Building a robust community on social media can often be an expensive and time-consuming prospect. Targeting, audience profiling, brand tone of voice and conversational planning are all key parts to getting the community right from the get-go. Tug recently undertook the task of building the social media community for Bombardier Beer, creating one of the largest ale communities on Facebook. The core campaign objective was to grow the Facebook and Twitter communities; develop the social media profiles into a key channel for brand messaging and consumer engagement to drive beer sales. In this event for Social Media Week 2013, community building is the focus, showing you how to go about creating and growing a community on social media from scratch. It is common on social media to find communities that have become less reactive to engagement efforts made by community managers that have worked on the brand for long periods of time.

1. How to Build a Social Media Community from Scratch
#SMWBuild
@tugagency
Friday September 27th 2013
WE BIG TRAFFIC

2. Tug Credentials
 Established in 2006, based in Shoreditch, London
 Offices in London & Toronto
 Staff of 40+ search and social marketing specialists
 Display, SEO, PPC, Social Media & Affiliates
 100% accountable, transparent & results focussed
 DMA Award winner 2009 & 2010 & 2011 for Best Use Of Search
 2011 & 2012 Revolution Awards finalist
 BIMAs 2013 Finalist – social community building

3. Some of our Clients

4. Background – Bombardier Beer
 Wells & Young’s asked Tug to develop its Facebook
Page for flagship beer Bombardier
 Tug were involved in determining the media spend
and campaign ideas to drive fans to the page and
build an effective community where people can
discuss all things Bombardier
 We are proud to say that we have developed the
UK’s largest online ale community, with over 75,000
likes engaging over 10,000 people every week

5. The alcohol sector and social media
 Alcohol brands are moving to using a social media platform as
their main B2C facing digital property – primarily Facebook
Pages
 Websites for many alcohol brands are now seen as a B2B
property for on-trade and suppliers to find more information
and make contact
 The primary reason is that this sector depends on brand
awareness (as there is no e-commerce aspect) and
responsiveness from a social media community is a key way of
ensuring this in a measurable way

6. Building a social community from scratch
 For many people, a social media
community is still a numbers game
measured by likes or followers
 Starting from scratch with an
empty Page or profile can be a
daunting prospect as its success/
progress is so immediately obvious
 The trick is to hit the ground
running, ensuring that even the
first fans to arrive have fresh and
engaging content to play with

7. What you will need
 Clear objective and purpose – what is your
community trying to achieve
 Launch idea and possible competition
 Creative assets pre-prepared
 Ideas for creative and engagement
 Access to Photoshop or a creative team
 You need someone who lives and breathes social
media working on the account ...

8. Listening to your target audience
 There are a range of social media
monitoring tools that can allow you
to listen to what your audience is
talking about
 This is the first key step to
understanding what type of content
is going to keep your community
engaged
 Conversations and discussions are
going to be the lifeblood of your
community
 What theme or conversation can
you capitalise on and join?

9. Determine your budget and platform
 Growing a community from scratch will
cost time and money
 Before setting the budget, it is important
to have a goal or KPI in mind for how
many people you are hoping to reach
 It is possible to set your budget
against the number of people you are
expecting to bring into your community
 Then it is important to think of the action
that they are set to take when the user
has clicked the ad and arrive in your
community – what do they do now?

10. Setting up and launching
 Register the social media domain
names (use namechk.com)
 Use a launch event and chose
your day carefully, your media
budget starts and it needs to be
significant
 Tie in some kind of activity that
can take life on the community to
kick start that initial conversation
and make sure you have some
good content pieces

11.  Determine a content calendar
based on new product launches,
seasonality, specific events
 Determine key categories and
content for social distribution –
each link should regularly lead
the visitor to a point of
engagement
 The community should be
an“anchor” for all content, to
amplify the messaging that you
know works with your
community, channel by channel
Planning your conversation

12. Starting the conversation
 Launch idea should tie in with an event
or celebration that will kick start the
engagement and get the community
buzzing
 This will also give you plenty of things to
talk about, filling the page with
comments and content to avoid people
arriving on a blank page
 New and potential fans clocking
engagement and activity is more
important than viewing the numbers of
fans on the page

13.  EdgeRank is Facebook’s way of
determining what content gets seen
in a person’s newsfeed
 Continual engagement – with rich &
relevant content, is needed to grow
reach and likes, building awareness
and ultimately retain your
community on Facebook
Edgerank and the importance of engagement

14.  Respond to your community
regularly, ideally daily on Facebook
 Balance between types of content
and avoid repetition, particularly
across different channels
 Brand tone of voice should be
adopted by anyone updating a
status on a social media community
 We recommend best practise is to
respond to user comments within
20 minutes of a post being placed
live
Community management

15. Learning from your community
 The types of conversations that
emerge in your community need to
be addressed and understood
 Popularity of posts is a good
measurement for determining what
topics and types of content resonate
best with the community
 We know on Facebook that
embedded videos and pictures
perform best in terms of content
 We also know that fans prefer
campaigning/ event based topics
over observational/ announcement
based posts

16. Competition fatigue?
 People suffer competition fatigue on social media
 Too many page depend on competitions to generate fans, giveaway are
commonplace and often do not add much value
 Small competitions that happen regularly run the risk of losing as many
fans as you gain
 Competitions now need to match the brand identity to ensure they target
the right people and ideally offer something offline or event

17. Running Facebook ads

18. Facebook Ad Targeting
Choose your target
audience carefully!

19. Matching the conversation with Ads
 The ad targeting, copy and creative
that brought people to your
community is an important indicator
as to what conversations they are
going to engage with
 Target audience profile demographic
on Facebook to deliver
advertisements
 Facebook ads will increase the
number of fans on the Page as an
additional extra, creating a larger
community to interact with following
the campaign

20. The right content and the right time

21. Keeping up the momentum
Friends and fans
and followers who
are exposed to
engagement &
activities
Increase reach
among targeted
fans and followers
across your
community
Engagement
Ideas and
Launch
Continually check Facebook
Insights and keep an eye on
all available metrics
Tweetreach is an effective
tool to monitor how many
people are seeing your
messaging week on week

22. What we did for Bombardier
AIM
75k Facebook fans and take advantage
of St George’s Day
CHALLENGE
Ensure engagement and community
grow together
Fans become brand advocates and
adorers

23. St. George’s conversation peak
Enter the conversation, at the right time

24. Relaunching the Facebook Page
St. George’s Day
cover image
Populate the
community with
content
Landing Tab listed in
the Page Apps
New Posts reflecting
the creative
concepts
Pin St. George’s Day
status to the top of
the page

25. Competition and landing page

26.  Standard Ads
Sponsored Video Post AdSponsored Image Post Ad
Facebook advertising
 Page Post Ads: turn content uploaded on Fan Page into ads

27. Targeting new audiences
Campaign Interests Reach
35-55 - TV Comedy
#Rik Mayall, #Dave (TV channel), #Hammersmith Apollo, #Red Dwarf,
#Have I Got News for You, #Mock the Week, #Never Mind the Buzzcocks,
#Men Behaving Badly, #The Young Ones (TV series), #Bottom (TV series),
#Stephen Fry, #Blackadder, #Mr. E. Blackadder, #The New Statesman
559,200
35-55 - Sports
#Cricket, #Yorkshire County Cricket Club, #Lancashire County Cricket
Club, #Warwickshire County Cricket Club, #Barmy Army, #The Ashes,
#Test cricket, #Pakistan national cricket team, #India national cricket
team, #Indian Premier League, #ICC World Twenty20, #2014 ICC World
Twenty20, #ICC Test Championship, #Ireland cricket team, #Andrew
Flintoff, #Rugby union, #Rugby World Cup, #Rugby league, #Heineken
Cup, #England national football team, #Football, #Sport, #UEFA
Champions League, #FA Cup, #UEFA Europa League, #Wayne Rooney,
#David Beckham, #Manchester United F.C., #Manchester City F.C.,
#Chelsea F.C., #Arsenal F.C., #Liverpool F.C., #West Ham United F.C.,
#Tottenham Hotspur F.C., #Newcastle United F.C., #Fulham F.C., #Aston
Villa F.C., #Stoke City F.C., #Football team, #Scottish Premier League
1,729,440
35-55 - England
#Saint George's Day, #England, #London, #Manchester, #Cornwall, #Oxford,
#Cambridge, #Salisbury, #Coventry, #Bristol, #Plymouth, #Brighton,
#Portsmouth, #Nottingham
1,221,840
35-55 - Army
#British Armed Forces, #British Army, #Red coat (British army), #Artillery,
#Royal Air Force, #Royal Navy, #Royal Marines, #Military, #Military tactics,
#Military history, #Territorial Army (United Kingdom)
473,660
35-55 - Drinking
#Ale, #Pale ale, #Drinking, #Alcohol, #Alcoholic beverage, #Bitters, #Bitter
(beer)
340,960
35-55 - Pubs
#Royal Oak, #White Hart, #Pub names, #Pub chain, #The King's Arms, #King's
Arms, #The Bull's Head, #Carpenters Arms, #Three Crowns, #The Star and
Garter, #The Eagle and Child
12,860

28. Social advertising – not just Facebook
 Social advertising has many pros and cons
 Page post ads work well and attract a high click
through
 Standard ads often have a high click through but
poorer cost per like
 People can often get annoyed with ads appearing in
newsfeeds and this can sometimes come back to the
community
 Ensuring that the targeting and messaging is
appealing to this audience prevents these problems

29. Media spend & fan estimates
Facebook Ad Campaign 4th – 30th April
4th – 8th April
Budget: £XXX 9th – 16th April
Budget: £XXX 16th – 23rd April
Budget: £XXX 24th – 30th April
Budget: £XXX
Month Budget Impressions Clicks CTR Avg. CPC Conv. Rate CPA Fans
April £50,000.00 2,000,000 20,000 0.07% £0.43 44.00% £0.83 60,500
Example budget!

30. Twitter opportunity
 Hashtag #stgeorgesday
featured as a trending
topic on the 23rd of April
#St. George’s Day
#AllTimeLow3Days
#ByTheWayBuyTHEWAY
#ASK5SOS
#WeWantOLDTwitterBACK
#FollowMeRichard
Abu Qatada
iPod
Cheers
Bombardier’s tweets
can take the top
positions in the
hashtag
#StGeorgesDay
Direct interested
parties to the
communities run by
Bombardier

31. Build your channel with help
Driving the community to the
Facebook Page
Youtube
Twitter
Website
Use multiple social media channels
to drive the audience to join the
community you are building
Ask yourself when the perfect
journey is and where do you want
the user to end up?
In the case of Bombardier we
drove everyone from the website,
Twitter and Youtube through to
the Facebook Page

32. Results of the campaign
 Hit KPI of 75,000 Facebook fans
 10,000 Twitter followers
 on time and in budget!
 Bombardier now own the largest social media ale community in the UK
 Facebook reach topped 2.8 million impressions on St. George’s Day
 Bombardier had several of the top messages on the trending hashtag
#stgeorgesday
 Weekly Twitter impressions reached 43,000

33. To wrap things up

34. Takeaway points
 You need an event to kickstart to your community successfully
 Build your community using the right messaging that closely follows your
ad copy and targeting data
 Continually test messaging and content for highest reach and highest
engagement
 Spend to your budget and always keep your target in mind
 Once you have built your community to a size you are happy with, it will
always be there as an effective communications channel that reflects your
brand
 Most importantly - enjoy and have fun!