A guest post by Prashant Pujara. 

Nowadays, being a part of a Community is such a great thing. In these online communities many people come together who prefer similar interests and hence they can share their overall experiences and support each other in an effective way.

The communities of online user are a powerful force and many companies are the part of these extraordinary communities. Many companies have active communities which focus on the products with credibility of high Brand; they also offer corporate integrity and even gives customer loyalty where they have deeper bond.

In current years, these communities are blooming and companies establish and develop the communities with their own credibility. The ever-encouraging online community inspires the companies to put these communities in the marketing wish list. Therefore, if you nurture an online brand community then you will get a great return.

What do you mean by brand community?

This is a platform which brings brand-engaged followers together and provides the chance to interact with the brand and each other. This community will also follow the company on social media profiles. They engage with the company, share the content, leave valuable feedback and even recommend to the friends and families for extended help.

Once like-minded people are together, they share their experiences about the brand and other related topics. The community is already on social media where all engaging happens. A strong community will benefit if people get the best platform for engagement, collaboration and discussion.

Brands also have to show their human side to stay successful. A Brand Community needs to ensure its customers will be heard and their words have value. The main focus of the brand is go obtain success through its fans and followers.

The reason for you to establish the brand community

The brand community is an excellent business tool as it will promote and encourage the advocacy of the brand. Your brand community should create a strategy where all your followers have a voice.

Use this platform to test new features of the brand. Followers can collect the product and provide feedback. By finding out what exactly customers want allows you to you tweak the product to improve it. Therefore, take advantage of all kinds of customer centric decisions and even benefit from advertising via word-of-mouth.

How online community helps in growing your brand?

It helps with the creation of brand awareness and word-of-mouth advertising.  People show four times more interest in making a purchase if they are referred from friends and families.

The online brand community helps you to gather many ideas from your customers’ perspective. Use their discussions, feedback and questions to improve your brand. Online communities help you to understand customers and fulfil the need for change.

It increases brand loyalty which keep customers engaging. It becomes a platform where customers engage with critical perspective through meetings and events.

Use your community to create conversions by developing trust through meaningful engagement with secondary and primary stakeholders. Encouraging conversation encourages members to interact with each other and share knowledge and experiences.

The community manager needs to make all participants feel they can freely share their opinions by asking for them, or starting a topic which people can relate to. Focus on setting the tone by leading by example. This will bring a new change to your thinking and improve the brand.

Ways to build online community to help your brand

1. A group of passionate customers

In an online community, people with similar interests and like-mindedness easily engage with each other. If there is no interest in your brand, then your online community will not survive. You need to find your brand appeal.

You can create an online community even with a few hundred people if you gain the right vibe from your existing mailing list. Just interact with your customers by asking them to join your online community. It doesn’t matter how big the company is or how successful it is. It depends on how much customers show love and passion towards the products.

2. Giving up control

Create and online community to get true recognition from its users. Customer to customer discussions sometimes go haywire, but discouraging an open discussion inside a community can easily kill it. If the contribution isn’t spam, then it should not be deleted.

Do not modify any kind of negative feedback. Treat this feedback as a reality check for the company to encourage them to perform better. If you do not have to answer all the questions, as communities help you find the answer you are looking for.

3. Rich experiencing community

Communities play an important role in getting the best customer retention online. They are forums which can provide online product support, which is vital for a good customer service.

An energetic community allows customers to provide their insights about the products. Customers have a resource base knowledge of the brand. Therefore, what they offer could improve things and offer a much better service.

4. Ready for infrastructure investment

Managing an online community doesn’t happen on its own. It needs a proper team with the right software. Companies need to manage the community to grow it from just a few members to a larger group.

Therefore you need to invest in a customised solution. You will need someone to look after the community’s wellbeing. The community must flourish positively to encourage customers to use it correctly. Sure, no company has a right to interfere, as this is a place for customer-to-customer interaction, but it does make any sense to monitor it from time to time.

5. Do not just believe in measurement

Being online is where everyone wants to track, keep records and check the dashboard to know which activity is trending. However, it is difficult to measure the ROI of an online community.

Having an alive and strong community should be your main achievement. With the increasing number of posts the company needs to understand the proper metric of community value. There is no specific measurement process of an online community, but maintaining engagement, advocacy and word of mouth should be you main priority.

What about your brand community?

Check and understand these five ways to see how you can build an online brand community. Having a reliable community is an overall gain for your company. It showers the best result you can achieve to deliver the best service to your customers.

Using these metrics to focus on your brand’s growth. Use social media as well to develop an online community and see the growth of your business in a true sense as it helps you with wider vision for the future.

About the author

Prashant Pujara is the founder and CEO of MultiQoS Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a top mobile app development company where you can hire full stack developer india for your business. He is in charge of the company’s commercial and delivery operations and strategic planning and strategy.

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