no community is an island
Post on 12-Jul-2015
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No community is an island(unless it’s an island community)
Why create a community?With community heralded as the answer to building
the deeper and more sustained engagement the
benefits certainly stack up nicely on paper. Active
communities bring finger-on-the-pulse insight into
the needs, mood, and sentiment of your audience.
They can be a source of new ideas for product and
service development, as well as provide instant
validation to those offered up by the brand itself.
Some are making communities work as a source of
leads and referral and many see them as a way of
improving customer service efficiency and support
through self-service. They certainly give the means
to communicate and amplify messaging without
reliance on third party media. Happy days.
There is a lot of really positive community activity
happening, but in equal measure there are many,
all too visible, casualties of those that just haven’t
got it. So the question is, are these benefits being
realised? Is there any best practice to apply?
Best practice?Two strands of community marketing have evolved:
• Getting involved in the existing organic
communities created and hosted by
their members.
• The planned creation of dedicated brand-led
communities, hosted by the brand, essentially
for the brand.
The first is about mapping what conversations are
going on and understanding when the brand has
permission to be involved. On the one hand this
might just be individuals joining in as active and
valued participants of the community, not passive
watchers, or worse still hijackers. This cannot be
campaigned, neither can you develop a strategy
for it: you need to develop a behavioural framework
for the brand and its people. On the other it might
be feeding these conversations with relevant,
compelling content that supports the reason for the
community to exist.
This isn’t just advertising by other means; it is about
developing an ongoing editorial framework and
content roadmap.
Developing a dedicated branded community requires
a more structured approach. You need to be clear who
the members of the community should be. What do
they get out of it, and what do you expect them to do
in return? Then you can start worrying about where
the community exists, and how its members interact.
This isn’t as simple as just adopting one of the many
community platforms that have sprung up and giving
one person the job of managing the community.
No community is an islandThe key learning is that no community stands alone.
They are all connected as are the people within
them. A community cannot be manufactured, but
you can create the environment (platform+content)
for a community to flourish. But this environment
should not be seen as an end in itself.
The community should be seen as the end result
of a structured framework for thinking about the
market, a set of behaviours that define the brand’s
actions and those of its representatives. Certainly
those that see community not as a bolt-on,
standalone business activity but an integral part of
business as usual are enjoying the spoils.
And ROI?There are many examples where specific objectives
and returns from community activity can be cited.
As ever, what is really needed is a clear metric
and method for assessing the total value a brand
creates through its community. The notion of ‘social
currency’ is starting to make some in roads here and
is an area to watch closely.
Jeremy Baldwin Business Development Director
Agree/Disagree? Let Jeremy know: jeremy.baldwin@brightblueday.co.uk
To find out more please call 01202 669090 or visit brightblueday.co.uk
It is easy to see why the concept of branded communities is so attractive to marketers. It provides a nice, neat response to the new communications landscape brought about by the social web, where consumers are now fans, customers have become followers and both have become active contributors.
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