I’ve been hearing this term a lot. I started thinking to myself what does it mean, why do we have it, is it important? I was getting coffee with an old co-worker when I realized how important it is.
It’s so freaking important, and the cool thing is, everyone has it. You have a community with you and you haven’t met majority of your community face to face. When building a brand or your business on social media, you have to connect with a community. Immerse yourself in that group.
Evan, How do you connect with a community?
It starts by engaging with them. If you walk into a coffee shop by yourself and you want to meet someone knew. How do you do it? You engage with conversation. Then you have a new friend. Same goes on social media. Engage with the community around you.
Hashtags on Twitter and Instagram are a great way to find a community. Facebook groups and weekly Twitter chats are a great way to find community. If you work in sports and are young #YPsportschat is a great community full of people who work in sports and are here to help you grow and find success.
Twitter is a very cool place to find community in just about anything. Follow people who have similar interests with you and engage in conversation. Send them a Dm, and ask to chat. 9/10 people would love to. (this stat comes from personal expierience.)
Imagine this
You’re working on building your brand and you are writing a sports blog in the DFW area. Huge sports fans and loves the Dallas Mavericks.
You start by following these teams on Twitter and Instagram, and start engaging with fans and the teams post.
You do this for an hour a day searching for tweets and posts to engage in and put your two cents in. Slowly but surely, you start to grow. People are following you and they are interested in what you have to say.
People are all of a sudden engaging with your blogs, because you post them everywhere, it’s easy to find. Some time goes by and your still posting to social media your blog links. All of a sudden someone from Bleacher Report slides into your dm’s and you guys just connect.
You already now have a new connection, and have built up your following. He( the guy from BR) now is talking to you about the possibility of writing for Bleacher Report.
They do some phone calls and emails and the person who makes the decisions likes your work and now you are writing for Bleacher Report and your blog is now being seen by 100x more people.
This scenario is entirely possible. It will take some grinding out and won’t happen over night. So don’t get discouraged. You got this.
Instagram Search
Now Instagram is a little less of conversation based and more of a supportive community. You don’t really have in depth conversations through Instagram comments compared to being on Twitter.
I used the 3x3 method and I’ve seen it work. It’s some time and effort but the outcome works. The 3x3 method is going on Instagram and going to the search tab, where all these reccomendations come up. You click the top 3 and you engage with your two cents. Then go to a hashtag relevant to it and do the same thing on the hashtag. Top 3 photos. Do this with three hashtags, and you’ll see growth and your building your following and community.
Back to the blog.
Community is very important. To me I’ve networked with so many people due to finding community on social media. It also is very important everywhere else, in your work field, in school. Wherever it is, you have community. I was sitting down with an old professor and he said his vision for his program is to
“create and build a community to where photographers can grow and create freely.”
That right there inspired me and got me wondering on how important community is in life and in social media.
You get to grow, and you network yourself. To me networking is a huge tool, you meet people and everyone is a possible client.
“You never know who you’re going to meet.”
I was talking with someone about photography and I was talking to him about where I’m at with photography and he ended up getting me some clients that I wouldn’t have got if it wasn’t for him. Networking and community are key.
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