Many businesses have built a digital fan and follower base over the years; they also have loyal customers and contacts who repeatedly return and/or endorse them. But the question often arises about what, as a business, you can do to improve the connection and engagement of this base and community.

For example, how can you show that you value their opinions and loyalty? And how do you continue to build a community around your business beyond this current group?

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Establishing a Win:Win community for your business

For the business, a community offers many opportunities, for example:

• A loyal band of advocates who helpfully bring referrals and deliver positive social proof that influences potential customers’ decision-making.
• A pool of critical friends keen to help you evolve well and improve your approach and offering.
• A forum for insight on market trends and experiences to guide your business plans and decision-making.
• A means for progressing current customers into a more involved and loyal relationship with your business.
  The ability to foster brand loyalty and remain visible

It’s not always easy to identify opportunities for potential community members. This is where businesses can struggle to create a community that remains well-supported and active. Community members must enjoy being part of the group – virtually or face-to-face.

If they feel they gain something valuable or worthwhile from the experience, they’ll return time and again. That worthwhile experience can bring them these benefits:

• Forging new business or personal contacts
• Gaining insight to be more effective in their work or personal lives
• Being alerted to new developments, sneak peeks of product or service innovations or improvements
• Having a part to play in developing something with others
• Getting help or support with something
• Enjoying the interactions with fellow community members

What worthwhile experience resonates with your potential community members greatly depends on them. You can find clues in the content of social media interactions you receive, customer/contact comments and doing research as part of your planning.

Creating a community – early considerations

Like any business activity it’s essential to be clear about why you’re doing this, as it requires effort, time, and investment. Clarity also ensures you’ve got a greater chance of your efforts achieving what you want – as you’ll be more focused on how you set up and develop the community.

So, decide a) what you want to achieve as a business with this group and b) what you want your community members to get out of it. Why should they invest their time here? Once you’ve answered these questions, you should also ensure you have the resources to execute this.

Identifying your community audience

It’s helpful to start small and get the basics of the community right before you push for a big membership drive. Begin by visualising the types of members you’d love to be involved in your community – start with who you know.

In doing so, consider specific customer contacts, passionate followers and supporters on your social media channels, contacts and referrers who put in a good word for you and endorse you.

In particular:

• What engages their interest in you? What do you communicate or do that they like?
• What do they vocalise in their support of your business? What do they say? And how do they say it?
• What themes emerge in their support of you? Is it Product quality, customer service, or other qualities?
• Why do they do this? What value do they gain from supporting you (how does it interest, help or make them look good?)

The answers to these will guide you on who to invite to be part of the community and what you need to be doing with the community to encourage involvement. They’ll also start to form a picture of your ideal community member profile and their characteristics.

Defining the Community’s spirit

A community is likely to survive if there is clarity of purpose, synergy of spirit and support for its values among the group.

Don’t shy away from articulating these right from the start. It also helps if the purpose is simple (not numerous). For example, you see communities focused purely on innovation/ideas creation, self-help or networking. The focus helps to develop the spirit of the community.

Some communities outline basic rules for involvement to members, while others articulate their values. As the lead initiator of the community, your business will set the tone. It’s worth carefully thinking about the spirit you want the community to embody.

Finding the best environment for your community

When you mention ‘community’ most people think of digital groups on social media (LinkedIn and Facebook predominantly) and online forums. However, there are others – such as business clubs and customer panels.

The environment for your community’s interactions doesn’t have to be exclusively online. It could be better suited to face-to-face events, such as mini-conferences, regular networking sessions, lunches or other soirees, sneak peek receptions, hangouts, and roadshows.

This may help you appeal more to community members’ interests and create valuable moments that are worthwhile investments in their time.

LinkedIn vs Facebook B2B community groups

In the last few years, many LinkedIn groups have become dormant (92% have no recent activity). In contrast, Facebook has seen continued use (and growth) of Facebook Groups, particularly among the B2B community. It’s worth considering that Facebook’s demographic is still quite broad, with only the younger audience in lower numbers (18-24).

While groups initially take time and effort to get going, they can provide an easy platform for hosting virtual meetups, talks, roundtable discussions, etc., with their group members. The analytics available also offer insights into how active the group is and whether it has led to more referrals, higher website visits, more newsletter signups, etc. All useful metrics to analyse.

If your target audience’s profile echoes the Facebook demographic, Facebook Groups are worth considering.

6 tips for managing your business community

Many businesses need help with this facet. How do you manage your community without losing control or creating something at odds with your original goals and plans? Here are some pointers to help:

1. What’s your role?

It’s sensible to aim for a position where you’re a facilitator not a director (and certainly not a censor) of the community.

Building it from a small base and giving thought to the people you want to be involved with at the beginning will help you get the right people to drive the community’s tone, values, energy and passion going forward. By all means, communicate principles for the group (rather than rules), so an etiquette or understanding is established.

2. Nourishing your community

It also helps to be prepared to have a backbone of ideas, themes, and added-value things to filter through to the community over time. At other times, be ready to go with what they want to discuss and generate. If you dictate and orchestrate the group too much, you may find people disengaged or, worse still, initiating a backlash.

3. Listening and responding

You must also listen, be responsive, and be timely with that response. Consider allocating a dedicated team member to represent the business so there’s a definite face/name in community discussions rather than an anonymous corporate voice. Also, draw in other specialists from your organisation (R&D, customer service, marketing, etc.) for specific interactions or topics that add value to the discussion.

As your community evolves, you’ll be able to see when members want a response from the business and when they want to discuss something amongst themselves.

At times like these, if you pounce too quickly and frequently, it can kill the discussion. The trick is to understand when to come in, but this comes with time and knowledge of your community’s personalities.

4. Having the right tone of voice

When you offer insight and comment, your tone should always be positive to encourage further engagement and demonstrate gratitude for any insights shared. Defensiveness and negativity will only prompt people to disengage.

5. Growing your community

When you’ve got the basics in place and are happy with how the community’s developing, you can market it to those who echo the ideal community member profile.

Talk with your existing community members and encourage them to invite people to join who they think would also value the involvement and who the community would value. Get a small community working well before growing it – you’ll encounter fewer problems later.

6. Measure the effort and investment

A community will take time to build, but that shouldn’t stop you from measuring its impact on your business. If you have established goals right from the outset you should focus on measuring the progress in achieving those.

For example, you may track upselling instances amongst the group, improved customer loyalty, increased referrals and recommendations, and valuable customer insights/feedback.

You should also find ways to check that community members continue to value their involvement. You can monitor members’ engagement levels and periodically ask them how they view the group and their suggestions for improvement.

Summary

Relationships between a business and its community members perform best when the business sees the group as a critical friend rather than an audience to be sold to. A spirit of mutual respect, genuine interest and trust produces a valuable experience for both.

Building and maintaining a strong community where everyone values their involvement requires consistent effort and resources over time. Therefore, the decision to build a community should not be taken lightly.

To do it well for a sustained period will require ongoing commitment and resources. Get it right, though, and it can become an invaluable asset to your business and its reputation in today’s highly competitive markets.