The Importance of Creating a Community
A valuable way to grow your audience, and your customer base, is to build a community. This could be accomplished in a few ways. You you leverage your existing social media accounts, have a blog on your website, or host in-person events within your community. The goal is to get your customers not only interacting with you and your brand, but with each other. You want to have your business be the source of conversation within your niche.
What is a niche? A niche is a smaller segment of a larger market that has its own unique needs, preferences, or identity that makes it different from the overall larger market.
Engagement is different for small businesses. When you’re a smaller, possibly less known, business, you may be met with skepticism from potential customers because you’re unknown. They may be have concerns about the quality of the product, getting their orders timely, or that customer service won’t be up to par. You’re competing with other businesses and larger companies which have established trust. A way for small businesses to build that trust is to focus on building the community. Small businesses are unique in that they can bring the “human element” to social media posts in a way that feels inauthentic when larger businesses do it. We see that a lot with brands on Twitter. Small businesses can show their process, ask questions, and post content their audiences are interested in seeing and build that trust with them.
Hosting an in-person event within your community where you show your process, or let customers make their own, is a great way to have direct interaction with your audience
Creating a community may require you to change how you think about posting content on the pages for your business. Instead of only posting about sales, new products, and other general promotional content, ask questions of your audience, post a relevant anecdote, share some behind the scenes photos or videos, or anything which would spark conversation with your audience. You want to see your customers interacting with each other int he comments. It’s important for your to participate in these conversations as well. Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Be just as engaged as you want your customers to be. Ask follow up questions in the comments, respond to questions your audience is asking, and use their responses to help generate your next round of content.
Retail-based businesses could ask what colors, patterns, or flavors your audience would like to see you carry next. You could create a poll and ask them to choose from a few options you’re already considering. If you’re selling clothing and accessories ask if folks have styling tips for certain types of products you carry. You can even encourage them to post pictures of how they've styled your product. If you are selling goods you’ve made, whether food or handcrafts, you can show behind the scenes footage of your process or ask your audience what part of your process they’re curious about. You may also consider hosting an in-person event in your community where you do a live demo. Service-based businesses may want to consider sharing industry news or emerging technologies within their industry. This gives your audience the confidence that you’re staying up-to-date and considering how to improve your business as new solutions arise.
Adopting this strategy of creating a community will allow you to grow your audience organically, and it only costs a bit of your time to plan conversation starters and follow up with the discussion. This conversation will not only help to grow engagement with your business, but has the ability to give you meaningful insights on what resonates with your audience and where to take your business next.
Do you already have a community built around your business?
Leave a comment below telling us how you engage or share some tips you picked up along the way!
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