5 Ways To Build a Community Around your Business

[ad#468x60]Lately we have been diving quite deep into Social Media marketing here on MarketingHackz. One of the reason we have been covering this more is because it is a sector that just shouldn’t go unnoticed. Although traditional marketing is never going to go out of scene and it shouldn’t, we certainly cannot ignore the emerging marketing platforms.

When talking about emerging marketing platforms or techniques Social Media obviously is one of the most talked about and recently utilized form of marketing. Without social media marketing on the web is almost useless. of course search engine marketing is critical but search engine marketing combined with a good social media marketing campaign can be huge.

The key to social media marketing isn’t about spending thousands of ad dollars. It is simply about building a community around your business and making people aware of the brand that you belong to. Lets talk a few ways as to how we can build a community around business :

1. Humanization : This is one of the things that I can’t stress the importance. i have talked about humanization of business on one my previous post. This is a critical element to any social media campaign and might as well call it a soul to building a community online that revolves around your business. HUmanization is simply individual participation within the community to make potential customers aware that you are not just a business but an individual like everyone else. Share personal life, links, ideas and thoughts and get out there.
2. Time : Who said building a community around your business is easy? It’s not. Although time after time we hear people talk about how easy it is to manipulate social media, its not the fact. Social media and community building is labor intensive. Its not the amount of money you put in but amount of time that matters. If you want to build a community around your product the key is to become an active participant and showing that you actually want to become a part of the community. Being part of the broader community will help you build a community of your own as time passes by. its not the money, its the time.
3. Value : Whether you use Twitter, Facebook or any other social media/networking platform, the rule is to avoid the norm. While building a community and being an active participant you do want to show people your personal side but not always. As they say on twitter, ” The first rule of twitter is never answer what you are doing?” This might not hold true in every case but it does have some weight. If you are planning to build a community or become an active user within a community, you do need to provide value to other users. When people join a forum they don’t simply join for the sake of joining. Some might join a mobile forum to learn from others and some might join to let others know what can be done with their mobile devices. Its a two way deal. Provide value to the broader community. Provide value and help others succeed and remember value is rewarded by value. As you build your community, your community will be the voice of your company.
4. Buzz Factor : Do not ever underestimate the power of buzz. Although “buzz” is thought by most as a spike and nothing else, its not true. A carefully planned buzz marketing approach on social media can go a long way. While you are still trying to capture users from the broader community to revolve around your’s do not forget to try out some buzz marketing tactics. They do not have to be for promoting your own products. It can be anything. A picture you took, a video you made, an article you wrote. Give people something to talk about you and they will embrace you and this will certainly help the growth of the community.
5. The Power of Community : Do not ever estimate the power of community. Your main goal while building a community is to enter into a broader community and be able to generate interest from community members. This is one of the best and easiest way to build a community. You can either start out from scratch or join a broader community and slowly build a community within the broader community. However, no matter how small, remember the power of community. Negative publicity flies faster than positive publicity. Everything you do within a community and everything you say within a community is being watched and read and probably applied. Be careful what you say and what you do. Slightest mistake can cause your brand to lose recognition among community members and with that building a community gets much harder.

Hope you enjoyed these pointers. If you have any suggestions please feel free to suggest us through your comments. By the way, blogs are the best way to build an active community and if you have a blog with an active community let us know and drop us a link. We might be able to feature some of you on our next post while we talk more about it.[ad#336x280]