When you own a business or work in digital marketing, you often obsess over the numbers. How many followers you have, what your engagement rate is, the list goes on. However, no amount of organic traffic or paid media will do as much for your brand as a single happy and loyal customer.
Even more powerful than one loyal customer is an entire supportive, engaged community. So what are some steps you can take to begin building this loyal community around your brand? Read on for our top tips.
1. Make It Easy For People To Communicate With You
Communication is the core of building a community, with studies showing that 57% of consumers will stay loyal to a brand if there was more human communication. Which means you need to make it really easy for your followers to talk to you. Your followers want the easiest method of communication for them. Here are some ideas for you to implement:
Facebook Messenger — Utilise Facebook Click-to-Messenger ads. Each time a user clicks your ad, a chat box will appear that invites them to chat with you on Messenger.
Launch a Facebook Group — This is a great place to have your community in one place so that you can reach out to your entire community directly. Make sure to engage with your community by responding to their comments and creating a positive atmosphere that people feel comfortable in.
Utilize Instagram Stories — Whether you pop on to show your face and chat with your community, or you utilize the question feature to ask and answer questions your community has; this is a great place to build your community.
2. Provide Value
Approach social media with a people-first, brand second approach. If you’re constantly bombarding your community with product only posts, your community will tire of this quickly. Be sure to ask what they want to see from your brand, what their pain points are, and how you can support them. A blog is a great place to dive into deeper questions that your community has about your brand. It’s all about finding the balance between creating content for social media that promotes your brand and creating content that actually helps your community members.
3. Give Back
The more you give, the more you’ll get back. Your community members are much more likely to engage and stick around if they are getting something back from you. Here are some ideas of how you can give back:
Run Giveaways — Social media makes it easier than ever for a brand to run its own giveaway contest. Such a contest boosts engagement among your community, raises awareness of your brand, and it can also convert leads.
Coupons — Highlights your top contributors and give them a prize. It can be a discount on your product or service or anything that’s of value to them. Reward loyal customers will not go unnoticed by your community.
4. Keep It Consistent
Just like any other marketing strategy, consistency is key. If you begin engaging your online community members and then suddenly stop responding to them or sharing content, it will hurt your brand more than it helps.
Remember: The more your brand is consistently presented out in the marketplace, the easier it will bring in new customers, and continue to leverage all the hard work you’ve already done.
This is why it’s important to manage content schedules and ensure your community is always at the top of your priority list.
In Conclusion
Hopefully, you can begin to implement the tips in this blog and begin to grow your online community! Learn to love your community, give to them, involve them and excite them, and they will give you back a thousand times in return.
And, as you go along, don’t forget to keep monitoring your social media presence, and join the GDC community on our social media @goodcommerceagency for more tips!