3 Essential Social Media Community Leadership Practices

In an effort to to catch-up on their social media community building, businesses are overlooking the three common leadership practices that practically guarantee their success.

Fortunately, the remedies are simple and straightforward.

Following are three community building practices that apply to all of the social media networks – including your Facebook business page, company blog, or any of the location pages, such as Google Places.

#1 – Qualified Community Managers

Social media amplifies your characteristics, capabilities, and expertise. Thus, to build a vibrant community you need to demonstrate your capabilities in no uncertain terms, and that starts with being honest.

Unless you are a celebrity, community, or industry leader, it is far better to set your sights on building a smaller community that you can capably manage.

Using social media to make wild claims is sure to lead to disappointment – for you and the community members you are seeking to align with your business or expertise.

Know your strengths and weaknesses. What is working for you in your everyday business activities is what you should use as your calling card.

This will not be exciting to those that are not your ideal audience. I understand that, and so do those who derive value from my passion for digital media that is grounded in my nearly three decades of mainstream small business marketing experience.

It’s really quite simple – know your audience and give them what they want – and need.

#2 – Consistent Fulfillment of Expectations

This past week I immersed myself in a week of writing a book that is designed to tackle the challenges small businesses face with their social media networking and marketing efforts. As a result, I created a space of nearly a week of “dead air” here on JeffKorhan.com, something that has not happened in nearly three years.

When you feel the pain of letting your community down, you know you are dedicated to delivering valuable content that serves the needs of those who have honored you with their attention.

You and I both know this is not the norm. There are many blogs and Facebook pages that have been devoid of activity for days, weeks, months, and more.

While I could fill these pages up with conversation, I know what you came here for are original perspectives, practical tutorials, and occasional interviews with notable experts. That’s my focus here.

However, on my Facebook business page you will also find links to useful content from other experts. For example, Mari Smith’s treatment of Facebook Timeline for business was so thorough that I had nothing else to add.

As a result, the right thing to do was to simply direct my Facebook community members to that content.

#3 – Adherence to Community Guidelines

One of the most valuable community building practices is creating expectations – and then adhering to them. This includes everything from the type of information that is shared, to commenting guidelines.

Nothing is more frustrating than joining a community that doesn’t meet your business needs. It is the reason that I have opted out of countless LinkedIn groups that are filled with too much chatter and self-promotion.

As the manager of your communities, you have the responsibility to manage the discussion.

You have to be diligent about deleting spammy comments and guiding discussions that occasionally wander off topic. This again honors the time and attention of those community members that are ideally aligned with your expertise or business.

Thank you for taking your time to consume this article in its entirety.

I will continue to endeavor to earn your trust – and that of your friends and colleagues that you recommend to this community.

In that spirit, please leave a comment below to share how we can collectively make this community more productive for everyone that happens to find their way here.

Leave a comment below and share this with your community using any of the share buttons below – or on the little red bar at the bottom of this page.

Until next time, Jeff

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