How do you use social media to foster a sense of community among your followers? We asked 10 business leaders, and their insights reveal creative strategies to build genuine connections and engagement.
- #GreenHeroesChallenge Empowers Followers
- Ask Us Anything Sessions Engage Followers
- Marketing Mastery Workshops Foster Learning
- Community Challenge Series Builds Engagement
- Your Olshan Stories Campaign
- Instrumentl Showcases Nonprofit Success
- Rasa Blends Fun With Wellness
- Private Facebook Group for SaaS Founders
- Collaborative Travel Guides Engage Followers
- Participatory Design Challenges Boost Engagement
How to Build a Community On Social Media
#GreenHeroesChallenge Empowers Followers
We use social media to foster a sense of community by creating interactive and purpose-driven campaigns that encourage our followers to share their personal sustainability journeys. One initiative that was particularly successful was our #GreenHeroesChallenge. We invited our audience to post photos or short videos of themselves taking small but impactful eco-friendly actions-whether it was switching to a reusable water bottle, reducing food waste, or starting a compost bin.
What set this initiative apart was our focus on celebration over competition. Every participant, no matter how small their action, was featured on our social media with a personal shoutout. This created a sense of inclusivity and recognition, making followers feel like part of a larger, global effort. The campaign resulted in a 41% increase in user-generated content and significantly boosted engagement, as our followers felt empowered and connected to our sustainability mission.
Chaitsi Ahuja
Founder & CEO, Brown Living
Ask Us Anything Sessions Engage Followers
One way we use social media to foster a sense of community is by creating spaces where our followers feel genuinely heard and involved. For example, we’ve run a series of “Ask Us Anything” sessions on Instagram Stories, where followers could submit questions about marketing, branding, or even running a business. We made sure to answer as many as possible, with honest, down-to-earth responses.
One particularly successful initiative was when we flipped the script and asked our followers for their advice—like tips on work-life balance or their favorite tools for productivity. Not only did it spark amazing engagement, but it also gave our audience a platform to share their expertise and connect with each other in the comments. It was a reminder that fostering a community isn’t just about us talking to them—it’s about creating a space where they can connect with us and each other. That sense of mutual exchange is what makes a community thrive.
Tom Jauncey
Head Nerd, Nautilus Marketing
Marketing Mastery Workshops Foster Learning
We use social media to create shared learning experiences, like running mini “Marketing Mastery” workshops exclusively through Stories or LinkedIn posts. Followers can learn, comment, and ask questions in real-time, creating a collaborative environment where everyone feels like they’re part of a bigger mission. This two-way interaction fosters a sense of belonging and community.
During Small Business Week, we launched a “Spotlight Saturday” series, featuring follower-submitted stories of how digital marketing helped grow their businesses. These personal stories resonated deeply, with users sharing the posts and starting conversations in the comments about their own journeys. It was a perfect example of how amplifying voices in your community can turn into a viral movement.
Jason Hennessey
CEO, Hennessey Digital
Community Challenge Series Builds Engagement
Social media has been key in fostering a close community of gamers. Hosting interactive events, such as game tournaments or live Q&As, has helped us build stronger relationships with our players. These events offer a platform for players to engage with one another and with us directly, making the experience more personal and real-time.
A specific example that worked well for us was our “Community Challenge” series on Discord, where players could join themed challenges each week. We offered rewards like in-game currency or exclusive content for winners, and the players loved it. It created a fun, competitive atmosphere while also fostering collaboration and friendships within the community.
These events not just boost engagement but also ensure that users feel heard and valued. A sense of belonging to something greater can often drive people to stay longer and evolve into loyal, committed members of a community. This type of interaction goes beyond simple brand promotion and builds lasting connections.
Marin Cristian-Ovidiu
CEO, Online Games
Your Olshan Stories Campaign
Social media has always been a platform for sharing experiences—whether traveling, enjoying food, or celebrating special occasions with family and friends. Similarly, people use this channel to voice their opinions, provide constructive criticism, and, most importantly, share their level of satisfaction with products and services they’ve used.
In a social media role, one of the most important tasks is fostering a sense of community among audiences and followers. This can be achieved effectively by encouraging shared experiences. Let me share an example of a campaign I organized for Olshan Foundation a few months ago, just before our annual conference in August 2024.
We launched a campaign called “Your Olshan Stories.” Homeowners were invited to share their experiences through photos, videos, and personal accounts about how their lives improved after their foundation repairs were completed, compared to when their homes had foundation issues. To appreciate the time and effort each homeowner put in (many spent over an hour sharing their stories), we offered a signed baseball by Nolan Ryan, our legendary brand ambassador and Hall of Fame pitcher.
Their heartfelt stories and videos were featured during our annual conference and printed in the Olshan newspaper, creating a genuine sense of community and celebrating the trust and satisfaction our customers have in Olshan.
Here is my learning throughout the campaign:
- Take the time to ask your followers how they feel about your products and services.
- Acknowledge their presence and time they dedicate to engaging with your brand and consuming your product and service.
- Periodically, reward them for their loyalty and constructive feedback because they help us improve our organization for the thousands of other customers that we would aim to serve.
Milan Bulchandani
Social Media Manager, Olshan Foundation Solutions
Instrumentl Showcases Nonprofit Success
Sharing real-world success stories on social media fosters a vibrant community. Highlighting how nonprofits have effectively used Instrumentl’s tools to secure grants encourages engagement and connection. Imagine posting a story about a small nonprofit that secured a significant grant using Instrumentl. This not only showcases the platform’s effectiveness but also provides inspiration and a blueprint for others in similar situations. Followers feel part of a shared journey, seeing the tangible benefits and successes that others achieve.
Creating an interconnected community involves encouraging interaction. Encouraging nonprofits to share their own stories and tagging Instrumentl cultivates a sense of belonging and shared achievement. For example, initiating a hashtag campaign like #InstrumentlSuccess where followers can post their grant achievements builds this interconnectedness. When organizations see their peers sharing successes, it motivates them to participate. This sense of communal triumph amplifies the network effect and strengthens the community bond.
Will Yang
Head of Growth & Marketing, Instrumentl
Rasa Blends Fun With Wellness
One way we build community on social media is by creating spaces for genuine conversations around wellness. We also love capitalizing on trends that allow us to connect our brand with what’s fun and current. For example, we joined in on the Moo Deng phenomenon—the viral baby hippo from Thailand that’s stolen hearts around the world. Our team put together a post featuring different Rasa blends as versions of Moo Deng.
This brought a lighthearted vibe to our wellness community and allowed our followers to see Rasa as something they can incorporate into their daily lives in a joyful way. The Moo Deng post became one of our highest-engaging pieces of content, with our community responding enthusiastically. Followers joined the conversation by sharing which blend they like most, adding comments, and tagging friends who they thought would enjoy it.
The success of this post reinforced the idea that community is built by blending fun with meaning. By tapping into trending content that brings a smile to people’s face, we deepened our connection with our followers and created a space that feels as warm and inclusive as the products we offer.
Lenny Chase
CEO, Rasa
Private Facebook Group for SaaS Founders
To deepen connections, we launched a private Facebook group where SaaS founders and e-commerce entrepreneurs exchange insights, troubleshoot problems, and celebrate wins together. Social media posts promote the group as a resource hub, sparking meaningful conversations that extend beyond likes and shares. The group has become a thriving ecosystem of shared expertise and encouragement.
During International Women’s Day, we created a “Women in E-Commerce” series, profiling inspiring stories of female founders in our audience and tagging their businesses. The posts were shared widely, drawing attention to these entrepreneurs and creating a ripple effect of recognition and appreciation. It was a powerful reminder of how highlighting individuals can amplify a community’s collective voice.
Marc Bishop
Director, Wytlabs
Collaborative Travel Guides Engage Followers
One way we use social media to foster a sense of community is by actively involving our followers in collaborative projects. A successful example was the creation of travel guides in partnership with our expert guides from each city where we offer free walking tours and our travellers. Through social media, they shared tips about the destinations they visited, from local restaurants to tricks for exploring cities authentically. This generated significant interaction, as our followers felt like an active part of the project. As a result, we created video and text guides that strengthened engagement and retention on our social platforms, while also increasing traffic to our website.
Marta Garcia
Head of Marketing and Social Media, GuruWalk
Participatory Design Challenges Boost Engagement
At DIGITECH, one of my most impactful ways to build community through social media is to run participatory “Design Challenges.” The Open Design Challenges, these challenges either ask our followers designers, developers or just inherently curious people on the internet to take their shot at solving a real-world design problem or give us what they think is an interesting take on the topic for the week. As a case in point, our recent Design Challenge was for our followers to pick a classic brand or website and describe how they would breathe new life into its look and feel—we called it “Redesign a Classic.” What followed was phenomenal engagement, with participants posting their ideas, tagging us and interacting with one another in comments.
What made this so successful was it wasn’t just a pure brand talent showcase, it was an opportunity for followers to engage with DIGITECH and one another. To further emphasise a sense of community, we showcased outstanding submissions by putting them up on our Stories and even launched a voting poll where the community could choose their favourite entries. This also made followers more valued and included in what was a sizable discussion on design and creativity. And of course it helps us to incubate talent and fuel conversations centred around innovation, a pillar of our brand.
Darryl Stevens
CEO, Digitech Web Design
