Curated from: 12 Top Community Managers Share Their Tips for Better Engagement by Lauren Drell
Engagement is one of the most talked about metrics for ROI.
Mashable gathered tips from top community managers to help you boost activity on your social platforms —they’re grouped into various engagement-inducing “actions” below. The individuals we spoke with have built up engaged audiences for brands, such as Gap, JetBlue, Instagram and Jetsetter, so they know a thing or two about community building.
Calling for Offline Activity
- Demonstrating that you remember and value them as individuals makes a huge difference. – Teresa Wu, community manager at Google Docs
- Encourage members of your community to meet up with one another and form teams based around shared interests or a common location. – Morgan Evans, community strategist at Etsy
- House all your materials in the community; no more binders! – Mike Fraietta, enterprise community manager at News Corp
Letting Them Know You Care
- Give the community a voice: – Josh Riedel, community manager at Instagram
- Cross-pollinate content across your social media channels, playing to each channel’s individual strength. – McKee Floyd, director of brand development at Sweetgreen
- Communication managers need to be very close to their member support teams – Jonathan Goldmann, social media manager at Jetsetter
- Identify leaders within your community and support these people as much as possible. – Morgan Evans, community strategist at Etsy
- My advice to you is: step back early! It’s much harder to show restraint, but your community will thank you for allowing them to run. – Sheena Medina, community manager at Fast Company
Responding to Feedback
- By encouraging and applauding our community when they tell us what they think, we build both community and loyalty.” – Rachel Silver, community manager at Birchbox
- Every user who takes the time to engage with your brand should be acknowledged and cared about like they were friends of yours on your personal social networks. – Jonathan Goldmann, social media manager at Jetsetter
Nailing Your Tone
- You can’t force it. It has to be authentic. When it comes to engaging our members, our philosophy is to keep it real. – Melissa Klein, VP of communications at Fab
Thinking Outside the Box
- Rather than solely marketing your product and promotions, we like to use our content to start conversations – Jonathan Goldmann, social media manager at Jetsetter
Using Visuals
- Our photo-driven content gets the most user engagement in Facebook and Pinterest. – Jonathan Goldmann, social media manager at Jetsetter
Making Connections
- If you’re looking to increase engagement, the question you should answer is: How can we continue to strive for meaning? At its core, social media is about making a real connection with something you care about. And it’s about building communities — which really means building relationships – Sheena Medina, community manager at Fast Company
- Now that you have people who are highly engaged with your brand, the goal is to connect them with each other. – David Spinks, director of community at Zaarly
What examples can you share?