Is community based marketing a new thing?

As a social media manager, I love creating content, but what I love even more is having an engaged social platform. I love when I create an engaging post and see customers react, and share their thoughts, ideas and even form genuine connections. This engagement helps to create a sense of community around your brand presence. This is often called community marketing, and is a powerful long-term strategy to grow mentions, customer loyalty and referrals.

One thing I’ve noticed is that a business with a great community engagement does substantially better than one without in the long run. Why is that you may ask? Having an engaged community is more likely to build a great relationship with both existing and potential clients. The more engagement you have on your posts, shows that people find your content useful, relevant and valuable. Community marketing connects customers in a more authentic way, and creates great trust easily and faster than traditional marketing.

To truly engage with your audience, allows them to feel like they're talking to a human. Creating more meaningful conversations and topics helps you understand your audience better, connected and cared for. With so much noise and content from other competitors, your attention and appreciation is your most valuable resource.

We can see more and more businesses taking the form of this in smaller communities such as affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, podcasts, or even social media groups. So what steps can we take to promote a community-led environment? As a small or large business owner, this can take the form of sharing relatable aspects of your business or your brand. It’s proven that audiences are more easily connected to people who showcase their lifestyle or a face behind the brand, and even the challenges of it all of it. This is not to say you must share everything on your platform. There certainly must be a balance, which I will share in another blog post! However, for now trying adding a little personality to your brand.

This can be done in the form of stories, reels, polls, asking people to relate to challenges, asking or answering questions, sharing information or viewpoints or participating in an event or activity of some sort. creating this kind of content, you allow room for others to feel invited, express their opinions or concerns, connect with others, and stand out from other competitors. Communities aren’t essentially a new thing, however they are finding their way back as brands and companies are heading into the virtual space. This is definitely a trend to embrace, as the benefits are not just instant, but long standing in years to come.