Let’s face it, we’re all enduring some form of isolation in the midst of a global pandemic. Brands understand the need to build communities in order to come out stronger on the other side.
We embrace and cling to brands that bring us relief or respite from reality.
But what is luring us towards the brands we embrace? Is it mainly quality and result that keep us loyal, or is it a sense of belonging and community?
If while reading these rhetorical questions you felt a greater sense of value when contemplating feeling like you belong and are part of a community, then you’re on the right track.
Sure, a pharmaceutical company likely doesn’t have much need to foster an expansive community especially for specific drugs that battle against conditions that make sufferers feel uncomfortable even discussing. But for an entertainment company or a clothing company, there is great need to be all-inclusive.
It’s one thing to remain loyal to a brand just because they make great stuff, but on a whole other level, being a part of a brand’s existence and decision-making process generates much more loyalty.
Today, we’re going to dive into 9 ways in which brands can build their communities through content. Our goal here is to help you find ways through which you can boost loyalty to your brand, reach new heights in marketing, and gain important insights and feedback about your products.
And based upon a foundation that all of the content you put out is captivating, encourages feedback, and easy to share (thus upping the potential for a viral post), let’s dive in.
12 Strategies Brands Are Using to Build Communities
1. Knowing the “Who”
Knowing your audience is already something most brands understand and track. But in 2021, given these harrowing times of isolation, knowing every “who” is even more important. Your community is spending most of its time at home and online, so when you’re planning to generate some captivating content, make sure you know to whom it will be received.
A great example of this would be your local coffee shop. Some customers need to get their daily fix while others are more casual in how often they offer their patronage. Community-focused content based upon pandemic-inspired limitations should be about how customers can receive their favorite drinks, quality reassuring content that inspires motivation, or testimonials from loyal customers regardless of their shopping frequency.
The bottom line is to not isolate one type of “who” from any other types which The Walt Disney Company does very well in how they build communities.
Try to blend your marketing content in order to reach as many of them as possible. When you can inspire your diehards as well as your more casual customers, you know you’re doing something right. Keep it fresh, straight-forward, and don’t shy away from being light-hearted when appropriate.
2. Being Effective
As we just mentioned, being fresh, straight-forward, and light-hearted when appropriate merely scratch the surface of how your community-building efforts can be effective. Being genuine, promoting your benefits, and ensuring that you are trustworthy are also equally important.
For instance, if you’re an insurance company for boats and you produce content that involves small ships carrying sushi for ill-prepared boaters, you’re not being very fresh, straight-forward, or genuine. Light-hearted, maybe, but the benefits of your services and trustworthiness are certainly not being displayed.
The approach to being effective in your community-building efforts, therefore, must be founded upon a mindset of these six ideals during the brainstorming phase. That is, of course, once you’ve also evaluated your audience. Knowing the “who” and developing content based on maximum effectiveness will surely help your content reach greater measurable metrics and ROIs.
Need proof? Just take a peek at how Starbucks is doing with their content to build communities. Even in the midst of a pandemic—despite a massive dip early on—they are more profitable than ever. That’s because Starbucks encompasses every single effectiveness step on their home page. They even took the time to promote charity, and a delivery partner during these stay-at-home times.
3. Which Platform?
Okay, so you’ve tallied your “who”, you’ve scrummed together to be as fresh and genuine as possible, and now you’re facing the great conundrum of where to post your content. This step can be tricky because some content will be more important than others. This is where you have to tenacious when you build communities.
For example, if you’re launching a new collaboration and limited-edition product, you’re darn right all platforms should be utilized in a coordinated fashion and synced with your partner’s channels. If you’re about to post something, say, like this blog about building communities through content, perhaps channel coordination isn’t as necessary. Essentially, take your heart out of the equation and be honest about how ground-breaking your content may be.
In the end, it’s about traffic and profit. You’re a business and you’re looking to earn revenue, so if the content you’re about to post has huge potential for generating greater earnings, then don’t hold back.
If it’s content that still important but doesn’t have as much potential for profit, then consult your marketing and social media teams to see which platforms will be available to help resonate your message best.
4. Feedback – The Foundations of a Community
Early-stage development of a community begins with providing your customers and potential customers with easy-to-access platforms upon which they can voice their opinions and feedback.
While this may sound a little scary at first, it really isn’t with the correct mindset: being open to receiving suggestions. Social media accounts, website forums, product ratings and comments, contact forms, and any other platform you can think of will ensure your burgeoning community will know they have a voice.
A second-tier bonus to creating all of these platforms will be the growing abundance of ideas and suggestions which can then be relayed to the appropriate teams, and evaluated for value. Coupled to this bonus is also the amount of reach and possible SEO you can attain when coordinated marketing efforts get published. Yes, you may receive some negative sentiment, but in the end, having as many avenues as possible upon which your customers and potential customers can communicate can and will only lead to greater possibilities.
An excellent example of community foundations can be found on Blizzard Entertainment’s platforms. They fully encompass every suggested means by which their customers and potential customers can reach out, provide feedback, and make many suggestions. And behind the scenes of it all is a massive communications team managing content creations, social media outreach and response, and coordinated messaging that is pertinent to each of their IPs. Win, win, win!
5. Really Listening
As we teased just above, really listening is a crucial part of fostering a community through your outgoing content. It’s one thing to spend weeks or months developing content which then gets published, but it’s another to sit back and ignore how well that content has been received. If you’re an Everybody Loves Raymond fan, you’ll likely be familiar with the term, “active listening”.
That’s essentially what every brand should be doing once they launch their efforts to foster a community. Having active listeners in place to receive all of the incoming feedback is imperative, especially for the people and teams responsible for developing your products. Since turning a profit is likely priority #1, why not have at least one person fielding your customers’ sentiment and then reporting back what’s been shared?
You can predominately see this in action on Gymshark’s very active social website. Not only do they provide regular content to their customers and potential customers, they have a very active team standing by to read feedback and engage with visitors.
And this is the perfect time to remind you that actively listening means letting people know you’re there; just a quick comment like, “Thank you for your feedback! We’ll pass it along,” should suffice in letting that visitor know that he or she has been heard and acknowledged.
6. Engagement
Another important way you can build your community once you’ve posted content is through engagement. Again, as cited above, Gymshark is a fantastic example of how well a brand can engage their audience. When they put out content, they don’t let is just fester in the ether, they get in there and converse with nearly everyone who shares a comment or their sentiment.
As we mentioned above, engagement not only lets a customer or potential customer know that they have been heard and acknowledged, it also lets everyone else visiting who may not be so inclined to share their thoughts that they’re in an accepting place to do so. It shows that not only is your brand willing to take risks when producing content, but that your brand is also willing to face the music if something should backfire. It’s essentially inclusivity, and that only serves to help build solid trustworthiness, genuineness, and straight-forwardness.
Engagement isn’t difficult. It merely requires compassionate members of your team to be listening and actively looking for ways to interact with your community. You may need to set some communications precedents before you begin building your community so your team is on brand and on point in how they respond, but that shouldn’t be too complicated. If you’re looking for inspiration, consider Marriott’s philosophy and approach to how they treat their own people, and their millions of patrons.
7. Easy to Share – Social Media
It may seem like a no-brainer, but providing your community with easy-to-access social media sharing links to various product pages, blog posts, and other communications is a great way to help spread the word, and gain community growth. Organic reach is a very important part of your efforts to build your community. Most people nowadays know what a paid ad looks like—and they’re likely blocking them—so putting as many possible ways to be seen on as many platforms as possible will help you build while earning you trust and showing your genuineness.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent example of how to get your own community involved and helping to spread the word. Probably one of the most ambitious games to ever be created, and having been developed to play on multiple platforms, the amount of outreach CD PROJEKT RED has gone to in order to add to and further build their community is massive.
Right there on the game’s homepage, you have links to their official social channels, and access to hundreds of official assets which are free to download and share.
Diversity in social media channels is important too. Not everyone on Pinterest will be active on, say, Twitter, and vice-versa. Reach is important regardless of whether it’s paid or not, but organic reach will always yield more genuine sentiment and help to boost your community.
8. Be The Inspiration
This is where your collective minds and talents really need to shift into high-gear. Collaboration and brainstorming content before it goes out will help to ensure what you post is inspirational. If you sell widgets, just saying, “We sell widgets!”, likely won’t generate a ton of positive sentiment. On the flip-side, if you post, “Want the best widgets? We have ‘em! Tag a friend and tell us which one is your favorite.”, now you’ve not only shone a light on your product, but you’ve also encouraged your community to get involved.
Rudimentary example aside, we hope you get the picture. You’ve got to inspire confidence in your community while also inspiring confidence in those who could potentially join your community. What makes this easy is if you’re thinking about everyone, then you’re including everyone.
Hands down, the highest ranking inspiration brand is Apple. Not only are their products some of the hottest selling items on the market, they’re so popular that they put on an annual show to millions of viewers to show off what’s on the horizon. If that’s not being inspirational, we don’t know what else to tell ya.
9. Share Assets
As we pointed out above with Cyberpunk 2077, having assets readily available for download and use is a great way to help bolster your community.
Giving your community the tools they need to show off their loyalty while also helping spread the word about your products is a solid way to grow it. Companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Facebook, Google, and many more offer their communities access to images and other assets to share with others.
Of course, you’ll want to use discretion depending on what it is you produce and how you’d like your community to represent your brand. But going in to the process of building a strong community must be coupled with a mindset that says, “Yes, we want to give our community the means to share with others what they like about us.”
Besides, when you create the images and assets, you control how they’ll appear once shared. Another win-win!
10. Rewards
Another great way to build up your community once you’ve established your channels, ability to listen, and fostering engagement is to offer rewards. What brings back your community more than offering them reasons to come right back for something discounted or for free? It’s also a savvy way to bolster how easy it is to share your products with others (which we’ll dive into next).
Rewarding your most loyal not only entices others to be loyal themselves, but it also makes your current community members feel appreciated. On top of that, it’s also another avenue for you to gather feedback since a reward program will be yet another hub for your community to gather. Be sure to keep that in mind while you’re developing the platform.
Again, Starbucks is one brand that nails this very well. Not only can you earn Stars which can be used to purchase items for free, you can also receive other extras just by being a member. The Starbucks community loves their coffee, and keeping them feeling loved and appreciated while getting them back inside a store is a winning combination.
11. Gamification
Finally, we come to another step you can take to grow your community and encourage them to be loyal. Gamifying your community’s means by which they connect with your brand is a surefire way to keep them coming back for more. By gamifying your community platform, your community can unlock perks, specials, rewards, and whatever else your brand teams can come up.
By encouraging your community to keep coming back for more, you not only build your community, but you solidify their loyalty all while showing outsiders they’d be welcomed and rewarded if they joined in too. We separated this section from the rewards section because this specifically applies to your community’s activity in engaging with your brand as opposed to those who purchase your goods. Both methods have incredible value, and should certainly be explored as you ramp up your efforts to build your community.
So there you have it; 12 ways to help build your community through content. We hope we were able to get your creative juices flowing, and hey, if you think of something else we missed, then we’re on the right track! Overall, when you’re community-minded, you’re company-success-minded, and that’s ultimately what we want to see for you.
12. Knowing Thyself
As rudimentary as it may seem, knowing your own brand and what you create is vital to ensuring your community is captivated. This doesn’t just mean that you know what color your widgets are. This means you know your mission statement, you know your products, you know your brand voice, and you know the boundaries within which you generate content.
Things to consider would be to know your goals as a company and to know the goals for each of your products. You’ll also want to consider your audience, their demographics, and what will resonate with them. Lastly, depending on what you produce, how should you be expressing yourself, as a brand, and how far are you willing to push your communications.
If you’re like most Americans, you have or have had a Samsung device in your home. Phone, TV, monitor—something, and even now, Samsung is branching out with other smart devices such as refrigerators and ovens. This is a brand that knows exactly who they are, and their innovation and knowing what they can do through their unique voice is why they’re rated as one of the best companies in the world.
So there you have it; 12 ways to help build your community through content.
We hope we were able to get your creative juices flowing, and hey, if you think of something else we missed, then we’re on the right track!
Overall, when you’re community-minded, you’re company-success-minded, and that’s ultimately what we want to see for you.
