Plugging In: The Six Communities with which Your Business Needs to Connect

Plugging In: The Six Communities with which Your Business Needs to Connect:

As you build, maintain, and manage your online social presence, you need to remember that communities don’t grow themselves. Whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, or any other platform, you need to cultivate those communities, especially if you’re a small business.

In most cases, that means that you need to reach out and connect with them first. They won’t just show up on your doorstep.

In particular, as you seek to build your following and online communities, there are six main communities with which you need to connect. If you start with them, your job will be easier down the line.

1. Your local community of individuals – On Twitter in particular, you can start out by searching for local people to follow. Once you find some of the key local individuals, see who follows them or who they are following. These may be the people you see around town, and they may or may not be your customers, but perhaps they are potential customers. Or maybe they are connected to potential customers.

2. Your community of existing customers – Find them online. And use your offline presence to let them know you are online. If social media is built on a foundation of word of mouth, then your current customers will be incredibly important to you online. You need to find ways to make all of your customers aware of your online presence. Whether they are local or around the world, remind them to connect with you online.

3. Your local business community – If you are a “local” business, don’t just connect with people. Connect with other businesses. “Like” and follow their business accounts from your business accounts. Connect with the individuals personally. Even if they might be perceived as competitors. When local businesses collaborate, everyone wins.

4. Your larger industry community – If you run a restaurant, connect with other restaurants around the country as well as industry associations, food bloggers, etc. Almost every business category has both formal and informal groups and organizations designed just for them. Connect with them online and learn from them. Share ideas. Learn what works and doesn’t work for your industry peers. No matter how long you’ve been in business or how much of an “expert” you are, you can always learn from others.

5. Your internal community – Don’t forget your employees. I understand that a lot of staff members might not want to connect directly with you on Facebook, but you can create an employee only group on Facebook to enhance internal communications. You can do similar things on Google +. Many businesses struggle with internal communications, especially when they have multiple locations, and staff that works different shifts.

6. Your non-business/industry community – If you meet a plumber out on the town at night, I’m betting he won’t only talk to you about plumbing. If he does, you’ll be headed in the opposite direction pretty darn fast. Connect with other individuals and entities that share your interests. Do you like sports (or a specific sport)? Connect with those folks. Perhaps you’re interested in books, cooking, fashion, or music. In other words, it doesn’t all have to be about your business. Being well-rounded actually will help you and your business in the long run. Your customers aren’t one-dimensional, and you shouldn’t be one-dimensional either.

Have you connected with all of these communities online? You might even be surprised at how many of them overlap!