5 Ways To Focus Your Business on Building Community

I’ll be honest; this past month or so has been hectic for me. I’ve missed out on some of the community building that I was focusing on in January of this year and am itching to reconnect and refocus on what truly matters to me – building friendships, connections, partnerships, and business relationships with fellow online business owners or entrepreneurs (and creating opportunities for them to connect with each other, too). Having a community and having people that support you and understand you is such a huge relief on this journey through starting and running your own business.

If you haven’t found your “spot” yet and feel too new, I have good news for you: this blogging/business world is so supportive. It’s amazing. I know people in so many other industries and businesses that are so intense, cutthroat, and competitive. It sounds stressful and lonely. Luckily for us in this online business world that is NOT the case. People who are technically my competition are some of my best friends. It’s incredibly and inspiring. I am so fortunate to be in this arena with great people.

If you’re ready to focus on community, I have five things I’ve implemented, experimented with, and seen direct benefits from. 

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BE AVAILABLE + ASK QUESTIONS

This has been one of the biggest assets to growing a group of people that I feel comfortable and connected with. I try to be as open and available as possible – whether it be by email or social media or hopping on Skype to chat. Building on that, when you are connecting with people make sure to put the emphasis on asking questions and getting to know them better versus talking about yourself. In getting to know people I generally can start to see how we can work together, collaborate, teach each other things, etc.

That’s something that I think transcends business relationships actually and applies to every type of interaction or relationship. I’m sure there’s an important quote about it, but I don’t know it off the top of my head. But my point is that the focus should be outside of yourself, if you want to build valuable connections. I try to approach every new person, especially in business, as “what can they teach me?” and “how can I help/serve them?” So far it’s served me quite well.

Being available can feel hard, especially when there are not enough hours in the day to do all the other things in your business – but it’s so valuable to your business. I think posting 10 things to Twitter a day is a good idea, but I think interacting with 10 people a day on Twitter is a much better idea.

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BE SOCIAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Building on that idea, make sure you use social media for its true purpose – to BE social. It’s not just a promotion platform. This is what I’ve been the most lax on lately (because I’ve been so busy) and I truly regret it! In January when I was more focused on social media and building a community I met so many amazing people daily just from being social on social media. I asked questions, answered questions, was on Periscope, was active in Facebook groups, etc.

So, clearly, that’s hard to manage time wise. I use time blocking so limit myself, but I do try to make a point to actually use social media and not depend fully on scheduling posts. Scheduling posts is useful but it’s not going to build a relationship. It’s not going to connect with someone on a personal basis. And if you want to focus on community – you need that personal element.

Another idea for managing time and social media is to focus heavily on the purpose/point you want to use each platform for. I talk about that more in this post but basically if you think Twitter is a great way to grow your peer relationships, then focus your energy and time on being social in that way while you are using Twitter (i.e. don’t waste time doing things that aren’t serving a purpose).

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INTRODUCE + REFER + PROMOTE

Once you start building connections and getting to know people better something amazing happens. People start to care about your business, talk about your skills, and send interested parties your way. It’s seriously mind blowing. Most of my clients have been referrals from my peers, which I can’t even begin to show how thankful I am for that.

But, that works both ways. There are a lot of things I could technically do for my clients, but these things aren’t necessarily my specialty (or what I offer). Instead of telling them a flat “no” I can instead refer them to peers that I know will be a good fit for the job.

So throughout your experiences and newfound community focus, make sure to actually remember and utilize the people you meet. It’s not a one-time talk that grows communities! It’s being a consistent role in their lives, and welcome their role in your lives (or businesses). Being able to easily recommend help to others (and be the person to introduce people to each other) really builds up your influence and trust, which ultimately grows your business.

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SHOW GRATITUDE

If you follow my blog you know that this is the MOST important thing to me for many reasons – but it applies to this blog post as well. You can most definitely never ever ever take the people who support you and your business and want to be along for the journey for granted. Ever. That is what makes your business successful! Without this support system you can’t grow to reach new heights.

Here’s what I mean: thank people for their support. It takes two seconds to say “thank you” when someone comments that they loved your post, or shares it with their audience. It isn’t difficult to be gracious; it takes just acknowledging the fact that someone supported you.

Something happens when you take the time to do it – suddenly there’s an opportunity for continued interaction and development. If you don’t take the time to show that you appreciate someone’s support then you don’t have the option to develop a possible friendship. There are people that I look up to for their business savvy, expert opinions, and amazing ideas – and that’s cool. But then there are also people I truly admire and want to bring in front of my audience, invest in products and services, and overall add to their success. What’s the difference in how I view these two groups of people? The latter have acknowledged my support, answered my questions or comments, and overall attempted to learn something about me – making me feel suddenly a lot more inclined to want to support them. 

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COLLABORATE

An awesome way to start developing a community is to collaborate with people. There are two different ways to look at this idea. First is that by collaborating with someone you can gain access to their existing community, or even just their audience (if they aren’t focusing on community yet). But another way is something that I am currently trying to implement in my own budding community – asking for collaborations (through guest posting on a blog, in this example).

Opening the doors to collaborating with people is such a good way to form partnerships and relationships because you are basically putting trust into someone else’s ability to do something and asking for trust from them. That’s the basis for relationships, right?

In my example I want to start a guest blog, so I sent out an email to my list and asked for submissions. I want to work together on a project and build each other up through this blog where we combine as one powerful resource! My thought was that starting this platform would be exciting, helpful, and allow cross-support between people involved. So, in your own community building plans think of how you can bring the interaction outside of “you” and “person” and make it more about “people” in general. A true community involves layers of support between everyone.

I hope this gives you some ideas about how you can approach building a community into your own business. 

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Five Methods I'm Using To Grow My Social Media Following

I owe most of my business growth to social media. I get new clients, new readers, and new friends through the different platforms and can’t imagine where my blog and business would be if social media didn’t exist. I learn something new about social media every week and am constantly adapting my plan to help my business keep growing. There are five methods, or ideas, that I have found stay consistent across anything I learn, try, or use in my own practice. These ideas are what I use in my own daily social media practice and I thought that today I’d share them with you, so that maybe they could help you and your business, too!

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FIGURE OUT THE GOAL FOR EACH CHANNEL

This is, for me, the most important and valuable step. I actually consider this as a part of branding and run through this with my clients. The thing to remember is that Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest… they’re all different. They serve different purposes, reach different people, and generate different feedback/interaction. So posting the same things across all of them won’t necessarily work. Instead, I think about what I want to gain from each platform and plan my posting out accordingly.

So, as a visual business, I can use Instagram and Pinterest to generate clients and send people back to my website. Those are two very visual platforms; they depend wholly on pictures. Pinterest, however, has a really crazy intense algorithm and requires a ton of interaction and posting to ‘be seen.’ So I focus Pinterest on just driving traffic to my website, whether it be readers or potential clients. It’s easier to post A LOT on Pinterest and not feel stuck in only posting client work. On Instagram I vary between posting client work and call-to-action posts that talk about working together. I also link to latest blog posts every week and show some behind-the-scenes type images too. With every post I try to ask for interaction, or direct people to a certain link.

For the other channels, I find that Twitter is best for building peer to peer relationships and community, so I focus on sharing other people’s content and thanking them for sharing mine. I’m very active on Twitter and often tell people that’s a great way to get in contact with me, because it’s so quick and simple. Facebook itself, as far as my TheCrownFox page goes, isn’t something I focus on – however, I do focus heavily on Facebook groups. I’m a member of quite a few groups and all of them have helped me with clients, promoting the blog, and establishing myself as a resource (by answering questions). Facebook groups are the one platform that I don’t have a specific purpose for, but instead just try to be very active in every way on there and utilize the opportunities presented (people asking for branding designers, or daily blog posts, etc.). If you aren’t in any Facebook groups I definitely recommend searching for some that relate to your industry, because they are hugely beneficial.

I use Periscope to really build trust and interaction among my audience. I love hopping on there and just chatting and having a quick lesson, and I think it’s a super useful tool to put a face to your brand. Otherwise, I don’t use YouTube often (Yet, but more on that soon!) and I’m not active on LinkedIn. The reason for that is I haven’t found a purpose for those two that grow my business, yet.

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DECIDE BEST POSTING TIMES

There are tons of infographics on Pinterest about this. You could also study analytics, use tools (like Iconosquare), or just study the results yourself. I’ve done a combination of reading through infographics and studying the results for myself. So, as far as my schedule goes:

I post to Twitter very often, sometimes up to 10 times a day, sporadically. My thought process behind this comes from studying the results / how I use Twitter. Basically, I don’t really scroll endlessly on Twitter (like I might on Instagram or Pinterest). I maybe scroll down for a few minutes at the most, and my thought it, most people are probably the same. Therefore, posting every few hours is okay because chances are you won’t scroll far enough to see too much of me. I need to be relevant and recent enough that you would see my post in a quick scroll while you’re eating lunch or waiting in the carpool line.

Pinterest, and its crazy smart algorithms, spreads out your posts anyway, so I don’t focus heavily on what time I post. I've got posts going up all the time thanks to Tailwind* For Facebook, I check the group boards throughout the day, but I post to TheCrownFox page daily, in the morning. I came up with that based completely off of when I saw the most interaction happening and the widest reach. It took a little trial and error, but that’s what I’ve come up with working best for my audience.

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SCHEDULE TIMES FOR INTERACTING

This is something that has been a big plus for my time management. Left to my own devices (and willpower – or lack thereof) I could sit on social media all day. This is not exactly conducive to actually running a business. So, I’ve incorporated block scheduling into my routine and blocked off times for social media. On Monday I have a larger block so that I can schedule out tweets for the week on Buffer. Otherwise, I give myself about 30 minutes in the morning to hop on and check Facebook groups, pin for about ten minutes, and check through Instagram and Twitter a bit. I have ten-minute blocks throughout the day where I can hop in Twitter or Instagram or Facebook and just do a quick scroll and check if there’s anything important or urgent that I need to interact with or respond too. Then, again, at the end of my day I have another 30-minute block to repeat the tasks from the morning.

I have to schedule these times and treat them as any other task on my to-do list, or I end up spending way too much time on social media. If you don’t already schedule your time for social media, I recommend doing that ASAP!

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USE BUFFER + Tailwind

These are two new additions to my process. I came to the realization that the amount of time it would take me to personally do what these two applications do was not a good “bottom line.” It took some convincing, because even though its total cost is less than my daily coffee habit, I still hate spending money. But – the results don’t lie. In just the few short weeks I’ve been using these two programs, my reach and my interaction level has greatly improved. Pinterest is growing exponentially and has quickly become my top referrer thanks to Tailwind*. I’m seriously regretting not using these tools earlier.

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MAKE COHESIVE DECISIONS

This is something that is easy to forget when you are pinning or tweeting in bulk. But – your audience is still YOUR audience and you want to make sure that the content you are putting in front of them is relevant. So, it’s really easy to go through and want to retweet every post you see on Twitter, but, I recommend taking pause and making sure it somehow fits your overall message. Same with things you pin, or share on any other platform. Sharing irrelevant information is detracting from your overall message.

I try to share things that are about branding, business, or blogging – same as the content I would share on my own blog. This is what people have come to expect from me, so I would hate for them to go to my Pinterest and only see stuff about how I want to decorate my living room or the food I want to try and cook. I understand, that stuff is important personally too, but I just use a secret board for things that are really unrelated to my business.

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I'd love to hear what you've been working on for your social media plan. Let me know in the comments below! I've found these methods work best for me, but like I mentioned before, I am an open book to learning new methods!

*The links for Tailwind are affiliate links -  but I wouldn't recommend this program if I wasn't personally using + loving it. Let me know if you have any questions about how to use it!

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