If you have not planned a community strategy or build a community before, this is the perfect article for you. The first tip is to actually kickstart and integrate it as part of your overall growth strategy.
There are a lot of community building articles out there – some explaining why it’s important while others share ways to build a community. I’ll share both below, briefly on the former and more on the latter, to give you practical tips to kickstart and build your community if you don’t have one yet.
If you’re reading this article, that means you’re keen on building a community for your brand. But is that what your brand believes in? I believe the first is to ensure all stakeholders are on board when it comes to community building. Mainly because it’s not a short-term, one-off initiative but a long-term, evergreen strategy that will pay off in the long run. I’m curious to know – are you looking to get started or are you looking to strengthen an existing community? Let us know in the comments below.
Why Building a Community is Important and Fruitful in the Long Run
If you need ammunition to convince stakeholders or your team on why you need a community strategy to build a community, show them this.
1. Increases brand awareness through an organic manner, while reducing marketing costs
Comparing against paid advertising, which you’re spending money to acquire shoppers that may or may not come back in the future, community building encourages:
- Word-of-mouth
- Referrals
- Retention
- Reviews
These free channels bring you brand awareness in an organic manner coming from the consumers themselves and not the brand. Think of it as a long-term investment that keeps on giving back. 8 in 10 Southeast Asia online shoppers say positive user reviews are among the most important considerations when deciding where to buy online.
2. Leads to customer discovery, success, and increases conversions
Consider your community as a valuable and honest source of feedback for your business. Not only do you gain insight into your customer demographics and psychographics, but that important information will lead you to better your brand messaging, marketing, and even products to fit your community’s needs.
When a member of your community feels supported, senses camaraderie, makes strategic connections, and applies advice they learned through the community, they will likely be retained to advocate for your brand. Glossier does this extremely well when they are launching a new product, they will leverage their editorial arm. The blog that started it all, Into The Gloss, solicits advice from what its readers really want and what they think about new products.
3. Fosters trust and brand loyalty, thereby retaining customers
Once you have a community going, retaining existing customers is arguably more important than acquiring new ones (and cheaper too!). That means you need to leverage your community to be your brand ambassadors.
Give them tools and resources to spend more time with your products – the more time and effort that someone invests into a product or service, the more they’ll end up valuing it. This is explained by the IKEA effect from Harvard Business School. IKEA’s business model forces consumers to spend time in assembling the products, resulting in overvaluing the products and the brand.
It’s important to find out who your power customers are and who are spreading the word on your behalf. They would be more willing to collaborate with you on initiatives that can lead to marketing for your new and existing customers.
Ok, now tell me How to Start Building a Community
So now that we understand the reasons why it is necessary for your brand to build a community, how do we do it? Here are 5 practical tips to kickstart community building around your brand, especially if it’s not yet a part of your growth strategy.
1. Clearly identify and define what your brand stands for
If you’re a small local brand competing with endless, large multinational brands out there, you need to stand out even more by clearly defining your brand’s mission and vision. 97% of online buyers tend to read reviews before making a purchase and that online reputation is crucial.
One great example that propelled the Warby Parker brand was their ‘Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” program. They distribute a pair of glasses to the less fortunate with each pair of glasses bought through them, similar to the TOMS business model. You don’t always need a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) like the brands above. However, you do need to have a clear vision of what keeps your brand and your company going.
- Does your brand have a mission statement?
- Do you know who your target audience is?
2. Find the right channel(s) to connect with your community
Once you’ve identified the above, let’s figure out the relevant communication channels/ platforms and how you’re going to start. For example, Bumble (a dating and networking app) has an ambassador program called “The Hive” whereby their “Honeys” and “Queen Bees” help market the app within their networks and neighbourhoods. They focus on offline in-person events with influencers and thought leaders in their cities.
If you’re looking to build an online community, blogs are a great way for the brand to become a thought leader in the industry. All while improving SEO for organic brand awareness. Hubspot is a SaaS tool for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service – but what sets them apart from others is their robust, educational blog. Blog readers ultimately see the value of the brand more when they learn and apply skills from the Hubspot blog. In return, readers are also keener on purchasing solutions from them.
Here are some things to consider when selecting your community platform:
- The (potential) size of your audience
- How your audience prefers to engage
- The features you need
- You/ your team’s technical skill level
- Your budget
- You don’t need to find the right platform right away and can test to see which works best for you. If you’re just starting out, perhaps a Telegram or Facebook group, or a forum on your website would be enough to get some traction.
3. Make your community valuable and exclusive
The best brands offer their communities the following: Boundaries, emotional safety, camaraderie, personal investment, and insider status. Leverage your chosen platforms to create a safe space where your community members can easily and comfortably share, feel accepted, and that it’s an exclusive spot in the community. To begin building the framework, you’ll need to think about:
- Setting clear guidelines ahead of time for community members to understand the ground rules
- Providing moderation at times and using moderation to enforce guidelines
- Limitation of community membership a.k.a how you get to be a part of the community
- Encouraging inside jokes, camaraderie, and fun interactions
- Exclusive benefits for your top community members through anything from status icons to monetary rewards to product discounts, special events, and more!
4. Foster community interaction, engagement, and discussion
There’s no doubt that starting out a community will be the hardest. How do you get conversations started? How do you get people to start talking to each other? What values do community members seek from the brand? It’s normal that the beginning will be tough but community building is a long-term strategy, not a short-term goal. As you begin to add more and more into your community, the interactions will begin to flow more smoothly as long as you continue to provide value.
Keep in mind that there can be 2 types of community members, those who communicate back and those who are simply lurkers or observers. Both are important to the community and keep it going. As long as community members are still willing to take in your content, you are still providing value.
5. Expect to give more than what you get back
The most important mindset to have is to give more than what you’d expect to take back. When you do this, your community members will recognize it as well. This goes back to what I’ve mentioned in the beginning to invest resources and time in a community, and not see it as a one-off initiative. This means providing support, answering questions, and offering useful resources to serve your community’s needs. The return on investment will come in the form of engaged community members, purchases, word-of-mouth referrals, and more.
At the end of the day, your community strategy is entirely up to what suits your brand and company resources best. Whether it involves in-person interactions, entirely online due to recent pandemic times, or a bit of both. Having one will be integral to building your brand awareness and loyalty. Having a strong and engaged community will, in the long-term, lead to better products, more innovation, learning, and company growth. Just make sure that your community will make an impact in your community members’ lives by providing support and value.
Within Shopform, we believe that the community is the essence and heart of the brand, and what ultimately sets one brand apart from another. Along with our platform where content creators can support local fashion brands, we hope that our ongoing blog posts for small local businesses will help propel your brand to the next level. We relish in knowing that our resources helped! Let us know below if you have any other community building tips and tricks you’d like to share with other brands reading this, we’d love to hear from you.