The Community Advantage: How Brands That Connect Win
Great products and solid customer support are essential, but they’re not enough to grow a brand in the digital world. A standout customer experience is key, but its impact is limited if it lives only between the customer and the business.
The real magic happens when your brand becomes a space for connection. Building an online community transforms one-time buyers into loyal advocates, creating a ripple effect of engagement, trust, and increased visibility. But cultivating that kind of community doesn’t happen by accident—it requires strategy, consistency, and heart.
Extracting Real Value from Your Customer Transactions
Many businesses have become accustomed to digging into their customer journey mapping to try to create a memorable brand experience for everyone. However, it’s important to remember that a customer’s journey doesn’t just end after they’ve made a purchase. Every business transaction should be viewed as the beginning of a new, long-term relationship.
To build these relationships on a strong foundation, it’s essential to truly understand the minds of your customers. Identify the hook that brought them to your business in the first place and determine how you can continue to replicate that feeling over time. Express your gratitude for their business and your dedication to maintaining a strong, ongoing partnership.
Turning a one-time customer transaction into an ongoing business means you’ll also need to be open to feedback. Distribute surveys or solicit online reviews as an opportunity to create ongoing discussion on how your business can improve and dive deeper into delivering on expectations.
What Does it Take to Create an Online Brand Community?
No doubt you’ve come across certain brands online that always seem to create buzz. Many times, you’ll find different chat groups on Reddit or other social media platforms with a significant number of people talking about new products or services. While many of these communities may seem to have developed naturally over time, a significant number of businesses work hard to establish them.
For most brand communities, there are a few key elements required to keep them successful:
A Common Goal: The most engaging online communities aren’t necessarily the ones where people are focused on buying new products. In many cases, the most active communities allow members to get behind something more important, like the core values of a business. When businesses address social issues or champion important causes beyond increasing profits, they create an opportunity to engage and collaborate with their audience in a shared value or mission.
Genuine Conversations: Thriving communities are made up of unique voices, both from customers and the brands they support. As a business, it’s essential to present yourself in a more personalized and less formal manner. This helps create authenticity within the community, which is crucial for brands seeking to establish greater trust with their customers.
Giving Members a Voice: While some brands often moderate their online communities, it’s also essential that community members feel they have a genuine voice in discussions. Allowing more curated content for actual customers can be an incredibly powerful motivator to other individuals. Highlighting user-generated content and allowing it to be shared is a great way to show brands that they sincerely value their customers’ opinions and feedback, and aren’t afraid to share them with others.
Special Perks for Members: Another great inclusion in online brand communities is for brands to offer exclusive content, deals, or other promotions that help to add a certain level of value for joining a community. This can be a great way to grow the follower count of different communities and reward members for their ongoing participation.
Strategies for Developing an Online Community for Your Business
Making Smart Use of Social Media
When trying to establish stronger community connections with customers, social media is a great starting point. Social media platforms make it easy to connect with customers while also giving your business a platform for sharing company updates.
But simply creating a social media presence on Instagram or Facebook is rarely enough to encourage customers to create new discussions surrounding your brand. It’s also essential to play an active role in growing the community by sharing content that’s relevant and interesting to your customers, while staying responsive to questions or concerns that are raised.
Establishing New Brand Forums
Starting your own online community space can be an effective way to generate more buzz for your brand. Dedicated brand forums or discussion boards offer your current and potential customers a central location where they can share thoughts, ideas, and experiences related to your business.
While these forums can be self-maintained, it’s essential to incorporate some level of moderation as well. You’ll want to participate in discussions whenever possible, while also ensuring that you remove any hateful or toxic speech that can ruin the experiences for others.
Providing Company Rewards
A great way to encourage customer involvement when building an online brand community is to offer incentives for their participation. You might consider offering them perks such as early access to new product features, special discounts, or gift cards for community members, as well as exclusive content.
When choosing your community rewards, consider your users’ interests and what incentives they are likely to respond to.
Creating Partnerships With Brand Influencers
Another way to get more interest in your brand community is by recruiting brand influencers. This can be a great strategy and allow you to leverage another individual’s credibility with their audience to help grow your community.
It’s really important, however, that when you’re researching influencers across different digital marketing channels, you carefully select partnerships that align with your brand. Make sure the content they typically share is relevant to your own and that they’re a natural fit when encouraging others to join your online communities.
Leverage Online Communities to Help Your Business Grow
Building and contributing to your online brand communities can help raise awareness for your business while also giving your customers a platform to share their opinions and feedback.
By following the tips mentioned, you’ll create a brand community that others are excited to be a part of, helping to create long-term advocates for your business.
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Building an online community transforms one-time buyers into loyal advocates, creating a ripple effect of engagement, trust, and increased visibility.