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Safe Camp helps brands to take the stress out of social media planning. This newsletter is a library of "camp notes" - explorations of social media nuances.

Social Media and Community

Community is the heart and ideal of social media

Jason King

Nov 29, 2022

As a brand or community takes shape, forging stronger connections requires much more than producing content. It is not enough to "build it and they will come."

A great community requires a combination of the following.

Some of these behaviors may overlap, but they are described differently to help spark thinking.

Guidance

Codify the principles and guardrails of the community, including how members are invited, admitted, and graduated from the group
Guide and mentor others in their approach to community building
Give new members a warm welcome through direct and public outreach, especially newcomers (e.g., onboarding, introduction)
Create meaningful connections between members
Invite people to the conversation
Empower the voices that have not yet been heard
Encourage advocates and champions
Promote and highlight noteworthy behaviors
Foster a sense of belonging
Shape culture (e.g., a name for community members, rituals)
Build shared values
Facilitate: Ask deeper, probing questions to draw insights out of others
Remove barriers that prevent members from embracing and engaging in the community
Connect and manage across multiple channels (e.g., Twitter, Slack, Discord, Discourse)
Gather swag details to recognize members

Content and Education

Share the community-building techniques that are working with community members, and generally share community best practices coming from anywhere
Ensure that available resources are understood and used, with reminders
Create, curate, and share content through an editorial calendar
Develop a hub or single source of information
Feature voices of the community and others (e.g., customers)
Plan and facilitate community programs and events, online and offline (e.g., meetups, conferences, live video) and with partners
Conduct community projects when relevant

Moderation

Balance growth with quality and value
Set standards for respectful, safe and open discourse
Create and enforce community guidelines; seek input/refinement
Stay calm and diplomatic in the face of dissent, debate, negativity, trolling and more
Hide, delete, or block inappropriate behavior
Listen actively and with empathy
Earn trust
Give and receive candid feedback
It's okay to have a private account and a community

Advocacy

Experiment with new initiatives, establish repeatable playbooks for the ones that work, and help expand the community
Create and contribute to content while sharing lessons learned along the way
Learn about members' personal and professional aspirations
Contact members directly for feedback and ideas
Represent community feedback and needs internally
Help community builders to do the things they'd do even without a tool, through a system
Empathize with community builders of many different shapes and sizes to understand their needs and challenges
Drive action within and beyond the community
Live and breathing the mission, and attract others
Product and topic education and tutorials
Integrate innovation and points of view on relevant topics
Use tools like Slack, Airtable, Zapier, Notion, Segment, and other no-code solutions to help operationalize and automate community workflows where appropriate
Compile and look at the data to see what is and isn’t working
Track and report on community metrics on a regular basis
Study products and think about how to improve them
Use other content mediums like video and voice to help increase the sense of personal connection in the community