Socially savvy

How to create a sense of community on social media

When it comes to lockdown, one thing is certain – people are at home. At home, on their devices and in all likelihood, scrolling their social feeds.

Gone are all the normal real-life distractions and everyone’s world is that bit smaller. You have their attention, so now it’s time to take advantage and get your brand noticed on social media.

Using your social media accounts effectively to draw in customers and create a brand personality can really help with sales. But to achieve this you need to have interested and engaged customers, and this takes time and effort. Here are a few ideas to get you started...

Make an impact

Disruption gets attention. It doesn’t need to be the bad type, and certainly don’t start making wild claims about your products, but doing things differently will help you stand out. Create graphics with clashing colours, pose difficult questions or write your posts in the style of a nutty professor – whatever it takes to get your audience to notice you and want to listen to what you have to say.

Create a community

Social media in lockdown times can be a wonderful place for interacting with other humans. Take the plunge and use the go live function of social media platforms a few times a week to chat to your customers. Go live on Instagram and you can ask your customers to request a split screen chat with you. Show your personality, pose interesting debate topics and get talking. All of this will create a friendly, community feel around your brand and grow trust in your advice and recommendations.

Be consistent

Post when you can and be realistic about your time restraints, but whatever time you have, make sure you devise a posting rate and stick to it. If you can only post once a week then that’s fine – a consistent weekly post is better than five posts a week and then months of nothing. If you want your audience to engage with your brand, they need to know you’re there.

Collaborate

Giveaways are a great way to grow your following and give something back to your loyal followers. Put together a bundle of healthy living goodies and give them away to one lucky winner – all people have to do to enter is comment on your post. It’s great for engagement – and this will tell Facebook’s algorithm to show your posts more in the future. If you work well with some brands then collaborate and run a giveaway for them from your page for an extra boost.

If this gives you a lockdown project and fires you up to do more on social, it’s over to you. Go for it, make a splash and help your business to grow even in the hardest circumstances.

If all this feels overwhelming and too much to take on, get in touch with us and we can help with everything from hints and tips, to full social media management for your business.

Sian Anderson is the Digital Communications Director here at JFN Productions. She runs an experienced team of social media professionals who can help to get your social media channels up and running. If you are interested in finding out more, email Sian at [email protected].