A New Generation Marketer

This is the last of a series of three posts discussing why brand communities are so important today. This post gives some more in-depth and practical tips and examples to consider before finalizing your community decisions.

Your brand community is a gift. Be thankful for it. In a community, it is never about you, your products, or your goals – it is all about the people in the community. Therefore, you must talk about consumer interests, listen to feedback, and build on the community by developing relationships.

If you are lucky enough to have people build a community around your product or brand, that is so great! Whether it is created on your site or not, you are given something very valuable to work with. This community allows you the space to have two-way conversations with key consumers, build better relationships, give away free information, and LISTEN!

The listening aspect of communities cannot be emphasized enough. Stop talking, talking, talking all day and start listening. Sometimes the best information you will hear is from others when you really stop to listen to their feedback and suggestions. When the community realizes that you truly are there to listen, they will be more apt to participate and talk to you.

The moment that you forget that you are there as a participant and start acting as the owner of the community, you are on a fast ride downhill because you have then lost their trust! This makes people feel used since you entered their turf, started talking to them, they began to trust you, and then you rudely took over.

Acknowledging participation in the community is also key, if not the most important thing. If you tell your audience, “We want to hear your ideas and take action on them” then they will know you care and are listening to their suggestions.

Before you start thinking about each social media community individually and how you will interact on each one, remember that it is not where the community is, it is about the people who gather there. It is not about the specific platform, but about the connections made on them that matters. You must go to where your target audience is on the web, not where you think they should be or where you want to be. This would be counterintuitive to providing value to the consumer.

Empower Your Community

Once your community trusts you, they will begin to look to you for their success. Since you are looking to them to succeed as well, a mutually beneficial relationship has began. To help them with their goals, provide them with tools to succeed such as third party articles, free tools, give-aways, etc. Do not instantly try to sell them your product when they express a need; give them what may be most practical at first, and then eventually tell them how your product or service can solve their problem.

Everyone is looking to solve a problem, but they do not want your blatant sales pitch because of it. In social media, people are looking to develop relationships and feel like their opinions are valued, hence the reason why they do not want to feel used by being sold to by you.

Celebrate Your Community!

Once your community is established in the appropriate platforms, introductions are made, communication and listening has started, and trust is built, it is then time to celebrate! But don’t start giving yourself a pat on the back, praise your community instead! You can do this in many ways, such as by taking pictures with customers at events and posting it to the site. By featuring your audience instead of you when celebrating the success of the community, it will only further entice participants to continue to engage with you.

So Where Does ROI Fit In?

Once you develop good, solid relationships in your communities, you will be able to influence each other much easier. For example, after talking in a friendly manner with a specific customer on a weekly basis on social media and they then express a need, you may be able to tell them how your product can solve their problem. Because they trust you, they will be much more receptive to your sell.

Communities are also a great source for lead generation, post-sale education, support and research and development for future products. Leads can be created by evaluating what purchase stage they are in and nurturing that in the community itself. You can also provide the community with valuable and original content in the form of eBooks, eNewsletters, videos, webinars, blog posts, and much more to educate them further on your product or service industry in general so they will be a more informed consumer. This may in turn speed up their purchase cycle. Feedback strongly helps with R&D since your own users are giving their input and suggestions which is one of the most valuable pieces of information you can gather from your audience.

I hope this three-part series of building effective brand communities will help you leverage your own specialized communities.

Have brand community success stories? Leave them below, I’d love to read them!