Frustrated with low engagement on your company social media? Have a great business, but struggle to find your online community on social media platforms? Learning how to build a fan base is not always the intuitive process it’s made out to be but worry not! Precise Creative walks you through 10 steps to help you nurture engagement, stay on top of trends, and learn how to build a community of early adopters with authentic content.
Step 1: Find Your Niche
Before you learn how to build a social media community, you must identify your company niche. This is the space in which you are uniquely experienced, be it cupcakes, massage therapy, or gym equipment.
- Who is your target demographic?
- What problems do they have that need solutions?
- How do you provide solutions to those problems?
Speak to your niche and your niche only. Aim for quality over quantity. The urge to target everyone will be strong, but casting too wide of a net will waste your time and resources and won’t succeed in building a fan base. For example, if you own a restaurant, you should be targeting everyone who eats. Find who wants to align with you and speak exclusively to them.
You’ll want to consider their age range, location, lifestyle, other interests, and more. For example, if you’re a chiropractor, you’ll want to target mostly women (because women typically make the health decisions in a household) who are concerned with a more holistic approach to healing and avoiding surgery and medication. This same group of people will most likely also be interested in nutrition and healthy foods, exercise and staying active, and caring for the environment. You can take it a step further and ask yourself why they are interested in all of the above… perhaps to explore, experience, and enjoy life every day.
Precise Tip: A thoughtful approach to your audience gives you a window into your target market and their external and internal motivations.
Step 2: Discover Your Voice
Once you’ve identified your company niche and target demographic, it’s time to develop your brand voice. A brand voice facilitates the conversation between your business and your target audience. It can take some practice to hone your voice — and you can absolutely hire an agency to help perfect it, if needed — but it’s the real bread-and-butter of how to build a fan base on social media.
One of the first steps of brand voice development requires you to examine your target audience.
- How does your target audience like being spoken to?
- What words do they use?
- How do you want your target audience to feel when interacting with your brand?
- What message do you want to convey with your tone and word choice?
- What adjectives would you use to describe your brand?
Precise Tip: Start with something small. How you greet your audience? Do you say hi, hello, hey there, what’s up, yo, or any one of a number of other ways to say hello?
These questions will help guide you in building a brand voice. Once you’ve established your voice, use it liberally. Brand voice can be a memorable make-or-break factor in how to build a community.
Step 3: Ditch the AI
When people look for social accounts to follow, they look for real, honest voices. No robots allowed! We crave human connection and tend to shun anything that sounds robotic, fake, or cold. Even if your business features robots, your target audience wants to find the unifying connection between tech and humanity. So, what does this look like?
Exercise Vulnerability
Little unites us faster than shared experiences. Show your scars to your fan base. Show the humanity behind the account. Let your personality shine through — but keep the stories applicable to your business.
- Be honest and open.
- Share lessons learned as they apply to your business.
- Provide a peek behind the scenes.
- Be genuine.
Running a business is personal. If you struggle to find connections or be honest, start slow and take an introspective look at your purpose, objectives, and execution. For example, do you have a coach or mentor? Did your children teach you a lesson about patience in business dealings? Did a customer enlighten you? Start there!
Strive for Genuine Interaction
Mean what you say and say what you mean. Your client base can and will detect insincerity in your brand voice. Genuine conversations establish trust and show your fans you are someone they can rely on for information, entertainment, care, or the services you offer. Reward them with authenticity and discover how to create a fan base quickly and earnestly — all while setting yourself up as a leader and guide in your industry.
Practice Kindness
A little kindness goes a long way and err on the side of goodness. It’s an excellent way to connect with others, display trust, and showcase your business’s sincerity. After all, it’s easier to attract flies with honey!
Step 4: Stay Relevant to Your Audience
After your successfully identify your audience, stay with them. Everything you do, post, and comment is for them. Ensure you treat this relationship with respect and value their time. Instead of posting the first thought that comes to mind,invest time on the message you want to relay and the outcome you’d like.
Step 5: Pick Your Platforms with Intention
Social media can overwhelm because it facilitates millions of users at any given time on a number of platforms. Dedicate time to research and discover where your target audience spends most of their time and how they prefer to receive communication. Compare this to how your products or services are best displayed in video, photo, or text.
Precise Tip: We recommend selecting up to three social media platforms to maintain an online presence; some brands may want to consider more social platforms.
Be willing to get your hands dirty and experiment on several platforms without the pressure to have a presence on every platform. As a start, you can cross-post content or share identical content on more than one app. However, over time you’ll want to customize your content and approach with each platform.
Just remember social media posts take time to compose, including the time to research and use strategic hashtags. So, when looking at how to build a community on Instagram or how to build a community on Facebook, some brands may need to consider that their target audience primarily exists on TikTok.
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Step 6: How to Build a Fan Base with Visibility
Your audience can’t develop into a fan base if they can’t find you! Be present, be clear, be precise, and use the tools provided to you on different social media platforms. Tools like local hashtags and location tags are valuable connection resources. Hashtags function as an online indexing tool to help users find everyone who is talking about a particular topic. Don’t know where to start? That’s okay!
We recommend periodic hashtag research first and foremost. Look at other local, regional, national, and global accounts you want to emulate or that match your business. Plus, tools like Inflact provide options for high-, mid-, and lower-volume hashtags. Local radio stations are also excellent adopters of pertinent and local hashtags. Plus, each social platform will have a search function. Use it liberally!
Step 7: Develop a Rhythm
“I believe creating communities while not serving them is a sin.”
– Himanshu Bisht
In business, consistency is everything. Little will tank your followers more than inadequate posting. Remember, people do 80% of their research before you have a conversation with them. And, if you haven’t posted to social media in a while, that can translate into the perception of an inconsistent, unreliable brand. So, create a social media posting schedule and stick with it. Post as little as three days a week to keep you top-of-mind for your followers. Tons of social media schedulers are available in a variety of price ranges to help organize and post content.
Precise Tip: We typically recommend a sweet spot of posting three to five times per week.
Once you’ve got their attention, keep it with consistent posts. For example, post tips on Tuesdays and behind-the-scene content on Fridays. Discover what works for you, keep it up and see how to build a fan base quickly.
Step 8: Don’t Spam
We are sold-to every minute on the internet. You can’t escape ads, sales copy, or influencer videos on any given social media platform. It can be exhausting. (Too much, and it becomes a surefire way to get unfollowed in a hurry.) Instead of dishing sales messages people don’t want; try crafting a delicious message that leaves them wanting more.
Tantalize senses. Capture attention. Intrigue minds. Build your fan base!
Step 9: Offer Freebies
“Nothing builds an audience faster than giving freely without the expectation of compensation.”
– Jeff Goins
Your target audience loves free stuff.
More than just giveaways or free services, share your knowledge! You run a business because you have something to offer your community. Teach your client base to fix small home repairs, brew the perfect cappuccino, identify birds in their backyard, or learn how to style the clothes in their closet.
Wherever your industry fits in with your followers’ lives, provide free guidance. Not all the time. Not trade secrets. But let them know you know you’re knowledgeable. Whet their appetites. Show them you are an industry leader for a reason.
Step 10: Make It Pretty
People consume with their eyes, so give them something good to feast on while you relay your message. Graphic designers are available on a spectrum of pay scales. Alternatively, you can learn to use Canva or Adobe Photoshop to easily create your own graphics from pre-created templates. Canva’s user-friendly interface offers tons of templates to get you started.
Learning how to build a fan base can seem overwhelming, but if you stick to our Top Ten tips and use your energy to learn who your audience really is, your community will reward your efforts. We don’t run businesses because it’s easy—we do it because we have something valuable to offer our communities. Find your community. Then find your fan base!
Need help finding your fan base?
Precise Creative can get you there!
