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Four Reasons Why Communities are Crucial to Your Business Success

Community building is a fabulous, fun, and effective way to get to know your customers, grow your business, improve your products, and stand out against your competition that you needed to incorporate yesterday. This community-building strategy requires building a community around your brand that puts your customers’ needs first.

 

You will unlock powerful resources, tools, and information that will only lead you to ultimate success through community building. In the age of technology, you must do everything you can to stand out and stay ahead of your competition. Fostering a brand community is nearly a requirement if you want to succeed in this day and age.

 

Here are the top four reasons why communities are crucial to your business success:

 

Communities Promote Word-of-Mouth Marketing

 

Nothing is more powerful than word-of-mouth marketing. People like the Kardashians are billionaires because of word-of-mouth marketing using social media and community building. They were smart enough to tune into the idea that they were building a community of followers on every social platform that they can influence easier because they’re a captive audience.

 

Communities Save Revenue

 

It doesn’t cost that much to set up a community. In fact, you can do it free through most social media platforms today, like Facebook and YouTube. So, if you already have these platforms take a look at the features, you may have been ignoring. The only thing it costs is your time.

 

Communities Establish Credibility and Trustworthiness

 

When you are part of a community, people get to know you more because you share more. When your audience sees with their own eyes the evidence you post in the groups and how helpful you are to the members of the group, they will begin to trust you more by observing. However, just the existence of a large, engaged, and friendly group gives you an edge on credibility and trustworthiness.

 

Communities Initiate Brand Loyalty

 

When everyone in a group is talking about your brand and what they like about your products and services, it becomes kind of like a club in that each member’s identity is tied up in using your products and services. When that happens, they become loyal to them.

 

Engagement and interaction are crucial to successful brand companies. This is how you grow a community that advocates for you while staying around for the long term. In other words, valuable engagement reduces customer retention while attracting new ones. Thus, making it easy to grow your brand sustainably and profitably.

 

In the end, these reasons establish just how crucial communities are to your success. Without one, you may not find your customers or continue to build the business you need to stay around long-term. Communities are your connection to more revenue, recognition, reach, and business potential.

 

 

 

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Essential Characteristics of a Successful Brand Community

A successful brand community has the power to unlock benefits and resources that can take your business to the next level.

 

Communities foster engagement that fuels brand awareness, credibility, and, most importantly, loyalty. With loyalty, you can market and grow your business more effectively than on your own or through traditional marketing efforts. In addition, loyal customers will not just participate in your community. They will loudly advocate for you to their friends and family.

 

Nothing is as powerful as word-of-mouth marketing. When you build a strong community, you will have many people who strongly advocate for your brand. To create a strong community to reap these rewards, you must possess certain common and essential characteristics as a business owner and community leader.

 

The following characteristics are essential to building a successful brand community:

 

  • Influential and Inspirational – You need to demonstrate that you have the necessary knowledge and experience to help your customers solve their problems. When you focus on problem-solving, you become very inspirational. Find ways to inspire them by giving them reasons to act in the manner you desire them to.

 

  • Authentic and Unique – It’s imperative that you are yourself and don’t put on any fake personalities. While your business needs to have its own personality apart from you – let’s face it, you are your business, so you must be who you are. The good news is when you are yourself, you’re automatically unique. Don’t worry if you think someone else can do the topic better. They want to hear it from you because you are you.

 

  • Collaborative and Engaging – The easiest way to be engaging is to include your audience in everything you say and do. Ask them if they like your new book cover. Ask them if they want to participate in a challenge. Let your members choose what they want to do with you by setting up two or three options and then letting the group vote on it.

 

  • Personalized and Valuable – Your community needs to be personalized for your business and made to represent who you are as a business. Still, its main purpose is to provide value to the ideal customer. So, ask yourself what value you can provide to this particular customer every day, depending on their buying journey position?

 

  • Consistent and Communicative – You can’t allow your community to go dark for even a day. You need to post something in the community a minimum of once a day, if not three times a day. Plus, what you post needs to be useful and not irrelevant to make headway.

 

  • Honest and Full of Integrity – One thing about doing business online to know is that if you’re dishonest, it’s going to come out. You may as well tell the truth and be who you say you are from the start, even if you believe you’re imperfect.

 

Incorporating as many of these characteristics or qualities as possible while building your own brand community is essential to make an enormous impact and grow your business. With these characteristics, you can create a strong community that advocates for your business.

 

 

 

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Six Strategies for Successful Community Building

A brand community is only as valuable as the work you put into it or provide. Meaning you can’t expect the community to do the work for you at all times. You must put work into it first to gain the amazing benefits brand communities return. Strong communities share your messages across many different avenues, starting with their closest friends and family, ultimately increasing your brand awareness, recognition, and credibility.

 

Here are six community building strategies to learn and how they can grow your business:

 

  1. Incorporate Customer Feedback – When you receive any feedback from a customer, whether email, in the community, or otherwise, use that information in the community. If it’s positive feedback, call out the customer in the group and thank them. How you respond to negative feedback demonstrates how you will make it better or change something you do. This shows your customers you are listening.

 

  1. Respond to Product Reviews – If someone gives you a review, don’t just ignore it. Instead, respond to it by thanking them, providing even more greatness, or if it’s not as good as you’d like, make it right by being understanding and letting them know you are here for them.

 

  1. Embrace User-Generated Content – The remarkable thing about building a community is the user-generated content that can be used and put to use. For example, you can ask for advice in a group about something relevant, compile it, and then make a blog post about it.

 

  1. Host Online and Offline Events – You can also start hosting events once you have a captive audience in the community or group. Events are great ways to bring your community even closer and get to know your audience even more. The wonderful thing is you can do events online or offline as long as your particular community is interested.

 

  1. Develop a Members’ Affiliate Program – One way to get your audience in the community engaged is to let them earn money or prizes promoting your products, services, and community by setting up an affiliate or referral plan.

Six Tips to Improving your Social Media Story Content

  1. Create and Share Valuable and Unique Content – Most importantly, use your community to create and share valuable content that stands out from the crowd. The more tuned in to your community, the easier this becomes.

 

Be sure to incorporate these strategies as you grow your own brand community if you want to reap as many benefits as possible. Again, the more valuable information or resources you provide or add to the community, the more they are willing to return. If they go to bed tonight having enjoyed the interaction in your community, they will be back tomorrow, which means you need to ensure something more is there for them tomorrow.

 

 

 

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Why a Brand Community is the Business Strategy You Need

Communities keep your ideal audience all in one place, making it easier to communicate, market, and engage and motivate them to buy your products, use your services, and consume your content. All of this together shows you why communities are a valuable marketing tool and business strategy to adopt if you want to grow your business. Plus, having a brand-centered community is fun too. And who doesn’t want to have a little fun while making money?

 

The following are the top five crucial reasons to build a brand community:

 

To Increase Brand Awareness and Recognition

 

Building a community increases brand awareness and recognition by capturing your audience into a smaller captive unit that you can send information to easier than if they’re all out in the wild. For example, you might have to run an advertisement to capture someone to learn about your new product, but your audience in the community will know about it simply due to being part of the community.

 

To Engage and Interact with Your Target Audience

 

When your community is on a platform that you all use to talk to each other, share information, and engage, it makes it so much easier for them to interact with you without the noise from everyone else interfering. In addition, the community is only about what you make it about, so you don’t have to worry about pleasing anyone but your ideal audience.

 

To Influence, Inspire, or Educate Your Audience

 

Having a community that enables you to be a lot closer to a smaller portion of the available. Being closer to them makes it easier to influence them to buy your products or try something you think works. In addition, you can educate them better because you’ll get insight into what they need by observing their discussions and actions.

 

To Foster Trust and Brand Loyalty

 

Your audience gets to see you more often through the content you share in the group instead of through an advertisement or email. As a result, they feel as if they know you. When they think they know you, they trust you more and become very loyal to your brand.

 

To Grow and Improve Your Products and Services

 

One of the best parts about having an involved community of people who want what you are offering and need what you have is that you can get insight into making your products and services better simply by asking questions and listening to the answers.

 

These reasons should easily explain why building a brand community is the business strategy you should be adopting today. If you have yet to get your most loyal customers together, you are only missing all the potential your business can gain. Strong communities create trust, loyalty, and value that services you and those involved.

Automate Your Community Management

 

 

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The Three Google Web Story Tools to Know About

Google web stories is a feature that allows you to publish content in a different format than your blog that is highly attractive and shareable to mobile users. This format is similar to what you see on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. It uses video, graphics, text, and other features to tell a story that your audience is interested in or needs through a more attractive and engaging format to your audience.

 

Using features that attract more mobile users is more crucial than ever, as nearly seventy percent of those using the internet to shop use their smartphones. What’s even more important is that the Google Discovery feature, where your stories will be placed, attracts around eight hundred million views every single month. To use this feature, you must be aware of the tools required to get it going. Let’s look at some.

 

The following are the three Google web story tools to know about and important tips on how to use each:

 

Web Stories for WordPress

 

This is the main plugin to use that started the launch of Google web stories. This plugin offers a unique editing interface, tools, and templates to create powerful and beautiful stories — making it your best bet if you want to get maximum value out of your stories. Of course, if you have a WordPress blog, this will work better since it’s designed to work with self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org). However, since it is a Google product, you will likely have success using this feature. Third-party options can still make things better and easier to use, especially as time goes on.

 

MakeStories

 

This third-party tool takes Google’s Web Stories technology to the next level and makes it easier to use. It also provides more tools to host your stories, turn your stories into Instagram style carousels on your website, and offer a workspace to design and collaborate with your team.

 

Newsroom AI

 

Another powerful Web Stories tool that builds on a more immersive and intimate experience with your audience. Newsroom offers a freestyle functionality web story builder that lets you add shapes, media, or text layers however you want. Newsroom also gives access to over three hundred million Getty Images to upscale your content with free images and use the advanced publish settings to Connect to Google Discover to get more views.

 

Get to know each of these different Google web story tools to find the one that works best for you. While many of these 3rd Party tools are useful, it is always a good idea to learn the one that was developed first to get the most out of this new feature, as it is likely to be the most compatible. However, it is only natural for more tools and resources to become more beneficial and valuable as time goes on.

 

 

 

 

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Six Tips to Improving your Social Media Story Content

Just because most social media stories only last for twenty-four hours doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to create a detailed content plan. Your social media story content relies on it to keep your brand image, message, and value consistent and audience engaged. Avoid confusing and boring your audience with lackluster or a hard sales-like approach on your social media stories.

 

Here are six tips to help improve your social media story content to increase your engagement and other important business conversions:

 

Be Personable and Less Formal

 

A mix of informal and formal content is the best approach when it comes to stories. However, lean more on the less formal side and use your website, YouTube channel, and other platforms or platform features for more professional content. Viewers want to get to know you and what you really stand for. They want to know you are real and honest. Due to the short time limit and engaging features social media stories have to offer. This is a great tool to do that.

 

Avoid Generic or Reposted Content

 

Don’t use your stories to simply repost content without making it more unique or different in some way. There is nothing wrong with repurposing, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t change it up somehow. This also includes using generic templates or limiting the variety of content you share with your viewers.

 

Get Your Audience Involved

 

Always have your audience at the top of your priority list when making stories and other social media content. While increasing your income is highly crucial to your business, you can’t get that without your target audience or a product that actually benefits them. So the more you keep them at the center of your focus, the better your content will be, and the more your products or services will improve.

 

Less is More

 

Don’t over-explain, use too much text or overcrowd your image or video with too many emojis. This can easily confuse your viewers, make them leave, or repeat the slide too many times, which can become a hassle.

 

Use Both Images and Video

 

Again, adding variety to your content with different images, videos, and templates or formats is important. This is how you keep your audience interested during the full length of the story and after.

 

Incorporate Audio and Captions

 

Audio and captions are a simple way to change your content while sharing key information with your audience. For example, many of those on Instagram don’t view stories with sound on, meaning if you talk, they will miss out. Captions are your way to capitalize fully on your target audience.

 

Keep these six social media improvement tips in mind when creating your next social media story content plan to ensure it achieves the business goals and objectives you need to succeed. Don’t post lackluster or invaluable content only because you believe the tool is useful and need to keep a consistent schedule. In order to gain the benefits, the content needs to be valuable to your audience too.

Six Instagram Influencer Marketing Tips

 

 

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Six Instagram Story Hacks to Use for Business

Just about everything you do on this platform relies on your use and understanding of the benefits and power stories provide. However, due to Instagram’s popularity, it can be hard to stand out against the competition to make a real impact and keep your audience interested and engaged.

 

Here are six Instagram story hacks to use for your business to provide your target audience maximum value and turn them into repeat visitors and customers:

 

Utilize and understand All Editing Features

 

Take the time to get to know how to use every single editing or other features Instagram has to offer. Instagram wants to keep people on their platform and provide you the tools to keep your customers there through these features. So the more time you take to learn it, the better you can take advantage of their benefits.

 

Create Progression Posts

 

Again, a goal for Instagram and you are to keep people active and engaged. If you want your viewers to stay around, create stories with slides or frames that work together to tell a full story instead of using single posts. In order words, don’t just share one story with a short frame of your product. Include extra details such as how to use it too.

 

Host Live Q&As or Other Events

 

Get your audience involved even more by answering their questions or showing off your products live. Q & As offers a fabulous way to build your community and advance brand awareness while answering many of your viewers’ or customers’ questions.

 

Take Advantage of Instagram Highlights and Shopping Feature

 

These two features are must-haves to get the most benefits from this platform. This is how you can make your stories last longer than twenty-four hours so your viewers can continue to receive the value if they were not there while it was live. It also provides you tools to add your brand colors to increase your brand awareness.

 

Mention Other Accounts

 

Account shoutouts are a professional way to increase your exposure and build the community with your niche or industry. The best trait to have as a business owner is generosity. The more you give and share to others, the more likely you are to receive more back. Additionally, when you post a shoutout, their audience will see your content, while your audience will likely view their content—a win for both businesses.

Use Tools and Pre-Schedule Your Content

 

Tools are important in order to keep up with the constant action required on Instagram. Of course, the amount you post depends on your target audience’s schedule, your niche, and what kind you want to create for your stories. However, the fact is still clear that frequently posting throughout the day is key to staying at the top of the newsfeed and better grab your audience’s attention.

 

As you can see, taking advantage of each and every feature the platform has to offer is the key to creating engaging and interesting content. The more features and tools you use, the more value it provides, keeping you at the top of your audience’s mind and preventing your competition from taking the lead. Add each of these ideas to your social media content plan to add the variety, consistency, and engagement you need to be successful.

 

Four Fun Ways to Use Instagram Stories Polls and Questions

 

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Five Google Web Story Content Ideas for Business Success

In 2018, a new competitor to the social media stories game was created and launched by Google; at the time, AMP stories — now referred to as Google Web Stories. It is a powerful feature that draws in more traffic to your WordPress blog through a more interactive and engaging feature for those who use their smartphone to search on Google and scroll through their Discovery page.

 

They are short virtual clips of content in video or picture with text that teach your audience something or further advertise your website. To attract these new viewers, you need to develop the right content. While the content is consumed in a story-like feature, it is much different than the stories’ function found on Instagram. Meaning the story content, you create for your blog will likely be different.

 

Here are five Google web story content ideas to utilize for your business to maximize your success and exposure with this feature:

 

How-To Series or Step-by-Step

 

By far, the most interactive, educational, and useful Web Stories to create for your target audience are how-to series or step-by-step tutorials. Cooking or baking blogs can easily benefit from this idea. Recipe how-to stories are highly popular, attractive, and engaging.

 

Top Ten Recommendations

 

The next powerful Google web story content idea that is highly attractive and shareable among many readers is the top ten recommendations within your industry. This shows your personality as a brand and can further educate your audience on your products without a sales-like approach.

 

Product Highlights or Promotions

 

Create a story that is around five to ten frames all-around a specific product or service. Be sure to avoid a sales-like approach. Education and knowledge are power. Tell your audience how and why you created the product or service and that your product solves their problem through your Google web story.

 

Top Industry or Niche Facts

 

Are there powerful facts or beneficial tips you know about your industry or niche that will helps your readers or followers? Answering frequently asked questions is a good place to start.

 

Industry Related Quotes and Inspiration

 

Step away from your niche for just a moment and inspire and motivate your audience instead. Find a similar subject that gets your audience to act towards the niche with a group of related quotes.

 

Adding these ideas to your Google web stories content plan is vital if you want to use this feature correctly. Maximizing and enhancing your content is the most important first step in order to attract the right audience and get them interested. Anything worth a long-form post is worth a supporting Google Web story to increase your reach further, traffic, and success on your blog or WordPress website.

 

Creating a Niche Home Base on Your Blog

 

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Five Tools to Automate Your Social Media Stories

Due to the high-value social media stories and other content brought to companies, third-party solutions and products emerged. These solutions were designed to make it easier for brands or businesses to take full advantage of the benefits social media marketing brings without breaking the bank or taking up too much time.

 

Many things in social media require constant work and are quite tedious. Not something any one person can do sustainably to see results or achieve your goals with social media – making it that much more important to take advantage of these tools to automate certain portions of your social media content plan or make it easier and faster to produce high-quality content.

 

The following are five tools to help automate your social media stories:

 

Hootsuite

 

Hootsuite offers a thirty-day free trial to get started. With Hootsuite, scheduling all your social media content ahead of time across many different platforms will save you more time and free you from frustration. Then, view what your customers or audience thinks, access image access to make regular posts, or evaluate your personalized insights to see what is working all in one easy-to-use interface.

 

SocialPilot

 

Never run out of content ideas with SocialPilot’s unlimited keyword search tool. Discover trending content, create it and schedule it ahead of time to automate your social media marketing. View all your social media comments, posts, and messages easily from your Facebook pages or groups all in one place organized for better communication. SocialPilot works with many of the popular platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

 

CoSchedule

 

A marketing calendar allows you to see all of your projects from different platforms in one area that you can share and work on with a team. It can be easy to get lost in communication and make your social media stories inconsistent or disorganized if you can’t properly work with your team or keep your project all in one place. Don’t let your content projects be scattered between emails, spreadsheets, or cloud storage.

 

Sprout Social

 

Get to know your audience better with Sprout Social, a tool that gives you the knowledge and information you need to create better social media stories or content for your target audience. Real connections make purchases, and that’s what this tool helps you do by understanding their needs and then doing the work to create a plan that meets them. They also provide tools that help you publish content, manage your workflows, influencer engagement, and view analytics.

 

PostPlanner

 

Automatically post your content and keep up with your daily posting schedule with PostPlanner. A tool that allows you to set your posting schedule, republish content with one click, or tailor your post to maximize your reach. It also has a feature that filters through Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to provide the best or most trendy topics and ideas to create more stories or social media posts that convert.

 

Give each of these tools a try to see which one provides the most value to your brand and overall objective. The idea is to free up your time so you can use it where it matters most. For example, create engaging, interactive, and highly valuable and beneficial content for your followers or paying customers. In addition, using these tools can help you automate the process and plan ahead to get the most impact from your social media stories and other content.

 

Schedule Your Daily Activities Based on Your Goals

 

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Common Social Media Story Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The best way to know how to use a certain feature correctly is to learn what not to do first. This is done by understanding some of the most common mistakes many do when first using social media stories to market and advertise their business. While social media stories and the other features it provides can offer your business many benefits, learn how it works so your efforts will not be wasted.

 

Here are four of the most common social media story mistakes and what to do to avoid them:

 

Inconsistent Schedule and Posting Time

 

Social media is attractive due to the high amounts of communication and its movement and speed at which that communication can be found and digested. However, it is constant and never-ending — making it almost addicting as humans love to socialize. This means you need to find a schedule that keeps you consistent and always engaged. Of course, this will be different depending on the platform you use, but most stories only last for around twenty-four hours, which means at least once a day is vital at minimum.

 

Ignoring Audience Interaction and Engagement

 

Stories are about engagement and audience interaction. Don’t use this feature to post the same content you do everywhere else and ignore your audience. Get them involved, ask them questions, get their feedback, and always provide maximum value in exchange for their time.

 

Cross Promoting or Over Prompting

 

Repurposing is a great idea, but not for your stories. You always want to be more creative and transform the idea into something better and different to keep your audience attached or interested. Posting the same boring content on all platforms will likely disinterest them, making them head over to your competition as you no longer provide any value.

 

Poor Branding and Overall Message

 

Always plan your content to ensure your goals and company values are clear and obvious. If you don’t take the time to plan, you may inadvertently send the wrong message. Take advantage of the features, such as changing your font and colors to match your branding and using the Highlights section offered by Facebook and Instagram. A consistent message and branding statistically translate into more revenue for businesses. This is because your communication is clear, making it easier for you to create products or content your target audience needs and enjoys.

 

Don’t be caught making these same social media story mistakes. Start your social media story content plan off right by avoiding these common mistakes and taking advantage of the tips provided above. Being aware of these common mistakes gives you the tools you need to be one step ahead of your competition and offer better value and high-quality content to your target audience.