How a social community can save your brand
I’m not a big fan of Social Media right now.
Privacy violations, the inability to effectively fight hate speech and the distribution of false information on their platforms have left deep cracks in the brand images of major social media companies. Above all Facebook’s. And what’s been left of one’s personal feed is occupied by ads. No wonder consumers are looking for new and more private spaces to interact with each other and the brands that they actually value most. This is when communities and especially the Facebook groups feature come into play.
What is a community?
First of all we have to come to a common understanding of the term community and especially social communities.
Depending on the situation or the context, communities can have different definitions and serve different functions. But generally, a community is a “group of people acting in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common”. My definition of a social community is a group of people in a digital environment following a certain purpose or having a common understanding of a topic. Whether it is product-driven, purpose driven or commercially driven. There has to be the willingness to actively participate and contribute.
Build. Build. Build. The community framework.
If you want to understand the need for a community we have to take a look back. The social network was founded as a community. A website for students with a clear and simple purpose. The time when the news feed was launched the formerly private social community turned into a million dollar business, reinventing the company by monetizing communication on an unprecedented scale. In other words Facebook forced brands to invest massively in media to bring the message to their consumers.
With major consequences for brands, their social media communications — and the way communities were engaging. People lost the original value they were getting from the service in the earlier days. And this is where a different, a more layered strategy approach is needed — a normal feed for fans and communities where superfans can engage with the brand.
To make it vibrant and value-driven it has to always renew its character and purpose. We are using three key pillars to make this happen:
1. Ambassadors
Building a long-term community means that you have to understand the behaviour of your audience. The engagement pyramid is a common model to drive engagement and build a long term strategy.
Ideally, the pyramid should represent all of your community members with your least engaged members at the bottom and the most committed ones at the top of your community. To be clear, there will always be more people at the bottom of your community and only a few people who are deeply committed to your brand, sharing and creating content. Which is fine.
However, you have to find ways and activities that your community stage up into the next phase. And this is where the magic happens. Find reasons to reward, to engage or to listen to your community and the pyramid becomes a lively picture of your brand. For example reward your real top fans by inviting them to an exclusive launch event or by letting them participate in your product development while a new fan will be inspired when giving him a super nice conversation though asking questions about the product or the experience they had.
2. Purpose and Value
As mentioned before, every community has to deliver participatory and purpose-driven elements of their communication.
Think about what added value the community has to offer before you start. How can your brand or product participate in this community and what do we want to achieve with that? Ideally, you already have found ambassadors or people who will tell you that. Give them space to participate and give them time to develop a focus and never underestimate the power of the community. It is a constant process of developing new stories and formats leading to a community that is contributing and taking part in evolving your brand’s purpose.
3. Community First. Brand Second.
Social Communities are the new playground where brands should communicate nowadays. The times are long past when brands were using communities or channels to push uninspiring marketing messages. Even more than in the past content that communicates in two directions, consisting of engagement and listening to your customers, creates a deep connection between both actors.
The role of the brand in this case is a more observing and reclined one, giving the costumer a playground for stories to collaborate and build up upon. Brands have to rethink their position in this process and relinquish the control of their story to the people who are committed to them.
Conclusion
The times of brands controlling their story are over. But there is still hope for your brand — communities are a vehicle to change the way your brand tells its story dramatically over the next years. Brands have to become aware that they have to give the control to the people who are building them. It will never be a short term success story, it is related with a very transparent and open approach of how you want to communicate with your audience. If you are committed to all these key pillars, success will be seen in the long run. Because consumers want to purchase brands they trust and a great deal is based on the brand’s purpose.
