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If you’re seeking ways of strengthening your brand and having better conversations with your customers, one highly effective way is to build a brand community.
A brand/business community rallies your most loyal customers on one platform, which is a huge win for any brand. Moreover, these communities are ideal for your audience to chat with like-minded people.
In this post, we will walk you through what a brand community is and how you can build a successful one. Let’s dive in.
What Is a Brand Community?
A brand/business community brings together a brand’s loyal customers. It provides a platform where these customers can interact with the brand and each other. A brand community could be anything from an online forum on a business’s website to a Facebook group.
Simply put, a brand community portrays brand loyalty at its best. Individuals who are in your brand community are emotionally invested; they will purchase your products, digest your content, and tell their family and friends about your company.
That said, it is important to understand that your brand community already exists on social media platforms. It is your job to find this community, directly connect with it, and create a strategy for its members to chat with each other.
How to Build a Successful Brand Community
Here is an outline of the essential steps for building a successful brand community:
1. Define Your Brand
To build a community around your brand, you first need to understand what your brand is all about. This goes beyond what products or services your business offers.
It involves your company’s vision, mission, brand voice, and personality. What does your brand want to be known for? Who is it trying to help? And how is it trying to help? Determining the answers to these questions will help you clearly define your community.
2. Define Your Brand Goal and Metrics
As mentioned earlier, brand communities provide a way for you to make customer-focused decisions and spread the word about your business. Even so, there are important things you need to consider to achieve this feat.
Here is an outline of some of them:
- What is the purpose of the community?
- What steps have you taken to ensure that members of your community stay engaged?
- Are you providing answers to questions about your products and/or services?
- What metrics are you using to measure the success of your community?
- How will your brand community goals impact your business’s goals?
3. Choose a Community Platform
There are numerous options when it comes to creating a home for your brand community. Some excellent options include:
- Forum: This is an excellent platform for a large brand community to chat about shared interests, regardless of whether they are directly about the brand or not.
- Social Media: There are two different ways of managing your community on social media; creating a social media group or engaging through your platform.
- Third-party Community Platforms: There are instances when brands decide to use third-party platforms to assist them in facilitating the community. Excellent options for third-party community platforms include sites like Mobilize and Slack, where you can create different channels for your community members to chat.
- Affiliate or Rewards Program: Another excellent way of honing in on your brand is by building a program that rewards your most loyal customers. Such programs usually provide regular customer benefits. A great example is Starbucks.
4. Engage With Your Brand Community Regularly
Ensure that your brand community members are always engaged. Create discussion posts, respond to all questions, and encourage fresh conversations with your community.
Building Your Brand Community is Worth the Effort
In the end, building a brand community is not as complicated as it sounds. All you need to do is offer value to your community members, have a well-thought-out content and engagement strategy, and focus on nurturing and maintaining long-term relationships with your brand community members. Contact NameSilo today for more insights on how to build a brand community.