Alone we can do so little, together, we can do so much.
statistics show that 76% of online users are in online communities, 60% of businesses own a branded online community and for a well optimised online community, an average of 30% of the organisation's revenue was derived from their online community alone.
Whether you're a person trying to build your personal brand or an organisation building your online brand communities are definitely something you'd want to be active in to help drive people and attract audiences to your service and product.
if you're here you likely know what the terms community and branding mean but here's a quick recap for those that'd like it, you could skip through the next two sections of this article if you don't.
Branding and Community
Branding is a word that defines how your organisation is perceived by your audience and the outside world in general. It is a way that the general public recognises your organisation or person and distinguishes it from others.
What are you known for?
A lot of factors contribute to your brand image, like graphics, tone of speaking, products, videos among other things.
A community is just a collection of individuals that come together and bond over similar interests, and an online community is one that is based online.
Building a community around your brand
Its really important and essential for your brand to have a community around it.
Could be by joining a community at you early stages and providing value and solutions to its members through you organisation's product, or building your very own community of individuals that are your target audience and helping them solve their problems with your product or service.
Here are a couple ways to leverage these communities
Engagement Strategies
A dead community is not a community at all. To ensure that a community serves its purpose the members of the community must be active and encouraged to participate in the communities activities.
Ways of encouraging active engagement in a community are;
Adding value
Learn what problems your community members have and give them possible solutions to these problems, if there's an opportunity for your organisation to come in here, suggest it. But don't overdo it.
Authenticity
Maintain your communities' image. Build trust with the community members by having a good reputation around your product or service and have genuine interactions with your audience to maintain this trust.
Frequent Engagements
Be consistent. Your community should be active, try to organise events or initiatives that allow its members to constantly interact with one another and discuss topics of interest.
An example of how to do this is by;
Creating valuable content
you can create content in the form of video, articles or even just social media posts and have the community discuss about it and talk about what they've gained from the content.
Hosting events and webinars
hosting events and webinars about topics that might interest your audience and constantly educating them on things related to the communities' agenda can also help drive more engagement.
User generated content
You can also have members of the community that are users of your product share their experiences with the other members to establish a feeling of rapport with other members.
Case studies
There are quite a couple of organisations that do these things and they are well known among the general populace for having a welcoming and inclusive community.
Here are some examples of organisations known for having such communities and by extension having a great work culture.
Google
Google has wonderful initiatives like the Google developer group and the developer student clubs which are communities that provide a platform for google fans, users and developers in general to bond over google products and technology.
They also have several initiatives and events like the Google I/O, Google solutions challenge, various hackathons and competitions that all help to encourage the general public into engaging with their communities and services.
Microsoft also has a similar initiative to Google's known as the Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors programme where students come together to learn about Microsoft technologies and how to use them for their various needs.
Cowrywise Which is a wealth management platform for Nigerians, have student communities consisting of various campus ambassadors that come together to learn about finances and managing them.
Due to these and various other initiatives like their student internship programmes, they are popularly known for their excellent work culture and inclusivity.
Another thing that can be done in addition to the tips mentioned above to help in leveraging communities for brand awareness is measuring your community metrics and its impact on your organisation's growth.
Measuring impact
Have tools and measures in place to take the metrics of the impact of your community to your business. Learn what helps and what doesn't, and work on improving the things that do.
Overcoming challenges
some common challenges when embarking on this journey are
Maintaining consistent engagement
Managing negative feedback
Scaling community efforts, and so on
These issues can be resolved by speaking to professionals who are well versed in the feed and learning from them.
Or perhaps simply hiring a community manager to help, as they are experienced and know what to do when issues like these arise.
Conclusion
In this article you've learnt the importance of communities in branding, and a couple of tips to implement to help leverage your brand with communities. Here's a brief recap of these tips
Identifying your target audience
Ensure active participation in the community
Organising events and other initiatives
and, Measuring engagement metrics.
Well, that's all I have for you, for now.
Good luck implementing these tips, I hope this article was of great help to you.