Tag: Barbara Genest

Posted on

How Community Member-To-Member Engagement Grows Your Business

Building a community is today considered one of the biggest industry secrets to growing your business. There is good reason this is true too, the fact is, communities foster the power of word-of-mouth marketing through member-to-member engagement and turn influence into dollars.

Why a Brand Community is the Business Strategy You Need

Community building is a crucial strategy that promotes trust, increases your credibility with your member size, and boosts revenue exponentially. Without word-of-mouth marketing or community involvement, many people won’t make a purchase or contribute to the success of your business because most people often rely on positive reviews or social proof before they feel confident purchasing or getting involved.

 

The following are four powerful ways member-to-member engagement within your community grows your business:

 

Customer Loyalty

 

A loyal customer is worth more than ten new salespeople because they will shout about how great you are from the rooftops without you ever paying them a dime. Just the fact that you delivered the right product or service in the right way at the right time to them in a way that met or exceeded their expectations is enough for them to keep buying and tell everyone they know about you. Likewise, inviting your customers to your groups and community will encourage satisfaction and increase loyalty because they feel heard.

 

Customer Retention

 

Keeping delighted customers is far less expensive than finding new customers. Even if you only have one product today, understand that having long-term customers hungry for every product or service you offer is your key to sustainability and success. A community helps you do this because people enjoy feeling like part of something important, and active communities serve that purpose.

 

Brand Advocacy and Word-of-Mouth Marketing

 

Thrilled customers become brand advocates without you even asking them to. With a vibrant community, you can actually develop your loyal customers to become brand advocates by asking them directly to tell others about you and rewarding them for doing so.

 

Enhanced Customer Service and Experience

 

Most people hate calling anyone on the phone to deal with a problem, so don’t worry, you don’t have to do that, but having a community will make your customers feel safe because they will feel as if they know right where to find you at all times of day or night even if you’re sleeping. It feels like a direct connection, and for the customer, that feels good because, face it, big business makes everyone feel unheard and unimportant.

 

As you can see, member-to-member engagement or getting your community members involved with each other positively is a powerful tool that can grow your business beyond your own capabilities. Not only is it powerful, but it is relatively affordable and simple to do with the right content and contributions from you or your brand community team.

 

 

 

Posted on

Three Ways Online Communities Improve your Products and Services

One major benefit of online communities to the owner and business is that all the members’ information is available when engaging with others in the group or the content you publish. This information will help you re-work and improve your products and services to keep them interested and buying more.

 

When you think about this fact, it means that communities are just as important to you as they are to the members who join. It’s simple, the more you know what your audience wants, the better you can deliver a high-quality and valuable product or service to them in the way they want it to be delivered.

 

Online communities improve your products and services in the following three ways:

 

Through Specific Feedback and Reviews

Day 3 Increasing Traffic, Subscribers & Customers To Boost Your Bottom Line

Generating various ideas and insights by asking for and receiving feedback and reviews from your community is very effective. If you make it easy for them to leave their thoughts and even reward them for doing so, you can encourage them to provide deep insight that can affect future products and services substantially.

 

You can take an especially well-written and delightful review and turn it into a blog post, place it on your website sales page, or even turn it into a case study to help encourage more people to buy that product or service.

 

Through Commonly Asked Questions and Frustrations

 

Being a part of your community gives your audience a chance to ask questions and even express frustrations. You can do this by using simple Google Forms if you want to or using your own website and another form creator. Just provide the link to the group members and tell them how to submit their questions or frustrations to you.

 

When you do get the questions in, or the frustrations are expressed, use that information to help each person directly but also use it to design a current blog post with information that solves these problems or directs them as to where they can find a solution if it’s not through your products or services.

 

Through Education and Member-To-Member Interaction

 

Each time you provide content that educates your members, always participate in discussing the information you provided. Encourage the member-to-member interaction and discussion by calling out particular experts or members who have already been educated in that regard. And remember, all of the discussions and user-generated content on your membership site, community boards, or groups are yours to use as you will as long as you set up permissions when they joined.

 

As you grow your community, please take advantage of these options to see how your members feel about your current products or what they are searching for to help solve their problems. These options provide you with more information that can be used to generate even more content. It also gets them engaged and makes them feel like they are valuable and a part of something important.

 

 

 

Posted on

Community Engagement is Key to Growing Your Business

To have a sustainable and profitable business, you must have involved or engaged customers, new or old. An active community includes tools and resources that help you attract new customers and retain old ones to keep your business running and profitable. Conversely, a not engaged community will fail to establish the positive reputation and brand awareness you need to grow your business.

 

The following are the four common ways community engagement help grow your business:

 

Promotes Long-Term Relationships and Trust

 

A community keeps the discussions and the former promotions inside it forever. A new customer can pop in today and see old conversations you were part of and begin building an opinion of you and the group from day one. As time moves forward, if you’re consistent as the relationship builds and grows, so will the trust.

 

Trust is not something people have for anyone without some form of proof. Usually, the evidence comes in the form of time. Over time, if nothing bad happens, the customer will develop trust for you and your brand. If something good happens, that trust will be solidified and become even stronger.

 

Improves the Customer Service Experience

 

Customers all have various needs and ideas about what they want in terms of interaction with brands. Your audience will have their own unique way. But stats tell us that most people today like to be involved in the community with the brands and products they use. People simply like feeling heard and seen. They want to feel important to you and like you care about their needs. It’s so much easier to demonstrate this over time within the bounds of a branded community.

 

Creates More Human and Authentic Interactions

 

While you will want to implement some automation because you do have to sleep, a community offers you a way to have authentic human interactions, even if they’re not always in real-time. For example, your customer might post a message at 3 am your time asking a question about your product.

 

You don’t see the question until you normally check your community, but your members will. The older members of a long-standing group will often help the person for you without your ever asking, but what’s more, you can respond on your own time within 24 to 48 hours of the question being asked, and to the customer, it will feel instant. The main reason is that most businesses underserve their communities so that you will stand out in comparison.

 

To Build a Customer-Centric Brand

 

Your brand, while it is your business, really isn’t about you. Your brand is about your customer. A branded community can help you become much more customer-centric in your offers and even help you improve your branding. After all, most of us choose colors and ideas based on what we like without even thinking that it’s not about us when it comes to our business. Now you can ask your community, and over time your brand will begin to feel even more authentic and trustworthy to your audience.

 

Ultimately, to increase your customer size, effectively promote more products and services, and cultivate more trust within your industry, you need to get your community engaged. Engagement is an effective tool if you want your community to grow your business.

 

 

 

Posted on

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.

 

 

 

Posted on

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

7 Easy Steps to Start an Online Business

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.

 

 

 

Posted on

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.

How to Repurpose Your Influencer Marketing Content

 

 

Posted on

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.

 

 

 

Posted on

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.

 

 

 

Posted on

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

 

 

Posted on

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.