The benefits of using social media to engage with your community members.

You may want to consider not relying entirely on your digital groups like Circle, Heartbeat, MightyNetwork, or Facebook Group to communicate with your community members. You want to go to where they are, and there are several benefits to connecting with your community members on other platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

How to Reach Out?

‍The first thing to do is to make sure during the onboarding process that you are collecting your member's social profile URLs via their profile set up for your group or via an onboarding form.Reaching out to members via social media to say hello and engage and:

• Makes members feel see
• Makes members feel celebrated
• Builds relationships with members
• Creates awareness of your group to your members' social connections

What are the benefits?

• It will increase your followers (potential new members)
• It's an easy way to promote your group events and experiences to members' social connections and followers (potential new members)
• It showcases the value and personality of your group to members' social connections and followers (potential new members)

4 ways to engage with members on their social profiles

1. Start a “publicly searchable” conversation
2. Reach out privately via direct message
3. Comment thoughtfully with one of their existing social posts
4. Like or Share their social posts

When you engage with a member's post, you are also elevating their post which means their post is more likely to be seen by their followers which is a benefit to both of you.You are showing your support for them, and they are introducing their social connections to your group. Win, win.

Few Things To Keep In Mind When Engaging On Social media.

‍You want to focus on quality over quantity when engaging. You don’t want to come across as spammy or like you are just trying to sell your group. You want to be genuinely interested in the person and what they are sharing.

• Be personal - Engage in a vulnerable and deep way with them. Be conversational.
• Use their name - reference something you know about them, their business, their blog post, etc.
• Be human - let your personality shine through.
• Timing - you want to make sure you are engaging when they are most active on social media.
• Avoid “pitching” your group - this will come across as spammy.
• Content - you want to ensure the content you share is valuable, helpful, and relevant to your members' interests.

Some engagement examples

‍Example 1:Hey (name), read your post on (topic), super inspiring. I learned (XYZ). Looking forward to tuning into what you share next. I’m also curious to know if (XYZ)Example 2:This is awesome! Learned for much. My biggest takeaway was (XYZ). I’m curious if you would be interested in (topic) as I know many of our members are.Example 3:I’m (your name) and I’m the (title) of (your group). I’m loving your recent posts about (topic) and just wanted to reach out and say hello. I feel like we could have a lot in common, looking forward to reading more of your posts.

In conclusion, engaging with members on social media is a great way to connect with members, build relationships and increase the reach of your group.