose has been recognized with a list of impressive awards, most recently including Ad Age's Best Places to Work, Hartford Business Journal's Best Places to Work, Chief Marketer's CM200 Award, Event Marketer's Top 100 IT List, and more.