Businesses must hold a few essentials in order to create an effective, amusing, and authentic brand community from scratch. Now you’re like, that’s okay but what exactly building a brand community is? and how does brand community helps your business? This post will take you through how to build a brand community and almost all questions popping in your mind.
A brand community is a pool of individuals who actively participate in discussions and activities that are both directly and indirectly tied to a particular brand, its goods, services, mission and vision. Additionally, it is a customer-centric growth approach that enables companies to build brand loyalty, gather data on target audiences, nurture leads, and raise brand awareness.
It creates a sense of affection at both ends, customer and brand.
During our research, we found a great piece published by Harvard Business Review.
Give it a read.
Pick a Cause to Emotionally Connect with Community
A feeling of connection and belonging is the foundation of any strong brand community. People want to feel connected to something greater than themselves, and you can offer them that feeling by building a community around your business supporting a cause.
This not only encourages loyalty, but it can also increase engagement and brand advocacy.
The people attached to your brand will work as assets for the organization. Their support can bring immense success only if the brand gives due thoughtfulness to its community.
The emotional investment of the people associated will pay in terms of their trust & word of mouth promotion. Their reference to friends and family can bring goodwill as loyalty about your brand.
It is more like creating a space where people who have similar emotive thoughts about your brand can come together and interact with each other.
For WordPress, there are plenty of themes & plugins available to build community at ease. Some of the tested ones are bbPress, BuddyPress, BuddyBoss Theme & Platform, PeepSo, and Youzify.
Moving on, brands that prioritize building and strengthening their community are likely to enjoy long-term success.
Building a strong community takes time and effort, but the benefits are well worth it. By focusing on these strategies, brands can create a community that is engaged, loyal, and willing to advocate for the brand over the long-term.
Strategies to Build a Stronger Brand Community
Well, there are infinite brands out there performing and experimenting what works best for them. But when you start, when your business is still a child that need care, you can’t afford to experiment with limited resources.
So our team at Growwmation researched and created a list of some common ways to build community for your brand.
Here are some strategies for brands looking to build stronger communities:
- Prioritize Customer Service
- Transparency
- Create a Sense of Personal Connectivity
- Give Back to the Community
- Reward Customer Loyalty
- Use Social Media
- Host Events
- Appreciate Feedback
- Don’t try Selling
Smart enough, yeah, you got that right.
It’s all to appreciate the customers in any possible way.
Either by making them feel heard, hosting them well, rewarding them with surprises or offering the top-notch customer service (most important).
1. Prioritize Customer Service
Brands or businesses should ensure that customers can easily reach out when they need help, and that their concerns are addressed in a prompt and satisfactory manner.
To make sure you master the game, here are some of the customer support tools you can consider giving a try.
- Fluent Support (our go-to tool)
- HubSpot Service Hub
- WhatsApp Chat (for one-man-army that need instant support window)
- Telegram Chat
- Live Chat Unlimited
Play around with any of them to see which one works best for you.
A friendly and helpful customer service team can make a huge difference in building positive relationships with customers.
2. Transparency
Make good use of your blog page and social media channels for being transparent.
This can include regularly updating customers on company news, being open about pricing and product information, and admitting to and addressing any mistakes or issues.
Businesses of all size should be honest and transparent in their communications with customers as it helps you to build trust and gain loyalty.
Doesn’t matter how big or small you are.
One of the great process that we recommend is sharing behind the scenes or the process behind any action, be it a decision in board meeting or price setting strategy.
It works, consider setting-up a blogging site for your business and leveraging your social media channels if you haven’t already.
3. Create a Sense of Personal Connectivity
Simply interact with your audience as much as possible.
As a brand, you should aim to create a sense of community among your customers.
This can be achieved in multiple ways, some of them listed below:
- Hosting events or meetups
- Hold Discussion sessions,
- Q&A interactions
- Feature the user-generated content, and more
You can leverage the brand’s website and your social media channels for a lot more.
4. Give Back to the Community
Brands can build strong relationships with their community by giving back and supporting causes that align with their values.
This can include donating a portion of profits to charity, sponsoring local events, or volunteering time or resources to support community initiatives.
You can also plan some products or service giveaways to your audience and existing customer to spread word of mouth that’d help you boost conversions eventually.
Creating coupons can be a great way too.
5. Reward Customer Loyalty
Recognizing and rewarding loyal customers can create a strong sense of connection and belonging within a brand’s community.
This can include offering discounts, exclusive content or experiences, or other perks for those who have been with the brand for a certain amount of time or who have made repeat purchases.
Discounts and perks can be of your own products and services or else you can also partner with others that your customers would like to use.
6. Use Social Media
Social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram etc. are similar channels where the brands can build their online communities very easily.
Yep! your followers are considered your community, try interacting with them much often to create a bond of trust and authority.
There are number of ways, join the interested groups, getting feedback, awareness interaction, Q&A interaction, and offer support. All of this can be done either by the most loyal followers or the brand itself.
7. Host Events
Product launches, pop-up shops, workshops, and meet-and-greets are excellent examples of events that allow brands to interact with customers.
You can make it face-to-face or even online through video calls, conferences, or virtual meetups.
For customers, you can design one-of-a-kind experiences and grant them exclusive access to their goods or services. Also, events give businesses the chance to hear from consumers and better understand their needs.
8. Appreciate Feedback
Brands that are open to and act on customer feedback are more likely to build strong relationships with their community.
This can include soliciting feedback via surveys or social media, responding to customer reviews (both positive and negative), and using feedback to improve products or services.
Give shout-out on social media by sharing provided feedback alongside how you plan to take that to improve.
9. Don’t try Selling
Don’t just try to sell things, build a bond where your audience listen to what you have got to say and act on what you recommend.
Try sharing your recommendation along with facts and results, how it’d help them. That all with no intention to sell, hope you know what I mean.
Do not consider community building as a way of creating marketing tactics or sales approach, it works far much ahead then these literal objectives.
The business existence, serving the people associated, engineering the community are the goals that can build the brand stronger.
Eventually, you are going to have the brand community that sells on its own, and that’s one form of growth automation.
Benefits of Brand Community for Brand or Business
- Customer Loyalty — The emotional connection between the followers and brand brings loyalty to a different level, they become your fans and advocates from just being the followers.
- Brand Awareness — The word of mouth publicity brings the brand in limelight of course for the good reasons, the recommendations made by the existing followers helps a lot in creating awareness.
- Customer Views — It also provides an opportunity to get to know what the customers are likely to feel and say about the product or service.
- Positioning — It creates an image that portrays the mission, vision and objectives of the organization. The better it works the better it reaps.
End Note
Building a strong community takes time and effort, but the benefits are well worth it.
By prioritizing customer service, transparent communication, a sense of community, giving back, and rewarding loyalty, using social media, hosting events, and embracing feedback, brands can create a community that is engaged, loyal, and willing to advocate for the brand over the long-term.
Whether you are an individual or an ecommerce firm, there are many benefits to having a strong community.
Excellent communities can provide stability, support, and ideas. Merchants will have an advantage in the long run if they can foster a feeling of community among their subscribers and around their goods or services.
