How To Boost Your Online Business With Social Media Groups and Communities

If you’re trying to boost your online business results, you probably already know by now that you need to stay strong, focused, and consistent and that connections are one way of boosting your brand visibility.

With all the social media platforms available, if you play your cards right and spend your time where it makes a difference, you can reap the benefits of creating meaningful connections with potential customers by using social media outreach.

In this article, we get into the nitty-gritty of how Social media outreach works, how it can help you boost your online business, how you can utilize social media groups in your favor, and how to measure your results.

Let’s dive in!

What is Social Media Outreach?

Social media outreach is one of the best ways to collect leads, build new relationships, increase engagement with your content and raise awareness about your brand. By simply using social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, you can spread the word about your products and services, whether you’re an online business owner or an edupreneur.

How Does Social Media Outreach Work?

Social media outreach requires you to devote a lot more of your time and effort to it, as you will need to invest in extensive work related to content creation and relationship-building. However, despite its demanding nature, social media outreach is becoming more and more popular amongst marketers due to the human touch and authenticity built via social platforms.

Long gone are the days of mass marketing. Thanks to social media you can now connect to your target audience on a personal level and build long-lasting relationships.

Sadly, some marketers use social media outreach as a way of spamming their desired customer base instead of building genuine relationships. That is why it is essential to remember that social media outreach is all about creating mutually beneficial relationships rather than transactional ones.

So keep on reading to find out how to make your social media outreach a success without spamming or annoying your audience.

Is Social Media Outreach Effective?

We’re not going to lie – executing a successful outreach campaign can be difficult. However, when done right, the results you get from it can make your efforts worth it. The key to achieving that is to set a clear objective for yourself and decide what you want to accomplish with social media outreach. This will determine who you want to reach out to and how you will do it.

To ensure the effectiveness of your campaign, it is also essential to remain consistent. Your outreach process should be continuous, and it can work wonders for you if it is well maintained. Furthermore, social media outreach can provide you with so much information about each prospective client, allowing you to properly research them and send personalized messages to maximize their effectiveness.

Have you now decided if you want to do outreach? Then let’s move on to the next step – setting up for success!

How Can You Boost Your Online Business With Social Media Groups and Communities?

When it comes to social media outreach profiles, there are two ways to do your outreach campaigns: either by using a personal account or a company profile. Many people prefer doing their outreach campaigns through personal profiles since this approach allows you to add a personal touch to your campaigns and create more authentic connections.

However, an advantage of using your brand profile for social media outreach is that it seems more official, especially if your company is already well known and established. Regardless of which way you decide to go, make sure your social media profiles are up to date and contain all the relevant information.

It is with certainty that when you’re engaging with people on social media, they will check your profile. That is why, if you want to be taken seriously, your profiles need to be presentable and include:

• A professional profile photo or the official logo of your brand;
• A bio explaining who you are and what your brand does;
• A link to your website, email, phone number, or other relevant contact information.

Decide Who Is Your Target Audience

When considering the direction of your social media outreach, you should first determine who you want to reach and who your ideal buyer is. In these cases, it is very helpful to create a detailed “buyer persona” if you haven’t done that already.

Ask yourself important questions, such as:

• What are their profile demographics?
• On which social media platforms would they spend most of their time?
• What kind of content do they tend to publish or engage with?
• What are their biggest concerns and questions regarding the industry you’re an expert in?

You can find the answers to these questions by checking out the most popular platforms and groups and browsing through the actual conversations these people have.

This research will not only allow you to identify your prospective customers even better, but it will also help you create personalized messages and content that will aid you in hitting your targets.

Find The Right Social Media Platforms

As you might already be aware, no social media platform has the same functions as another one. Even if multiple channels could work for you, they vary in user habits, the hours your audience is active, the popularity of different types of content, etc.
Therefore, you’ll need to do your research and identify which one is best for you and your industry.

One way of doing this is by examining where your competitor brands or users get the highest interaction or posts shared per platform. Following already established best practices will help you create a successful content format for each platform.

Prepare Articles And Resources You Can Share

Before starting your outreach campaign, make sure you already have content that you are ready to share. In order to really stand out within your chosen social media communities, you need to present yourself as someone who can provide value and interesting insights.

Review the content you already have available and identify if there are other assets you’ll need to create from scratch.

Some resources you can look into: articles, downloadables like checklists or templates, videos, or even quick tips that you already include in your online course.

Reach Out to Prospects Across Existing Social Media Groups

This is it! You have done all your research and prepared thoroughly for your social media outreach campaign. Now it’s time to start approaching your prospects across different social media platforms and channels. But how do you even go about that? Well, there are several ways.

One way to go about it is by finding prospects based on their profile bio or industry-related posts they’ve engaged with. You can do that by finding a viral post from your industry and checking out all the people who have interacted with it. This way, you have a solid list of people who could be interested in your brand and are happy to engage in discussions.

Another easy way to find your target audience and engage with it is by joining groups. You might have the most luck with platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook since they have thousands of groups for all kinds of industries, in which professionals discuss relevant topics all the time.

Engage With Your Audience and Their Content

Once you have identified where your target audience is located it’s time to connect and then engage, engage, engage!

Join the groups relevant to your brand, and then make sure you’re staying active and partaking in conversations to build an expert image in your community. This will contribute to the legitimacy of your profile, as your profile visitors will see how knowledgeable you are about industry topics.

Frequently interacting with others on social media and their content will indicate that you are interested in what they have to say and give you the chance to collaborate with them.

Being active, leaving insightful comments, and answering questions can position you as a thought leader within those groups. This will help you gain credibility and grow your reputation, which in turn will help make your social media outreach campaign even more successful.

When To Start Pitching

Now that you’ve spent time and effort establishing genuine relationships, reaching out will be a smoother and easier process. However, although you have already established yourself among those communities, you still need to keep several things in mind when approaching your prospects.

• First and foremost, you should be aware of your tone of voice and how you phrase your sentences. Many people online do not appreciate aggressive pitching styles and will most likely reject you or ignore you. Instead, try adopting a more conversational and genuine tone of voice.
• Secondly, your pitch should be direct and brief. Clearly explain why you’re contacting them and add a couple of ideas or materials to be more specific. Do not give any additional information unless your prospect shows interest and wants to continue the conversation.
• Third, do not follow up after two unanswered messages. Regardless of whether they ignore you or haven’t read your messages, you should not continue pushing. In both cases, the chances of getting a reply are low, and you might actually provoke more frustration – which is something you’ll want to avoid.

Maintain Your Connections

Social media outreach is all about accumulating and preserving contacts. After all, these connections that you’ve worked so hard on creating can help your business grow in the long run. That is why you shouldn’t treat your connections as means of accomplishing short-term goals.

Make sure to keep in touch with people you’ve worked with, and don’t miss good opportunities to help them when they reach out to you. Being attentive and nice to the contacts you’ve created will pay off in the future.

Create Your Own Social Media Community For Outreach

While joining already established communities can help boost your outreach campaign immensely, creating your own social media group can also be quite beneficial in the long term. This way, people interested in your brand will be coming to you instead, in an environment you control.

However, maintaining a relevant and insightful social media community requires some dedication and strategy. As the founder of a group, you will be required to communicate a lot more with your audience and identify the best topics for your members.

Create Your Own Group

Studies show that 57% of consumers will stay loyal to a brand if there is more human communication. Therefore, when creating your own online community, you will need to make it really easy for your followers to talk to you.

A Facebook group is a great place to gather your community together, allowing you to reach out to your whole community directly. The reach-out can take place in the form of posts, polls, live Q&A sessions, and other types of content, in which you can directly ask people if they have any questions for you. Plus, you can provide tips and support for people to have a reason to always return and even invite other potential prospects to join.

Keep Your Audience Engaged

Being in charge of a group representing your brand also means that you will need to post engaging content. As such, it could be a good idea to create a content library and calendar for yourself.

Posting regularly in your community will not only allow you to engage newcomers and convince them of the quality of your product, but it will also increase the chances of your content being reshared by group members within their own network.

Provide Value and Special Perks

Providing value to your online community is a must. Your group members need to feel like being a part of your tribe gives them special perks. You can do that by sharing exclusive content, premiering never before seen courses, or just by simply solving their problems.

By using social listening, you can uncover your audience’s pain points. Ask questions or host Q&A sessions and find out what your community members are most struggling with. This way, you can gather as much information as possible before addressing it via content. This will also help you improve your digital product (e.g., online course, bundle, subscription) and help uncover potential flaws in your outreach campaign.

Decide How Often to Promote Your Online Courses

Having your own social media community also allows you to promote your online courses to the people who will be interested in them. After all, they have already joined a group run by your online school, meaning they want to stay informed about what new courses you have coming out.

However, it’s important to remember that you shouldn’t spam your audience. As we previously mentioned, it is necessary for the group to provide value to its members. The moment they start feeling like they are being excessively advertised, you risk losing many of them. So make sure to keep that in mind when deciding how often to promote your products there.

Measure Your Results and Improve Them

As with any other campaign, keeping track of your social media outreach results and seeing what works is very important.

One great way of doing this, according to Hyperise, is by segmenting your leads. For example, you can go through your list of leads and highlight all the decision-makers. Group them and track the results for that group vs. other groups that you set up: interns, 2nd LinkedIn connections, etc.

Depending on your product, you’ll find that some groups perform better than others. Focus your attention on those groups, and don’t waste as much time on the ones that don’t perform.

On the other hand, when it comes to social media outreach, some people prefer to just measure reach and engagement rates, while others track the impact of social media on conversion. There are different ways to track the success of your outreach campaigns. It’s up to you to decide what works best for your brand.

Final Thoughts

As explained in this article, an outreach campaign starts way before contacting your prospects. Social media outreach is a long process that requires a lot of preparation, research, and once put in motion – commitment.

However, even though it might seem tedious at times, the results you get from it can make your efforts all worthwhile.

Discover more about Social Media Marketing:

• 30 Best Social Media Automation Tools & Practices You Need to Try Out
• 10 Best Social Media Strategies by Successful Online Course Creators
• 11 Great Social Media Content Ideas for Online Course Creators
• How To Use Images & Videos to Promote Your Online School on Social Media
• 17 Online Tools You Need For Awesome Social Media Content

Andreea Constantin

Andreea is LearnWorlds' Head of Brand Marketing & Communities. With over 13 years of experience ranging across different areas of Communications, from PR to Social Media and Internal Comms, Andreea enjoys highlighting success stories and amazing people stories through social. She loves the wonderful power of words and, in her free time, she enjoys traveling, gardening, and the occasional Netflix & chill.