I’ve been trying to learn more about Social Media lately. One of the ways that I have been doing this is by participating in a Social Media Podcast. This podcast is called the Bunker Project and takes place bi-weekly in the back storage room (aka. the Bunker) of a bar in the Barclay Hotel on Robson Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Many of the regular participants have huge Social Media Communities. One person has over 100,000 Twitter followers and is one of the top Social Media influencers in the world. Another participant, has a huge LinkedIn following and a noted LinkedIn Expert. The hosts have done hundreds of Podcasts and are frequent social media contributers. Other participants include SEO experts and Games developers. So, these are obviously people with lots of social media experience!
A recent podcast was about building communities in Social Media. Each participant was asked to give a tip about building social media communities. These tips were so good, I thought I would write this blog post to share them.
Tips for building Social Media communities:
1. Don’t Spam. If all you do is bother people and try to sell something you won’t build a good community.
2. Don’t Put a hashtag (#) in front of every word in your Tweets in Twitter. This is just bad etiquette and makes your Tweet hard to read.
3. Don’t post the same thing to multiple social media sites (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, etc.) in a short period of time. Your community will probably be following you on multiple social media sites and they don’t want to get the exact same post within a few minutes.
4. Give more than you take. Contribute to your community and you will build your community!
5. Don’t post too many items in a row in a short period of time. There are tools, e.g. Buffer, that can space out your postings.
6. Like your community. If you don’t really like your community, what is the point in building a large community?
7. Meet people in your community. Personal contact with people in your community will raise your standing in the community and help to build your community. This is easier if your community is local, but if it isn’t you can always go to a convention or meet people in your community when travelling!
These are some of the tips that I have picked up by participating in a community.