The Power of Community for your Business.
Understanding your business’ community will prove to be vital to your business’ success.
With more users and potential customers interacting online rather than physically in a store, your business will need to adopt new methods for communicating with its growing community. Especially with the current COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are increasingly adopting inclusive and personal-toned messaging in their engagement strategies.
In the context of your business, a community is an active unified body of individuals. These individuals are your customers, your partners, and your professional connections. Your community is comprised of the people who wish to engage with your product/service’s brand. Community engagement is part of the marketing strategy. Often, businesses will adopt certain social media strategies to cultivate a community. There are other methods your business can employ as well to grow your community.
Using Social Media to Grow Your Community
A major benefit of using social media to interact with your community is having the opportunity to instantly make a connection. Platforms such as Instagram offer live video streaming that can enhance that instant connection. Other platforms can open up your community to more focused discussion; Reddit for example, has established communities for you to introduce your business or service. Also, you have the option of creating a specialized subreddit as well.
There are specific platforms that are better for your community than others, but it certainly involves staying active among at least more than one.
Identifying Your Community Ambassadors
With your engagement strategy, you will start to see more community members consistently engage with your brand. At the start, you may have 10 subscribers to your YouTube channel or 20 followers on your Instagram profile. This early set of community members likely share the following characteristics:
- they were able to find your brand
- they currently like your brand
- they want to see more
- they have a unique connection to your brand
This early set of community members are your ambassadors. They are the most willing to spread your message at no additional cost. They are effectively an extension of your engagement strategy; if you know what is creating more community ambassadors for your brand, you will bring in more ambassadors and grow your reach that much quicker.
Engaging With Your Community
Next, we are going to look at the frequency of engaging with the community.
“How often is enough?” will depend on your business; certain businesses may need a weekly update while others are fine with less frequent monthly or quarter updates. Others may have even less frequent updates, with cycling periods of high activity.
Conclusion
Fostering a community for your business is extremely important, it allows for building stronger connections, expanding your reach, and keeping your business relevant. At 3CX Digital, we are here to help you grow your community to new levels, and provide the tools and tips you need to succeed. In our next blog, we will be discussing how you can attract more attention with content.