Why Even Bother Building a Community on Social Media?

Kassaundra  00:01

You’re busy, I get it. So why in the world am I asking you to put social media marketing on your plate? Today we’re going to chat about the top three reasons that you should want to build a community on social media.

Kassaundra  00:15

So teacher authors, go ahead and reheat that cup of coffee because I’m your host, Kassaundra Foster, and we’re about to get Schooled in Socials.

Kassaundra  00:25

Welcome back to Schooled in Socials. The rest of this month, we are going to be diving in to what I’m calling my why even bother series. So we’re going to talk about why are we even bothering with social media in the first place? Why are we going to bother with Facebook and Instagram and so that you can make informed decisions about your social media marketing plan moving forward. And today, we are going to start with the most important question, I think, why are we even bothering to build a community on social media? What benefits does that have, and why should we put these social media tasks on our plate in order to build our community? So I have three reasons why building a community is so important for your teacher author business. 

Kassaundra  01:18

Number one is brand awareness. So when you build a community on social media, you’re becoming more of a person than just a storefront. So when someone goes to search for a resource and they end up at your storefront, it’s really just about your resources. There’s a spot for you to give your background and what you do, but truly, all they see is the resources and what those resources offer. When you start to build a community on social media, you get to share more of yourself, and people get to feel like they know you. And building that know like and trust factor is so important when it comes to marketing your resources. You’re humanizing your business. You’re showing them the teacher or teacher author behind that business. And the more that those teachers start to get to know you and like you and trust you, they are likely to take that leap from passive content consumer on Instagram or Facebook to an actual buyer of your resources. There’s potential that even if they don’t click through to buy from your social media page, they could recognize your branding when they’re doing a search on TPT or Google or Pinterest, and recognizing your branding and having a little voice in their head say, Hey, I know that person. They’re probably more likely to click on your resource because they feel like they already know something about you, and they know the value that you can provide them because they’ve been following you on social media, they’ve been trying out the tips that you share in your classroom, and so they know that you probably have something for them that’s helpful and they might not need to search any longer, and that is so powerful. 

Kassaundra  03:24

And along with that, social media has the ability to drive traffic to your store, which means you’re not at the mercy of the search bar when you’re building a community. So what I mean by that is the TPT search bar can only go so far, right? Whew, there have been a lot of updates, and getting people to your store through search has been hit or miss. I am part of several TPT Facebook groups, and the results that I see people posting are a little silly sometimes. TPT is trying to test out their personalized search and obviously they have some bugs to work out, and that’s leading to some undesirable search results. So you may have seen your traffic from the TPT search bar go down, but that’s okay, because if you build a community on social media, those are teachers who know your value, who are in your corner, who are more likely to come back as repeat buyers, and they don’t need to find you through the search bar. And beyond TPT, you aren’t just at the mercy of the Pinterest search or the Google search, right? Your followers are already here. They can easily click to your page and see what you can offer them without having to go through the whole search process. And since they hopefully already have no like and trust with you this can be one of the easiest ways from point A to point B for them to get resources. So instead of going to Google, instead of going to TPT and typing in science task cards, they know, oh, I follow someone on Instagram or I’m in a Facebook group, and they have resources around science. Let’s go check out their page and click in their link in bio and see if they have some science task cards I could use, right? Instead of having to go through all of those search results to find what they’re actually looking for. They know about you, and they can come to you directly. And that is beautiful.

Kassaundra  05:47

So truly, having a community means that you have potential customers at your fingertips without having to rely on any search engine. Don’t get me wrong, you still want to optimize things for search engines, but building that community can help in those times when you’re trying to get better SEO, when things are being tweaked around with the TPT search algorithm, and you don’t have to panic as much, because you can call on your community, and they can get your resources simply through your social media channels.

Kassaundra  07:51

All right. And reason number three, easy market research, my guess is that even though you are starting out promoting your resources on social media, or you’ve been promoting your resources for a while on social media, you’re more than likely still creating resources for teachers in the classroom. You’re building your store, or maybe you’re launching a course, or some sort of mastermind to help teachers. There’s always, usually something else you’re creating. And when you create something new, you have to do some market research to make sure your audience is actually going to want that thing. And traditionally, this happens in the form of, like, longer surveys and things like that. But when you build a community on social media, and you’re also an active participant in that community, meaning that some of your followers and audience members have had touch points with you, conversations with you, have felt connected to you, whether it’s on Instagram or Facebook, you’re able to gain a lot more helpful information that goes beyond just what you should be doing for your marketing on social media. If you have a Facebook group, people are likely to be sharing their pain points and struggles resources that they’re looking for because they feel like this specific group of people could help them. This is fantastic market research for what kinds of resources you could be creating to help resolve those pain points. No long survey needed. You can gather important information to move your business forward just by reading through posts and comments and noting them for yourself. In fact, this is something that I help some teacher authors do with Facebook groups that I manage is I kind of look through and I take note of what people are asking for, and then I let the teacher author know. I say, hey, you know, in the last few months, I’ve seen lots of people ask about science task cards. Maybe that could be something you could put on your list to create for them.

Kassaundra  10:07

When it comes to Instagram, there are so many great ways that teachers can share their ideas with you. They can’t specifically post like in a Facebook group, but you have a different ways to get them to respond to questions in order to get that information from them. You can start out by just simply posting a poll in your stories that can help you get a quick pulse check on how your audience is feeling, what they might be looking for, how they need or want to be supported. And again, that is gold. Knowing what your audience needs and wants helps you create things that they’re actually going to want to buy in the long run. And the best part is when you’re launching something new. So if you’re doing one of those bigger things, like a course launch, a mastermind, things like that. You don’t have to search for your target audience to poll them. You’ll already have them in your social media community, ready and waiting for you. How awesome is that? You can just like, take out a whole step there. You don’t have to search for them. You don’t have to figure out who is my target audience? Through social media, you have brought people to you who need your resources, who are your target audience, and you can find out if the thing you are about to launch is actually going to help them and be interesting to them.

Kassaundra  11:38

Little bit of a truth time. Community building on social media does take time and effort, but it is so worth it. Bringing awareness to your brand, who you are, and the resources you create helps people recognize you as a leader in your niche and someone who brings them value. Plus bypassing all the craziness of the search bar, whether that is TPT, Pinterest, Google, or otherwise, can bring you such a sense of relief. You’ll have teachers who love your resources in your corner ready to grab the next thing you create. And finally, no more stress over market research. Having a community means you can easily see pain points and struggles and create resources that will help teachers take back their time. Now it’s all well and good for me to share my thoughts on why a community is so important. But if you are going to make a social media marketing plan that works for you, you also have to get in touch with your why, too. So after this episode is done, I want you to grab a piece of paper and spend a few minutes just jotting down why you think social media could be beneficial for your business. Think about how it can help you reach the goals you’re already working towards, and how it can fit into and complement the plans you already have once you’re done, I would love to hear all of your thoughts, so shoot me a DM over on Instagram.

Kassaundra  13:20

All right, cold coffee friends. Thanks so much for listening. If you’re loving getting schooled in socials, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. Also, I would love it if you left a review, so that other teacher authors like you can start getting schooled in socials too. All right, I’ll see you in the next episode.