Most user groups typically have a website, with a forum where members can discuss topics of interest. However, most leaders struggle with two things: 1. Encouraging more members to sign up and 2. Having a vibrant community. Leveraging Social Media can help in both these areas and it begins by first understanding how social media has changed communication (you can watch this quick 5 min video) and then follow the suggestions given below.
First things first: Leveraging social media isn’t about just being present on all the possible social channels. It’s about being social.
Being Responsive to your community
If you’ve really watched the above video 
The first thing you’ll notice is that people now expect a quick or rather instant response to their queries and suggestions. Start being responsive using the following three steps.
1. More forum moderators & responders : Ensure that besides yourself, you have at least 2 volunteers who promptly respond to your community members. The next logical question which you might have, where the hell do I get these volunteers. Simple, first post a call for volunteers publicly on your website and your forums. Second, award people who post and respond maximum on your forums, and invite them to the exclusive forum moderators panel.
2. Be social: The above point applies to your presence on social media channels as well. Ensure that you have moderators out there as well to provide quick responses. You’re not taking advantage of social media unless you’re being social on those channels. Being social means being courteous, helpful and tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others (yeah I picked the last bit from Merriam Webster .
3. Make it super simple and easy for people to connect and get recognition: Provide your community members ample opportunities to introduce themselves to each other. You could obviously hold networking events, however, a simpler less expensive tactic is to feature your members on your website. Interview key members, talk about their key focus areas, their work, how they got to be successful, how they could help each other etc. Talk about other aspects of their personality, maybe they’re part of a band? Maybe there’s a singer somewhere out there. One community leader I know was awesome with magic tricks, in fact he did a a show in one of the community leader meetings, it was a great icebreaker and got a lot of people talking amongst themselves, besides people getting to know him. Most people like it when they’re recognized for just being a part of an organization and a club. Provide them a badge to display on their blogs, website etc. Showcase their talent and abilities. Don’t restrict this to just the stars in your community, make sure even the newbie has an opportunity to shine.
To summarize: Being responsive and social is critical to ensuring a well promoted and thriving community.
I hope the above has helped turn the wheels of imagination and ideas in you, and I’d love to hear about your ideas and suggestions as well.
One last note: Though I’ve started this post with leveraging social media, yeah that was to grab your attention, the real meaning is being social, don’t just maintain a pseudo presence. Oh, sometimes you might want to do that, as in get a page on Facebook or Twitter to make sure no one grabs your group name. Just make sure that you’re ready to be social, when you announce to your members the availability of your group on a certain social media channel.
