In today's economy, more companies are taking an interest in building an online community for their brand. The interest signifies that there’s a value from having a community for your brand whether it be online or offline.
Community Management is often thought of as social media management. However, it goes beyond that since it's also about building relationships that are valuable and vital to the long-term success and strength of your brand.
When done right, community management can prove valuable not only to your business but to your customers and employees as well. So, what’s community management and why does it matter for your company?
Jump to:
What Is Community Management?
Community management is about creating a network where people can connect and feel connected to the brand or company they do business with. The community you create within your organization should cater to the internal and external audiences of your company.
Your internal audience is your fans, followers, and customers. Creating a community for customers and potential customers makes them feel connected to your brand and feel valued by it. Your external audiences are the company’s team members, employees, partners, and vendors.
Brand communities are the people who expect from your brand. You want them to feel valued and connected to the company brand. Investing in community management means that your company is creating a space where these people can connect and share, which helps your brand to grow.
Types Of Community Management
The different types of community management can be explained using the SPACE model. Each type can be used by your company as a strategy for building and maintaining your brand community.
S: Support and Success
The success of any business rests with customers. Without them, your business can’t exist. Therefore, investing in community management can go a long way in showing your customers that they are valued. You may wonder how does a community does that? Well, a community can support customers, a space to communicate with each other and your brand.
In communities, people can share tips, issues, and tricks relating to your product. They can communicate with your team as to what isn’t working and needs to be improved. It can also be a space where members of your team get ideas to improve your product.
Examples of such spaces are forums, community websites, and FAQ pages. People can interact in the comments section of your social media pages. It’ll also save your team time from having to answer the same questions over and over again.
P: Product Ideation, Innovation, and Feedback
This type of strategy can be beneficial in improving and making your brand stronger. Building a community can provide a platform where members can give feedback and share ideas about how you can innovate and improve your product or service.
The feedback you get back from members can help in improving your product or services. It’s also a great way to connect the customer to your brand and involve them in the process of developing your product or services.
A: Acquisition and Advocacy
Oftentimes, companies will deploy a good marketing strategy to push their product and try to connect with their customers. However, the disconnect can happen and this can be bridged by a network of advocates and ambassadors. These people can help you connect your brand with your customers.
In today’s society, people are likely to buy a product if advertised by trusted ambassadors and advocates. They can help build awareness and increase sales for your product. Therefore, building a community for your company can create a network of advocates for your product and can even increase the number of referrals.
C: Content and Programming
Content and programming are other types of community management that you want to look into if you want to add value to your brand. This involves creating content for your members. It includes user-generated content, crowdfunding, and the marketplace. However, your brand can go beyond that and build a community where people within the community can contribute to the content that'll be valuable to your product.
According to stackla.com, 60% of consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by content generated by family and friends. Creating a community allows the members to generate content and this helps empower your members and allows them to contribute to your business value. However, with this approach, you should have people monitoring your community to ensure people are posting appropriate content.
E: External and Internal Engagement
External engagement is about building relationships with your customers and employees in a space outside your business. The community will help your team raise awareness and maintain relationships with your customers on a more personal level.
Internal engagement is more of how you build a strong community where your employees connect with your brand, have a sense of pride and belonging, and help improve productivity. You want your employees, suppliers, and partners to feel that they are valued by your brand and can freely contribute ideas to the end product of the company. It’s a vital step in creating a healthy workplace.
Why Does Community Management Matter For Your Company?
Your ultimate goals are to build a strong brand and increase customer acquisition and retention and that’s how community management will help your company. It’ll also help your business connect with your members and feel a sense of belongingness.
Additionally, it’ll provide a platform where ideas and information are shared freely. The feedback can be then used as contributions to the end product of the company. It can help build your brand and awareness of it beyond social media or any online platform. It’ll further provide your brand with a space to network and partner with other brands and engage with a larger audience.
Community management is about the growth of your community and business, engaging your customers, listening to the feedback they give you, and improving your brand to stay ahead of your competition.
Conclusion
If you want a grow a strong brand you need a strong community that feels they’re connected and can develop relationships with other community members. Building, growing, and managing your community will be time-consuming as it grows. Therefore, you should have a community manager and team that will be responsible for sustaining and managing the community.
Your community management team should understand that you’re building a community both in the online and offline world. Therefore, they should be well-versed in the strategy of maintaining your brand community. They should have a set of strategies for the type of community management they choose to utilize.
