5 steps to creating a community management strategy

If you're serious about building a community around your brand, posting content alone isn't going to cut it.

Social media is all about creating meaningful connections between your brand and your audience.

And this is why you don't just need a posting strategy--you need a community management strategy.

Community Management cultivates relationships and drives trust, loyalty and love for your brand.

When done right, community management fosters engagement and creates a space where your audience feels genuinely connected to each other and you.

So, if you want to build relationships that will last, Community Management has to be part of the equation.

These days, audiences aren't interested in perfectly polished brands. Instead, they crave real interactions with real people. And brands that embrace this need are rewarded with higher loyalty and retention rates and stronger communities.

As social media continues to evolve, so do the opportunities for brands to engage directly with their customers.

Community Management comes in many forms.

But whether it’s responding to comments, facilitating discussions, or managing feedback, brands that prioritise community management will stand out in an increasingly crowded market.

So here are 5 steps to creating a community management strategy for your brand:

1. Define your goals

Before diving in, define what you want to achieve with community management.

Are you looking to build brand awareness? Strengthen customer relationships? Gather valuable feedback?

Clear, specific goals will help shape your strategy and give you measurable benchmarks for success.

2. Choose the right platform

You don’t want to be shouting into the abyss and hear nothing back from your audience.

So find out where your audience is the most active and start there.

It can be useful to research which demographics are most active on different platforms. For example, TikTok and Instagram will work well for younger, visually driven audiences. LinkedIn is ideal for professional networking.

To further target your efforts, you might want to create a customer persona to help you find your ideal audience.

It’s best to start community management on one to two platforms first. This means you can focus on building meaningful engagement without spreading yourself too thin.

3. Establish a brand voice

For your audience to feel connected to you, your community interactions must feel personal and authentic.

So flesh out your idea of how you wish to show up as a brand.

Make yourself a cheat sheet outlining how you’ll respond to questions, commentary, and complaints. Your tone must be consistent, conversational, and relate to your brand’s values.

Sometimes it can be helpful to think of your brand as a person, character or celebrity. Would they use humour? Specific emojis? Professional or casual language?

Stick to your tone. If you stray away from this, your audience will be confused and will no longer engage.

4. Engage consistently and creatively

Consistency is key. It's absolutely non-negotiable. So when you get engagement from your audience, respond promptly. This shows them that you are present and invested.

Occasionally, you can switch out your method of engaging by using polls, questions or giveaways.

Show your appreciation by sharing user generated content. It’s simple yet an effective way to make your community feel real, valued and involved.

5. Measure your success

Consistently track your efforts so you can be sure to see that your strategy is working.

Ask, what’s working and what isn’t?

Pay attention to the metrics.

What’s your engagement rate? How about your video retention rate and overall sentiment? This will help you understand how your audience feels about your brand.

You can use external tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite to help gather data if you like. But it’s perfectly fine to just look at your metrics within each app for free.

The future of community management

In 2025, brands should be putting a large focus on building connections that are genuine and will truly engage.

Effective community management builds brand loyalty, setting you apart from others in a competitive, constantly evolving world.

-Jess & Brooke, Community Managers