Community Management: Building Trust with Your Current Audience

Watch time: 7 minutes & 30 seconds.

Community management is about nurturing the connections you already have and creating a space where your audience feels valued. This is where you make real, genuine connections with people who already engage with you.

• Focuses on engaging with your current audience.

• When someone comments on your posts, take the time to respond with something that resonates with you. This keeps the conversation going and builds reciprocal engagement.

• Building relationships and trust with your existing followers.

•  Once your community starts growing, use Instagram's saved collections to engage consistently with the posts you care about, keeping your connections strong.

In short, community management is about being present and showing up for your people. It's about building relationships that lead to loyalty and trust—key ingredients for long-term success.

Target Acquisition: Expanding Your Reach with Precision

Target acquisition, on the other hand, is a more strategic approach. This is where you're actively seeking out your ideal followers—people who may not know you yet but are already engaging with content similar to yours.

• Look at your competitors and aspirational profiles—these are people who offer similar value, content, or purpose as you. Engage with their audience by commenting and interacting on their posts. Remember, your competitors will not know when you're engaging with their audience.

• Use the Keyword Search Bar to find your target audience: Spend time engaging with posts in the hashtags you've used or use the search bar to search for communities using Keywords. This puts you in the right circles and increases your visibility.

• Follow profiles that align with your niche, comment on their posts, and save their content to your collections. This helps you stay on their radar and builds trust over time.

• Strategically finding and connecting with potential followers through keyword searches, hashtags and other industry/ competitor profiles.

Target acquisition is about casting a wider net to draw in new followers who will eventually become part of your community. By strategically interacting with the right profiles, you're positioning yourself in front of people who are most likely to resonate with your content and become loyal followers.