Let’s face reality. The social space is no longer the free ride it used to be, and as a business owner you’ve probably gotten really good at being creative with your resources, time and money to compensate for this fact.
One of the creative strategies many businesses have embraced is building a free social media group or community.
However, before you jump in and create your own group, there’s something you should know, and I’m going to share that with you in this post because it could mean the difference between outrageous success or a lot of hard work and frustration.
The simple truth about communities
In my time as a content marketer, one of the big mistakes I’ve seen brands make is seeing a community as an advertising or promotional platform and not an opportunity to connect, share, gather ideas and build trust.
The thing is though, for a community to work, it needs to be driven by a common interest or purpose and not just a brand name, and here’s the surprising truth: You don’t need to name or brand your community, you just need to make sure it meets a need your ideal clients have.
Yes, it’s true! In fact, some of the most successful communities I am a part of have nothing to do with the business owners’ core businesses, and yet these groups are highly effective in terms of feeding business success, helping with launches and projects, and providing valuable feedback and ideas. Some of them are related to a brand’s core business but they’re not named after the business.
So, how exactly does that work?
If you want your potential customers to know, like and trust you, it pays to put yourself in their shoes, walk their path for a mile or more, and understand what is important to them. How can you do that effectively if your community is all about you and what you do?
When I work with clients on their ideal client profiles, it often becomes obvious what kind of community they need to create. Here’s how you can get started:
Look at where your ideal clients are going to for information now and assess whether or not that source is meeting their needs.
If you’ve dug deep into the soul of your ideal client, you’ll have a real sense of what’s keeping them awake at night and what their deepest desires and needs are. These may or may not relate to what you offer, and that’s okay, because if you can provide a way for them to get a need met, they will love you. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
The We are Podcast community: Chef Ronsley Vaz has a thriving personal chef business aimed at highly motivated entrepreneurs. He started a podcast to help grow his business profile and it was so successful he started helping other entrepreneurs with podcasting so they could do this too. He started a free group on Facebook to share info about a podcasting event he was organizing and it kinda skyrocketed from there. It’s now a place for people to share and connect about podcasting. His avatar: Highly motivated entrepreneurs. His group audience: Highly motivated entrepreneurs. Are you seeing it now? Are those entrepreneurs more likely to do business with Ronsley as a result of being part of his group? Well, wouldn’t you be? I sure am.
Another different but amazing example of a community that is not directly related to a brand is the 365 Grateful Project by filmmaker Hailey Bartholomew. It started out as a personal project on Flickr but has grown into a massive movement, a book, and a documentary. Through fostering community based on user-generated content, the project has impacted thousands of people across the globe. And guess what? That project has raised Hailey’s profile internationally both as an author and a photographer/filmmaker. Her community is still on-brand because it’s all about fostering creativity and using that to explore and deal with some of life’s bigger issues. Hailey is a photographer and filmmaker with a passion for working with meaningful projects, so through 365 Grateful she’s solidified her brand, even though it’s not directly aimed at her filmmaking client avatar (it is aimed at many of her clients’ audiences though). Am I more likely to do business with or recommend Hailey as a result of being part of her community? Absolutely!
What if you’ve already started a group with your brand name?
You can still start a group and name it after your brand or business. I have. Just be really clear on the group’s purpose. For me, the connection point was blogging, a huge pain point for many of my small business clients, so I started a community around my new startup, Writally to gather feedback and learn what is important to my target audience as I build my app. I’ve tried starting content marketing groups before but they’ve never taken off. This one has, I think because it hit on one specific need… and that’s the key thing I want you to take away from this post.
Community is a powerful driver and can make launching new products, services and programs a lot easier, but it doesn’t need to be directly about your brand to succeed.
If you’re thinking of starting your own brand community, I urge you to dig deep into your ideal clients’ problems first, to get a real understanding of what unmet needs they have. Meet the need and you will be the go to person when they need you!
