Have you ever looked at your firm’s social media report and scratched your head at why you only ever seem to add a few followers each month? Don’t worry; you’re far from alone, and there is a way forward.

That’s why, for the third episode of our Meet the Marketeers podcast, we talked to Sam Shrager, Head of Marketing for BCB Group, exploring the major positive effect that community building can have on your firm’s social media strategy.

Why you need to build a community around your business

First, let’s take a quick look at why building a community is important. For starters, brand awareness is the number one priority for Heads of Marketing in 2020, with four in ten citing it as the top concern for their brand. 

The fact that they also see social media as the medium likely to have the greatest impact on their brand visibility and perception (more than three times more impactful than press coverage) highlights how vital digital engagement is for firms.

It’s about more than just brand awareness though. ROI plays a critical role in decision making – especially when it comes to platform choices. That’s why LinkedIn (which is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook) is the go-to social channel for B2B firms.

There’s clearly a huge opportunity for you to achieve your marketing goals through platforms like LinkedIn. However, with so many firms looking to do exactly the same, you also face the challenge of how to cut through the noise. The answer is to foster a community that not only sees your content but actively wants to engage with you. So, how do you actually do this?

“It’s all about trying to resell the benefits of building a community as part of a marketing strategy that’s building brand exposure at the same time.”

Gaining buy-in from your internal team can make the difference

As Sam explained on the podcast, it’s entirely possible to begin adding followers rapidly with the right approach. “I’ve started from quite a low base in most of the companies I’ve worked with – in terms of number of followers and size of the community,” she says. “So, I’ve had to build that pretty quickly.”

“It’s really important to get team buy-in to start with, which can make or break your efforts,” she continues. “Initially, it’s really good to use your team as ambassadors to amplify your messages and content. For example, an easy win is to send round the links to your social posts and get them to like or comment on them.”

Gaining that buy-in from your team can be tricky – especially in more traditional businesses. For Sam, helping them understand the value and making them feel part of your community building efforts is vital. “I try to put in strong, workable approval processes that everyone is comfortable with – and a reporting structure with benchmarking to show performance,” she says. 

“It’s all about trying to resell the benefits of building a community as part of a marketing strategy that’s building brand exposure at the same time. It’s a really good way to engage customers in a two-way conversation – and really the main way of doing that is with content. You want to establish your key team members as thought leaders in your space, getting educational but engaging content out there into the community.”

“It can be a challenging job to convince people, but they are beginning to understand the importance of community and great content”

Taking your first steps into community building

Community building will have a positive impact on your follower count – and your subsequent social activity. But what if you’ve never done anything like it before? How do you get going? 

“I tend to start with a real digital audit of all the channels a firm is using (what they’re doing well, what they aren’t doing so well) and then try to introduce guidelines,” says Sam. “They may have an email database newsletter. And, if they’re comfortable doing that, why not encourage them to think that they can build on it – using and repurposing some of the content the team is already producing? You can use that to start gaining followers, gaining interest and – as a result – get people down the funnel.”

Accountability is another key element Sam highlights as part of bringing your team along on your community building journey. “Good reporting structures are helpful – as is benchmarking of what competitors are doing,” she says. “It can be a challenging job to convince people, but they are beginning to understand the importance of community and great content.”

“The more you can make intelligent, educational noise in your space, the better”

Creating content doesn’t have to be difficult

Getting your team to buy into what you’re doing is obviously not the only piece of the puzzle. You also need the assets for your people to share on social media. And Sam’s advice is to keep things simple.

“If you’re producing content already, think of ways to repurpose it,” she says. “So, if you’re producing a video, think about creating a transcript of it and posting it as a LinkedIn article or a blog post. It’s also really good to use pull quotes and extracts to make smaller bitesize versions of the video.”

“The more you can make intelligent, educational noise in your space, the better,” she continues. “More people will respect what you’re saying and doing, and get involved by following your company and engaging with your output.”

Events are another useful method that Sam recommends you use to generate content and build your company’s profile in its community. “You want to get your company thought leaders in events and speaking engagements – promoting that before, during and after,” she explains. “Even if you don’t have a budget and can’t get your people to an event, it’s great to be there virtually.”

The final thing on Sam’s list is awards. “It can be quite an easy win,” she says. “Sure, it takes time to research awards appropriate to your industry and product. But it’s a really good way to make your team feel good internally while putting you out there as an impressive player in your community and industry. Again, it’s another opportunity for more content and more engagement.”

Discover more about how to start building your community, engage with your industry and build brand awareness. Listen to the full third episode of Meet the Marketeers below and tune in to the rest of the series, here.

You can also hear more expert insight from Sam as part of Meet The Creators series of live shows, here.