Category: Marketing

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Four Ways Community Building Improves Customer Service

Proper and effective customer service can make or break your business. In 2019 Forrester Consulting surveyed over a thousand different customers across two-hundred enterprise brands to learn what customers really want from brands.

 

One important takeaway was that nearly two-thirds of respondents reported how one unpleasant experience with a brand caused them to switch brands instantly while also warning their peers to stay away — showing you just how important proper and effective customer service helps you retain your customers and keep them happy.

 

In addition, growing a community for your business can instantly improve your customer service and build more content members that foster a more successful and sustainable business.

 

Here are four ways community building can improve your customer service strategies:

 

Increased Availability and Communication

 

Real-time support is possible with online communities – meaning problems can be solved instantly even if you or someone from the business is not responding directly. You can set up automation using bots in most communities to answer frequently asked questions that allow your members to serve themselves when you’re not there essentially.

 

Increased Self-Service Tools and Resources

 

You can also incorporate files and written FAQs that enable your customers and members to check out the rules themselves any time they want to. If you offer these tools, make sure to post about the tools and resources you have in your group and how they can access them. Not everyone understands how these tools and platforms work, so a little education can go a long way.

 

Increased Engagement and Education

 

Within the enclosed privacy or at least imagined privacy that a group provides, members will feel more at ease about engaging with your content and you. Because of this, the information and education you provide within the group will be much more useful due to instant feedback.

 

Improved Products and Services

 

When you start regularly speaking with your customers in a community setting, online or offline, you’ll begin to understand how you can improve your products and services. Not to mention you’ll end up with a never-ending stream of new product and service ideas because you’ll know the audience so much deeper.

 

As you can see, all of these options work together to provide superior support to your target audience. Through communities, your customers can find information faster and get the solution they need easily without frustrations. Access to nearly endless education, materials, and superior customer support makes community building a must-have for business.

 

 

 

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Common Community Building Mistakes to Avoid

Creating and building a brand community provides loads of benefits to you and your members. However, to achieve these benefits, you must be sure you give your audience the right information, tools, and resources. Unfortunately, many brands in online communities are making many mistakes today that are destroying their true and fullest potential.

 

Here are the six most common community-building mistakes to avoid while growing a more successful and sustainable business:

 

Lack of Clear Goals and Community Focus

 

Before you start building your community, you need to know what your brand stands for and the goals of having a community for yourself and your customers. First, the community has to be primarily for the customer, and secondly, the community has to represent your brand’s values. If the group members have no idea your point of being, it might be big, but it won’t be prosperous.

 

Overselling or Over Promoting

 

While you do want to make offers and sell in your groups and communities, you do not want to make these communities all about selling in the minds of your audience. They need to believe and know that they can come to the community you build and get information without being bombarded and harassed or threatened with losing something if they don’t act right now to spend money.

 

Yes, you do want them to buy from you, but overselling and over-promoting do not work as well as you might think. Selling and promoting your products and services need to answer a problem the customer has suggested and not the only reason you have the group.

 

Ignoring Community Members

 

Setting up a community requires that someone keeps everyone engaged. You need a minimum of one post a day, plus several interactions to keep your group busy and in front of the audience. The more you post and the more interaction you have with the community members, the more they’ll come back to do it again. The more members visit your community, the more likely they will buy your products and use your services.

 

Sharing Irrelevant or Repeated Content

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While it is okay to repeat some posts when a timeline is attached, try to avoid sharing other people’s repeated and irrelevant stuff in your group. They already saw that cat post you saw somewhere else. Try to be much more original. If you want to share that cat post, try to find some connection they may not have considered when they saw it on their own wall earlier to make it relevant to your group.

 

Tracking the Wrong KPIs

 

It’s easy to track likes and shares, but are they really relevant to what you need to know about your group? The group key performance indicators that you want to track need to focus on why you shared the content in the first place. The reason you share anything is tied up in the impact you want to create. So, if you share a particular post about an event you’re going to speak at, and you want them to purchase tickets, the KPI you want to track is how many tickets were bought when you shared your event? How many shares and likes the post generated is mostly irrelevant if no one signed up.

 

Not Setting Proper Community Rules and Guidelines

 

If you really want to have a solid group that you can rely on for years to come, you must set very clear community rules and guidelines and then stick to them yourself. Of course, you don’t need to have a lot of rules, but having something that the members can look to in order to stay on the group’s topic will help.

 

Be sure to keep this list around to avoid these common mistakes as much as possible. Avoid stunting your growth and results by building the wrong community or steering them in the wrong direction. A community needs to thrive with clear goals, rules, focus, and determination with valuable and relevant content.

 

 

 

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Three Steps to Building a Highly Engaged Brand Community

Communities work because they are engaged. Engaged people feel connected and form relationships that keep them around long term. Thus, allowing you to grow a healthy and sustainable business. In addition, through these communities, you can inspire your members to take action that benefits your business and them.

 

Follow these three steps to build a highly engaged and active brand community:

 

Step One: Define Your Business Values and Align Them with Your Customer Needs

 

Your customers’ needs come first, but you need to understand what your business values are. When you can share what you stand for and show that it aligns with your customer’s needs, you’ll really stand out in a big way. For example, if your business holds the value of a commitment to the customer, that needs to be very clear in every interaction you have.

 

Step Two: Choose the Right Platform and Community Structure

 

Lots of activity on every platform is not required to succeed. However, it is important to start an account if your customers are there. Social media platforms come and go, so even if you focus on one more than others right now because that is where your customers are, that doesn’t mean that will be the same one you’re focused on later.

 

The right platform to use to build your community is the one your customers will use. That may seem like a cop-out to say, but it’s true. The platform you choose needs to be the platform your customers like, even if you don’t like it. For a lot of businesses right now, that means Facebook Groups.

 

Step Three: Share and Engage with Relevant Content

 

More important than anything is not the platform as much as what you share with them on the platform. Provide interesting information, education, and offers for them to take advantage of throughout the year. Try to offer something new to them every single day if you can.

 

Content is where engagement and interaction breed and continue. Without content, you won’t be able to inspire and influence your audience to act. Without action from your target audience, you won’t find success within your community. An active and engaged community leads to success because they share the valuable information they appreciate with others or make direct purchases. The way to grow their trust and find value from you is through the content you share.

 

Following these steps will ensure you set up the right community for your business and target audience. These steps are essential to review and not overlook if you want to build a thriving, inspired, and engaged community. Knowing what your brand stands for, and using the platform your audience prefers, while keeping them active with relevant and actionable content will make your community exceptional.

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How Brand Communities Provide Endless Value to Business

While all brand communities should be working hard to provide value to their audience, it is important to look into all the benefits they give back to see why the challenging work is worth the effort. Communities take time and hard work through unique content and creativity that inspires your members to grow with you and others outside the group.

 

Here are four vital ways communities provide endless value to your business:

 

Communities Make You Stand Out Against the Competition

 

When you host a vibrant community that makes the audience feel heard, you will stand out from your competitors in a big way. Of course, not everyone builds a community the same way, so what works for your members may not work for someone else. However, how you run the community will make people stick to you.

 

If your audience needs answers fast and they get them from you quickly through the group, they will return repeatedly and skip going to the other person. Most people just want solutions as quickly as possible.

 

Communities Are a Source of Vital Quality Content and Education

 

Not only will you educate your community using content, but you will also get content ideas from your members. Audiences like to discuss issues within smaller communities, and you can be like a fly on the wall watching the discussion. The questions and the conversation can open you to many more content ideas than never being part of a community.

 

Every question, review, criticism, and discussion within your community is a fabulous source of vital information that you can use to create quality content and educational materials.

 

Communities Provide Customer Support and Guidance

 

If you have a community, be ready for most people to come to that group first for customer care. Then, of course, you can redirect them to your customer care system, but it can also be really helpful for you to service them right in the group. When people see how valuable you are, it helps them feel safe.

 

The really neat thing about allowing for customer care to happen inside your groups is that your loyal customers who receive this care will also start doing it for you when you’re not around, free of charge.

 

Communities Supply Customer Input and Direction

 

When you really get your community hopping with daily information, discussion, and interaction, you’ll end up with a never-ending supply of input that you can use for more products and services. Plus, you can use the information to better direct your customers toward the products and services they need.

 

Communities provide a space for your customers to learn about your offers, get educated about the topic, and also review your products and services, so you know where to improve or what to create next to show your target audience how much you value them as you provide the solutions they need.

 

 

 

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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.

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  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.

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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.

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