Mar 8, 2021
How to build a strong brand community?
Build a long-lasting ecosystem for your brand and your followers.
First, what is a community?
A community is a tribe. It is an ecosystem in which each participant contributes and each participant benefits.
So, we need to keep in mind that your brand is only a part of this big community. You don’t really make or create a community. You only help people to connect with you.
The community benefits from your brand. Your brand benefits from the community.
That’s all.
What is the tribe really made of?
A tribe is made of only two things:
- Leaders.
- Followers.
Without leaders, there are no followers. As a brand, your role is to lead your tribe members to reach a common goal. That is your mission.
All tribes are about belief in an idea and a community.
So your goals are:
- To make the idea almost palpable.
- To earn your tribe’s trust.
What does the tribe need to thrive?
Only two things help a group of people to turn into an effective tribe.
A shared interest a.k.a. your big idea.
A way to communicate.
Vision: a palpable illustration of an idea
Like we said earlier you need to bring the big idea to life. That’s the moment when you need to articulate a vision. Your vision statement is the tool that will help your followers gather around you. That is also the tool that will help them trust you in reaching the community’s mission.
A communication tool
Great leaders empower the tribe to communicate. That is how they create movement.
Thanks to this tool your tribe can communicate:
- Tribe to leader
- Leader to tribe
- Member to member
- Member to outsider
With your powerful communication tool, a leader (you) can help increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members by:
- transforming a shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change through its vision.
- providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications.
- leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members.
An illustration of the three tactics
The first tactic: vision
The shared interest in Nike’s tribe is to create groundbreaking sport innovations by making products more sustainable and making a positive impact in communities.
To bring people together around this big idea they articulated the following vision:
To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.
By reading this you can think of a thousand different ways to do that.
The power of this vision statement is that you can imagine it, but you can’t grasp it until you join the tribe.
The second tactic: better tools
Twitch has only one goal:
Help people come together live every day to chat, interact, and make their own entertainment together.
By providing their communication tool they help millions of people in making their own entertainment. They’re all about empowering their tribe. So they lift up and celebrate every member of their community.
The third tactic: growth
The third tactic is the most common one. That is why these days everybody talks about exponential growth. That is the reason for the present multiplicity of start-ups we see these days.
All start-ups have the two same problems: they tend to forget that their model is only based on the third tactic. Consequently that there are two other effective strategies.
Without embracing all three they end up stalling. But their business model doesn’t allow it… so they fall.
The recipe for movement
- A compelling story about who we were at the beginning, who we are now, and the future we’re trying to build.
- A connection among the tribe and between the latter and its leader.
- Something to do, together.
The right to lead has to be earned
Only generosity and insight can give you the right to lead. You need to be worthy of other people’s trust. All of this is a matter of tightening the relationship with the people who decide to follow you.
Sources of inspiration
I hope that this article helped you in understanding better how communities work.
You’re free to clap if you want me to be gain visibility on Medium.
Have a nice day!
Alban.
