8 Strategies for Community Building in Business

Authenticity has always been a crucial aspect of brand building. Most consumers prefer to listen to other buyers rather than believing the corporate brand messages. This is probably why most brands or leveraging the power of community. Apart from helping you gain valuable insights regarding your consumers and products, community building can also help boost customer loyalty. Hence, this article will teach you the eight strategies to help you with community building.  

1. Social Media 

We all like engaging with people we relate to, and with social media’s accessibility and reach, it becomes easier to find such people in our locality and around the world. Additionally, once you connect with someone, you are more likely to engage with their content. For example, fitness enthusiasts worldwide share their workout routines and preferred activewear brands.  

Such tendencies are popular on social media platforms, making them the perfect platform for building community. Social media can help you in reaching out to your audience. Instead of making your brand talk, you can utilize your community members to promote your brand on social media. This will lead to more authentic conversations as your audience can interact with real customers. Apart from a more organic way of brand advocacy, it will also lead to better brand awareness.  

2. Reviews 

Consumers these days expect their brands to be responsive. Around 52% of consumers expect their brands to contact them within seven days of giving a review. Hence regardless of the fact that whether the reviews are positive or negative, you need to respond to them as early as possible.

Reviews can also play a key role when it comes to brand building. Since these reviews come from authentic customers, they can provide social proof, bringing you more credibility and increasing conversion rates. Studies suggest that nearly 88% of consumers believe in online reviews as much as personal recommendations, while 72% of them take positive action.  

On the other hand, negative reviews can hurt your brand's reputation. However, instead of ignoring or deleting them, you need to address them and fix the issue quickly. They can also help you collect valuable feedback. Keeping track of what your community members are saying will help improve your brand and show your consumers that their opinions are valued.  

3. Feedback 

You can incorporate consumer feedback in your design or develop your product accordingly. Since consumers have personal experiences with the product, they can provide you with critical feedback.  

4. Co-creating Content 

While content remains essential, creating customized content for each marketing channel can become tedious. But if you can take the help of your community members, it will reduce the time and resources needed to create content. Besides being a faster and more scalable option, co-creation will also help create relatable and authentic content that will resonate better with your audience.  

Many of your community members may be experienced content creators, brand partners, or influencers who better understand cameras, lighting tools, editing software, etc. Hence, their content could also be repurposed across several marketing channels. You can also employ user-generated content (UGC) produced by employees or customers. They may be unpredictable, but they are an essential part of our brand story. Additionally, it is free content, and you can also repurpose or use it to collect feedback.     

5. Influencer Marketing 

You can opt for a creator partnership to boost your community-building exercises. Influencers lend credibility, thereby creating goodwill and expanding your brand’s reach. You may also ask your community members for influence or recommendations. This is not just another community-building exercise but also builds more hype around your collaborations.  

Read Also: How Local Influencers Can Help Grow Your Small Business  

6. Affiliate Network 

You can quickly transform your community members into brand advocates. Since they speak about your brand positively and authentically, you can take your marketing to the next level by turning them into affiliates. Affiliate marketing capitalizes on customer conversion by paying a commission to the affiliates on the sales they make. It is highly cost-effective as more than 81% of brands employ this strategy.  

Additionally, transforming your community members into affiliates will provide them with financial motivation so that they can promote your brand to their respective audiences. This will not only expand your reach but also authentically boost online sales.  

7. In-Person Events 

In-person events have always been great at bringing communities together. While online interactions may be convenient, they are mostly less personal. You can give them a reason to come together with events like masterclasses or pop-up shops. While hosting such events is a great way to engage with your customers, they are also helpful for your customers to create a network with each other, thereby helping in community building.  

8. Segmentation 

While separating your consumer base into segments may seem counterproductive to community building, it is vital for better communication. Since consumers expect personalized interactions with their brands, a generic e-mail may cause community members to question their choice. Therefore, to create a flourishing network, you must provide engagement opportunities as diverse as your consumers. It would help if you tailored your outreach by segmenting your consumer based on their age, lifestyle, location, personality traits, hobbies, etc.  

A strong community will eventually lead to better awareness, brand loyalty, improved products, and overall success. Therefore, community building has become a crucial aspect of any brand. From hosting community-building activities to co-creating content, these are some ways to help you with community building.