So you’re establishing a brand but are you thinking about building a community for it? When you engage a community, it creates longevity and impact that goes beyond transactional interactions between the business and its clients. This is because a brand community is a group of engaged customers that have a strong emotional connection to a brand.
This community not only purchases the brand’s products, it interacts with their digital content and promotes the brand within their inner circle. In other words, they’re not just interested- they’re invested. If you’re looking to strengthen your brand-customer relationship then community marketing is an approach you may want to add to your overall marketing strategy. Here are a few things to consider as you do:
#1 Location
What kind of community should you build? Online or in-person? This is greatly dependent on the type of business and brand that you have (e.g. virtual vs brick and mortar) but hybrid communities are also an option. For example, American Sewing Guild (a membership organization for sewing enthusiasts) has mini chapters in various locations. They come together for the love of sewing and meet in local communities that have in-person gathering options as well as Facebook groups.
#2 Engagement
At the core of a strong community are shared values and interests. People want to engage with a brand that represents and stands for what they believe in. Once this has been established, there are creative ways to keep your community engaged, such as:
- Generating quality content that your community will want to engage with
- Encouraging community collaborations and networks
- Utilizing systems and software for the community’s benefit
- Offering incentives
- Creating opportunities for user generated content
Likewise, you can keep them motivated to continue engaging via:
- Community badges, awards, points
- Free event invitations
- Exclusive content offers
- Merchandise and “swag” bags
- Gift cards
- Free courses or lessons
- Product or service giveaways
- Special features
- Networking
Ultimately, a successful community is an engaged and invested one. This should, ideally, be independent and not led by the (people running the) brand. The brand helps guide the community, but the people help connect the dots.
#3 Customer Experience
As alluded to earlier, it’s important to know where your community is and where they will engage with your brand. If your customers spend their time on social media, for example; you may want to consider having a social media presence too. This will then allow you to start building traffic through posts that encourage engagement and content sharing. Since your community are the best advocates for your brand, this is a great way to make them part of the brand as influencers and co-creators too.
#4 Time
Building a solid community takes time; so it’s important to be in it for the long haul and nurture the relationship. Don’t focus on the number of people in your community, though, focus on making impact. For as the saying goes, if you can be faithful over a few you’ll be able to be faithful over many. Investing that time by building your community’s ability to know, like and trust you is what gives you the opportunity to really know what your customers think of your brand through regular feedback. This is a great way to gather fresh insights, further engage with your community; better serve them through your content and, ultimately, your products and services.
Building a community is a high-level strategy that can support your core business goals. The more connected your community feels to your brand, the more likely they are to purchase your products and/or services. A strong community that shares in your brand’s beliefs, values and interests means that your business has advocates who are proud to speak about your brand with others. As you start building your very own community, remember that the size and location is all up to you and should fit into the holistic brand identity. With that being said, what does your dream brand community look like?
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
