Questions and integration
Open-ended questions
Social media allows for a brand's most desired outcome: market research. You want to know what your community members want? Ask them. Quick, timely, relevant questions garner a large amount of engagement.
Live Nation tapped into its core audience -- live music lovers -- with the below open-ended question. Generating simple questions that pertain to the root of the brand is key in building a community of engaged and quality fans.
Cross-platform integration
While social media platforms are different in nature, audience, and demographic, you can try to obtain some crossover fans and followers when it makes sense. Letting your Facebook fans know you're on Twitter (and vice versa) is a good way to spread your reach.
In this example, Expedia has incorporated a well-known hashtag that's used on Twitter and brought it onto Facebook. There are many ways to cross over the different audiences on Facebook and Twitter, and this is a great one. It's important to let your fans and followers know you are unified in your messages on Facebook on Twitter, that it's one voice, and that they can follow along where they most feel comfortable. Expedia also doesn't come off as abrasive or spammy (i.e., Follow us on Twitter @Expedia!), but instead, allows the fans to find the brand and follow at will.
Lauren Friedman is community management supervisor at Context Optional.
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