Brand Online Communities

       Brands need to create meaningful engagements with users that elicit responses from consumers and translate those responses into brand loyalty and repeat purchases. However, heavy usage of social media has pushed traditional brands out and made them less significant as consumers have the freedom to create their own internet culture and avoid traditional advertisements and sponsored content. The advertising industry has never been this oversaturated and brands are struggling to distinguish their voice and image in the minds of the consumer. Because of social media, users now have the ability to make a personal identity online and interact with other users on such a personal and uniquely filtered level. This means that brands can no longer infiltrate these tight knit internet populations as easily as they once did. Also, because of the growing mindset of embracing individuality and the power of community across current cultures, consumers view brands as having humanistic characteristics and are quick to leave a brand due to lack of interest or if there is perceived unreliability from the brand.

Therefore, Facebook has launched an initiative to promote personal business groups for brands and will provide the company tools to accurately measure brand relationship quality alongside the current and constant rapid changes in online consumer behavior. According to research, groups will allow brands to better analyze data and trends about psychographics organically rather than making assumptions from broad categories and ranges of consumers. This will enable brands to see an increase in active user engagement through enabling feelings of intimate and personal connections between brands and users. It will trigger a response in consumer cultures and communities by giving consumers a more tangible way to feel a sense of meaning and identity with a brand that is larger than a simple transaction for a good or service. This will allow brands to better establish themselves in the minds of the consumers with positive humanistic characteristics, rather than negative ones. When a brand creates an online group such as using the new Facebook groups, they are making the first move to open the door for the consumers to talk about and interact with the brands. A whole experience and interaction with a brand that goes past traditional marketing is now necessary in the eyes of the consumer.

Social media allows consumers to spread news, innovations, ideas and brands with other consumers, which gives them a new sense of personal identity, and allows them to choose their engagements carefully and personally. By allowing brands to engage with consumers on a more personal level by transitioning from traditional marketing and advertising onto real life social media groups, the brands will be established as innovators in the current media and consumer culture. Brands will be able to break through the advertising industry and into the personal identity groups of consumers. The brands will then see a rise in engagement levels and the addition of once potential nonusers into the growing active user consumer group. This will lead to a rapid increase in cultivating brand loyalty among consumers.