Nowadays, the word community gets thrown around a lot. Especially when it comes to brands, a small group of dedicated users might pop up, but it takes more than that to hone a community. To understand the idea of a community and help you grow your brand’s community, here’s a short article to discuss what a community around a brand means and how you can develop yours.
What Does a Community Around Your Brand Mean?
Whenever a group of people likes something, in particular, they tend to naturally form groups and communities around it. And when a community starts around your product or brand, you know you’re doing something right. You know there’s a community around your product when clients regularly purchase and patronize your offerings, consume your content, and interact with others who are similar to them.
But this doesn’t end here. You also need to understand how to leverage it. Just because there’s an increase in your brand awareness doesn’t mean there’s already a community forming around it. There is the start of the community. But for a business to truly harness and develop that, conscious and deliberate effort needs to be done.
Benefits of Building a Community Around Your Brand
Why do businesses even bother developing a community in the first place? Well, there’s an overwhelming number of reasons. For one, since communities tend to form naturally, interacting with them and help them through your services and products will benefit both your business and the end-user. Having a community around your brand also means consistent business, something every entrepreneur wants. And finally, it emphasizes a customer-driven philosophy that is at the core of successful companies.
The question then becomes, how can you build a brand community? Below are some tips to help you out.
Establish Your Brand
Before you can even develop a community, you need to establish what your brand is. And it’s limited to defining not just what your brand sells but also the philosophy of your business. Think of what your brand is setting out to do and who it’s trying to target. What’s also included is what you want your brand to be known for. When you’ve established this information, people looking for your specific service will gravitate towards you, and your customer base will grow- including the members of your community.
Define Measurable Statistics
After establishing your brand, you need to come with key performance indicators or KPIs for yourself and the community as a whole. Definite what the purpose of the community is and how the community can help its members. Also, think of how you can bring casual clients into the community and keep them engaged.
The community itself will be doing these things alongside you, so it’s best to observe how they naturally react to changes and improvements in your service. It’s also important to listen to their feedback so you stay customer-centric and address their needs better.
Have a Platform Where You Can Meet
Of course, all this planning and creating a community around your brand is next to useless if there isn’t a method or place for your community members to connect. That’s why you have to invest both time and effort in having a community application or software for your brand.
The easiest one is through a social media group, one that’s officially tied to your public accounts. This makes disseminating information and promotions easier while at the same time offering it in a ready platform that most of your audience is already on. Another is dedicating the resource to create an entirely different platform where your audience can convene and interact.
Engage with Your Community
Needless to say, it won’t make your business look good if you ignore pressing community issues. Actively moderating the community for potentially offensive or spammy content is essential, as you want to keep the community focused on its purpose. This is where community management comes into play.
As mentioned in the last point, you need to have a community platform, and it’s your responsibility to monitor that platform. You can also place community leaders (they will naturally stand out from the rest) so there are non-insider influencers who will positively impact your community.
Humans are social creatures, and we inevitably form communities and groups wherever we go. It’s essential to harness this to provide a better and more cohesive service. Not only will your product flourish, but its customers can thrive with what you give as well. Know how you can make this work for your business.
