How Community Building Can Help Your Company: Gain A Competitive Advantage

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How Community Building Can Help Your Company: Gain A Competitive Advantage
25 Aug 2021
6 min read

Blog Post

The term "CMO" may now refer to a company's "Chief Community Officer" rather than its "Chief Marketing Officer." As more organisations realised the difference between creating a community and just gaining/buying social media followers, this new CMO position became necessary. Certain organisations have enough clout to influence a company's product design and marketing strategy. You may build your community on any platform, whether it's a public site like Facebook or a private one that needs users to sign in. #ThinkWithNiche

Few Benefits Of Community Building

1. Closely Monitor Market Trends, Customer Wants And Needs

Ask your users what they want to know! Do you want to know what others think about your products and services? How many individuals are dissatisfied and intend to leave? Everything may be tracked by monitoring and participating with your community rather than (or in addition to) subscribing to expensive churn prediction tools or sending email surveys that will not be opened. Creating communities’ boosts engagement, helps consumers feel valued, and assists you in making decisions that are important to your users.

2. Support Your Customers Beyond Emails, Live Chat, Or Phone Call

With the exception of email, live chat, and phone, all of these communication options are great. This implies that they only allow conversations between two people, not one person to a large group or a large group to a small group.

When you start hosting numerous live Q&As, webinars, or interviews on a regular basis, it's no longer just another vendor. Engage your audience by doing the following:
A response to a frequently asked question
Users' questions can be answered in real time.
Executives from the industry are interviewed.
Sharing content that is only available to subscribers.
A preview of forthcoming features
You may also turn your live recordings into on-demand webinars (on-demand webinars), YouTube videos, social media posts, and anything else that comes to mind.

3. Get A Ton Of Ideas For Your Content (Directly From Your Consumers!)

You're working on a new blog post, aren't you? Do you have a book in the works? You're in charge of a public event, aren't you? Some of you may be unsure about the title you want to use or the topics you want to discuss. As I was considering the title of my next book on community building, I posed a question to the Facebook group. "Community-Led Growth" was the title picked by my community, and despite the publisher's efforts to persuade me differently, I went with it. Not only will asking questions like these help you engage your community and test their wits, but it will also generate excitement in the minds of your viewers for the ultimate result. It's human nature for people to support what they've helped to create.

4. Get Testimonials In No Time

It's tough to persuade consumers to post reviews, and businesses are constantly looking for new methods to entice customers to offer feedback. When you're in constant communication with your customers on a daily basis, you'll find the review-request process much easier.

If you want to get the most out of your customers, ask them to record video testimonials or leave comments on a review site. Obtaining testimonials should not be a problem as long as your consumers are satisfied with your products and feel a personal connection to you. The employment of "high-level, covert methods" is also unnecessary.

5. Make Life Easier For Your Customer Support Team

According to SuperOffice, customers may expect an average response time of 12 hours and 10 minutes. Clients, on the other hand, want their inquiries to be answered within minutes, if not seconds. If you have an online community, your users will be happier, and your support team will have less work to perform. One of the advantages of having your support representative answer questions asked by members is that it helps not just them but also other members who may have similar problems. Another aspect to consider is that other members of the community are likely to respond to the question before your support representatives. Most significantly, the "customer community" you've built appears to be a genuine community, one in which individuals know one another and assist one another when necessary.

6. Grow Your Audience Of Fans And Partners

Unsurprisingly, your most active blog readers, podcast listeners, and YouTube channel viewers are likely to be members of your community. Furthermore, they will be among the first to register for your public events, such as conferences and webinars, or to read the new book that you have recently launched. Furthermore, you may find yourself making alliances with other members of your community. Your community is the ideal place to not just support and participate, but also to connect. You could want to look into interviewing community members for your podcast or sharing quotes from them in your next blog piece.

7. See Your Users Upselling Your Products And Services

As a result, it is typical for forum users to inquire about features of products or services that some customers may be unaware of. As a result, higher-tier plan users frequently raise queries in SaaS communities about capabilities that aren't available in lower-tier subscriptions. Following the reading of the comments and viewing of the debate, other members may get interested in those features, investigate the benefits, and upgrade their membership. Emails and push notifications are not necessary. As a consequence, your community members will handle the upsell for you.

8. Fight Facebook’s Declining Organic Reach

When you post something new on your Facebook company page, chances are that only 5.5% of your followers will actually see it, and only 3.6% of them will engage.

9. Get Referrals And Grow Your Community

Only 5.5 percent of your Facebook followers will see a new post, and only 3.6 percent will interact with it. For one thing, Facebook's organic reach is diminishing. Instead, the company wants you to put advertisements on its website. Members of a Facebook group, on the other hand, have a greater chance of seeing other members' postings in their feeds—for free. As a result, the more comments and interaction the new post receives, the more prominent it becomes. Only paying customers are able to become members of some businesses. Other motivations for allowing outsiders include fostering new members and turning them into paying customers. According to one study, 68 percent of branded communities feel the community has assisted them in generating new leads. The rules of your community will change depending on the type of community you want to build. If you want to encourage your users and make them, feel unique, it's important to keep outsiders out of your community. However, if you want to position yourself as a thought leader and gather people who share your interest, your community should be open.

As You Develop, So Will Your Neighbour

Once you've established a community and are in the development stage, you'll see its benefits. It is more essential to keep consumers and establish connections with them than to promote and sell to them.

EDITOR’S CHOICE