Top Community Engagement Tips From Social Media Day
Babe Crafted’s “Create Easy, Engaging Video for Instagram” Workshop at Brave Haus // Photo by by A. Creative Co.
This past June, Babe Crafted was tapped to put together a panel on a subject we know well- Community Engagement. With Social Media Day becoming pandemic-ified and spreading over a whole month of content goodness, I gathered some of our babes to virtually chat about how their businesses engage in the community and most importantly, what they’ve learned with the community engaging with their brands. Below are some of the best bits!
Want to see the whole live replay, but didn’t purchase a Social Media Day ticket? Don’t worry! You can still purchase and access to the FB Group and watch the Community Engagement panel as well as any other educational replays.
First things first-
Meet The Panelists
Amber Romero of A. Creative Co.
Ashly Anderson of Tampa’s Downtown Partnership
Brittany Ward of A Marketing Whisperer and CreateCollabs
Ok, let’s get this panel started!
What does Community Engagement mean to you?
Amber:
We want to foster a conversation online that’s not just one-sided.
Ashly:
The main goal is to try to get you to have Downtown front of mind and know that you can come to us for anything cool, exciting, and fun, and then we break it down from there depending on what you’re interested in as a user.
Breonna:
It’s all about building an audience who feels like they belong and are now a part of something that’s greater than them. Additionally, as a Digital Creator who helps women monetize their gifts, on the flip-side, it’s saying “you know what? you have a voice and you have gifts that you should share with others.” You can build a community around that.
Brittany:
I look for people who are great storytellers, have a perspective, and they just get as weird as they need to be because that’s where I think the special sauce comes in where we’re able to connect meaningful relationships between our clients and those people who are authentically weird and unique and are their special selves.
Breonna, you have a YouTube community of over 85K subscribers, how do you keep your subscribers coming back for more content? How do you interact with your subscribers on & off YouTube?
Breonna:
One of my gifts is that I can walk into a room of strangers and I can leave with at least authentic contact. That’s how I create my content. I want at least one person to get something from this. I strive to create content that is valuable, that people can go back to, and that is evergreen.
I always listen to my audience. If they have questions I write it down in Trello. I have a long list so when it comes time to create content I can reference that and create content around what my audience wants.
Ashly, as the Director of Marketing for Tampa’s Downtown Partnership, can you talk a bit about how you engage with your partnerships members vs, how you engage with residents, business owners, and more?
Ashly:
I’m an Urban Designer, and all the people who work for our organization are Place Experts. Place Branding is my secret sauce and I understand why people gather, why Downtown’s become the biggest part of our core memory when we visit new cities. Even Disney, the happiest place on Earth, is designed after Walt Disney’s hometown main street in Missouri because of that nostalgia. We take that lens into everything we do, especially social media. We have too much content and have to highly edit.
We also engage with influencers and that’s a new avenue for us. We’re Place nerds, but we’re not always the messaging nerds. So working with people who know the audience we can tell Downtown’s story better.
Speaking of telling stories, if you’re telling a good story, you get people talking, right? What are some ways that you reward when people engage with your content?
Ashly:
We put on quite a few events and in general that’s our main engagement, to use digital tools to draw people to a physical space. When we see the Riverwalk packed and lots of attendees at our major events, we see them there and know our message has gotten them there.
Amber:
I like to connect with people who are highly engaged with us and send them a voice memo, ask if they want more info, and add a touch of personalization. That’s how I respond on Instagram. On TikTok, you can respond to people’s comments and have it post in your feed so there are lots of fun ways tome people feel heard & seen.
Breonna:
Saying someone’s name and sending an audio messaging or video lets people know “I see you, I hear you, and I appreciate you.”
Brittany:
I’m looking at this through the client’s lens. I’m always looking for ways that people have inserted themselves into the brand. If they have an image we can re-share and re-use that content to give them a platform of recognition and their own 5 minutes of fame, people really love being recognized for that.
It also gives you more credibility because you’re now giving credibility from the brand to the individual who has actively used your product or service or city space. I have also found that be re-sharing that and using user-generated content, they’re inclined to come back and do it again.
Amber, you have a community that surrounds your company, A. Creative Co., and then you also manage and build a community for your social media clients. What are some approaches you take when you’re engaging with your community vs. your client’s communities?
Amber:
I work with both product and service-based businesses owned by women. No matter what, there’s always a face to their brand. so it’s hard for me to respond personally on behalf of the brand. But I learn their voice and brand so I can respond in a way that no one knows the difference. I manage comments and DM’s and reach out to new people I want in their audience and engage with their content. There’s no quick fix, but my biggest tip is to use Instagram on desktop instead of your phone is a big efficiency trick.
For myself, I can approach it differently because I’m the brand. I do a lot of voice memos and video memos in DM’s. One of the biggest things I do that sets me apart is when someone new follows me, I will send them a personal voice message saying their name and thanking them for the follow as well as inviting them to reach out to me if they have any questions about social media marketing. Giving that acknowledgment will go so far.
Brittany, you own a marketing agency called A Marketing Whisperer and a platform where you connect influencers with brand called CreateCollabs. What engagement strategies do you use for one company vs. the other?
Brittany:
Three years ago when I started A Marketing Whisperer, the intent was to cast a wide net and provide all services to all people with the end goal of allowing ourselves to organically find niche. But 6 months in, the social algorithms changed and it became more pay to play. We stopped seeing organic growth and it was a real issue. The solution for us was CreateCollabs and engaging with more influencers. We needed to be able to continue growing that following organically and we needed spoke peoples to do that outside of a logo.
We like to talk about these collaborations with influencers as ambassadorships that we want to grow over time. That way that CreateCollabs engages is through our influencers. We re-share their content and make them the hero of their story and I’m purely the director.
