Social Strategy

A vibrant community breeds brand loyalty and customer satisfaction among other benefits including increased sales, repeat purchases and brand advocacy. So how do you build a rich network for your business and reap the rewards?

First it's important to understand the trademarks of a rich network:

• High ratio of interaction between leaders and participants
• Idea exchange between community members
• Frequent activity within the community

It's not about the visibility of your brand or the size of your community; it's about the frequency and quality of the interactions. Here are some suggestions to help get you on your way.

Are you a Small Business? There are some real benefits to building a community around a small company. As busy as you may be, you truly have the opportunity to connect one-on-one with individual customers. You can use tools like Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook to search for people talking about your product category in your geographic area and reach out to them with individualized offers. Make sure to keep track of your best customers with management tools like CoTweet. Keep in mind, its okay to initiate conversations rather than waiting for consumers to come to you. Provide them with inside information and deals before the rest of your customer group and you're likely to not only increase customer satisfaction, but also brand loyalty.

Are you a Mid-sized Business? Here you have the best of both worlds. You're starting to expand but still have a manageable sized community that presents a lot of opportunity. The main concern here is scaling. It's more important than ever to provide the same consistent experience your community expects, even while you grow. Put in place repeatable processes and policies to ensure that all incoming messages from your community are handled in a timely and appropriate manner. Continue to search for opportunities to proactively interact with your community and entice them to bring new members into the fold.

Are you a Large or Enterprise Business? Large enterprises often mean large community sizes. But as mentioned above, size will get you only so far. Quality is ultimately the most important factor to keep in mind. As a large business it's critical to consistently find new ways to improve quality while maintaining efficiency. Take advantage of the tools that are available today. Many help you not only prioritize but also track, assign roles and report back on interactions with the community. Use the size of your community to your advantage by encouraging customers to support each other. Provide valuable and useful content for them to consume and share and use structured and assigned search parameters to identify opportunities that may otherwise go unnoticed.

These are just a few general suggestions to enhance interactions within your community. Want more? Join our community to exchange ideas with other CoTweet customers or contact us directly. We're filled with ideas and love building communities and strengthening brands.

Katie is blogging on behalf of the Social Media Marketing Team at ExactTarget