Building the Perfect Community for Your Brand

What distinguishes a phenomenal brand from a mediocre one? Outstanding brands don’t merely produce products; they cultivate communities, transforming their customers into devoted fans and supporters. Consider well-known brands such as Apple and Starbucks. Their customers don’t merely purchase from them due to their exceptional products. These brands hold a more significant meaning and a more substantial presence in their customers’ lives, stemming from a sense of community and identification with the brand. A community engages people, and a highly engaged audience can easily become loyal customers, repeatedly purchasing from you for years to come.

Why Do Communities Matter?

Communities heighten awareness of your brand and help embed it in the minds of your audience. Amidst fierce competition, your brand needs to stand out. By establishing a loyal group of engaged members, you can distinguish yourself from the rest. Communities also present an excellent opportunity to deliver value. They can serve as a space for providing useful information, answering queries, and offering a platform for conversation and networking. This added value, without any strings attached, will make your customers adore your brand even more.

Your brand community grants you direct access to your cherished customers. Companies are constantly seeking insights into their audience’s demographics, emotions, and behaviors.

The community you develop enables you to interact and eavesdrop on your followers’ discussions, making it an ideal place to learn about them. Finally, your brand community already exists! People are gathering and discussing your brand somewhere. Building a community entails connecting with these individuals and directly involving your brand to reap the benefits.

Define Your Business Goals

Your brand community can serve various purposes. Most businesses utilize their communities to offer their audience additional value, learn about their audience members, and steadily increase sales. However, before delving into your community’s specifics, you must outline your goals, as this will steer your other decisions.

Your goals might include:

• Boosting Brand Awareness:?Use your online group to encourage conversations and?word-of-mouth.
• Earning Directly:?While not the primary focus, you can sell products directly to community members and generate revenue.
• Conducting Market Research:?Your community could concentrate on gathering insights and feedback.
• Building Your Reputation:?Help your audience members directly through your group to establish yourself as an authority in your field.
• Nurturing Leads:?Your brand community could be part of your sales funnel, helping qualify and nurture leads.
• Enhancing Brand Loyalty:?Your community could encourage customers to make more purchases.
• Improving Customer Onboarding:?Use your brand community to help buyers maximize your products’ benefits.
• Cultivating Influencers:?Interact with your most significant brand advocates and encourage them to spread the word.
• Facilitating Networking:?Provide a space for your customers to connect with each other.

You may have multiple objectives for creating your brand community, but focus on one of the aforementioned goals to guide your decisions on building, managing, and promoting the community.

What Type of Community Suits Your Business?

Your community should deliver value and be something your audience eagerly joins. Brand community models to choose from include closed entry, open, subscription, or mastermind. After deciding which best suits your business, you can then select your platform. Options include:

• Closed Entry:?A private community closed to the outside world, offering exclusivity. Your members feel part of something tailor-made for them. The core membership could comprise those who have already purchased your products. Use this community to enhance your customer onboarding process.
• Open Model:?Anyone can join an open community, which is ideal if your primary goal is to expand brand awareness. Use this community as an entry point for newcomers and a platform to demonstrate your value.
• Subscription Model:?If you want to earn directly through your online community, you can opt for a subscription model. However, to keep people subscribed, you need to provide tangible value.
• Mastermind:?A mastermind is a peer-to-peer mentoring group where members assist each other with their challenges. This model is an excellent choice for coaching businesses or online courses. Upon completing a course, members can join the mastermind and continue growing.

You have various options for community building. Social media sites like Facebook offer tools and features to help you create a community, and since most people are already there, joining is easy. However, a self-hosted site might be more suitable for you. Using a social media platform limits you to their rules and available features. Self-hosting means you own your site, which could be advantageous if you want to connect it with your e-commerce store or blog.

Your Role in the Community

As you establish your brand community, define your role within it. You will need to act as a moderator, creating rules and enforcing them. Rules might include no profanity, no negative comments, and no harassment. Also, set guidelines regarding promotional posts to prevent members from spamming each other.

It’s crucial that you interact with community members. How you do this will depend on your goals, but you will likely offer assistance when needed, share your expertise, and participate in conversations whenever possible. One interactive role you’ll need to adopt, especially in the early stages when conversation is minimal, is that of facilitator. Start threads and encourage discussions by asking questions and prompting members to share their opinions and experiences.

Your role also involves keeping the community focused on its members. It shouldn’t be all about you and your brand. Welcome new members and encourage people to share their successes and celebrate their achievements. This approach fosters a welcoming environment where customers want to be.

Tips for Building Your Community

Once your brand community is set up, promote it across all your platforms. Create a simple message explaining the benefits of joining and share it wherever possible. Think creatively and produce videos and other content to generate interest. Here are a few more tips for attracting members to your community:

• Use Social Proof:?Encourage your most vocal members to create short testimonials describing why they enjoy your brand community or how it has helped them. This demonstrates to others why they should join and is more powerful than a message from you.
• Partner with Influencers:?Collaborate with influencers in your niche to grow your membership. Identify individuals who have your community’s target market in their audience and propose an offer. One option is cross-promotion: you can share their content and products with your audience, and they can promote your group to theirs.
• Share Where They’ll See It:?Promote your community everywhere you have a presence, online and offline, targeting places where your ideal audience will see it. Use the concise blurb you created, detailing the benefits your community offers, and ensure it resonates with your audience. Share this blurb and link in your social media profiles, guest article bios, blog or website sidebars, and anywhere else you might encounter potential members.

Once up and running, your brand community will provide a space for your audience members to socialise, learn from you, and extract maximum value from what you offer.

Brand Community

Branding

Brand Strategy

Business Goals

Brand Reputation