When you’re approaching community marketing, it’s important that you strike the right tone with your audience. You don’t want to come off as being too pushy with constant sales posts, ignoring your audience when they engage, or spamming them with irrelevant content as this can do more harm than good.
We’ve listed 7 proven community marketing strategies to help you get started
1. Participate
Ultimately, people join online communities because they have a mutual love of a product, service, or cause. They’re there because they want to connect with others, share information, research, and learn about whatever topic you’re niche falls into. Nobody joins a community because they want to sign up for a hard sell – they’re there out of choice, not an obligation. Keeping this in mind and using your community as a space to really participate in conversations and getting to know the people who are hanging out there will make a huge difference to the online atmosphere you’re creating.
2. Contribute like a pro
When you set up a community, always remember you’re the expert in your field and topic. Every time you respond do it from a space of adding as much value as you can so that people see you as the authority and expert. Publishing educational articles, providing tips and how-to’s doesn’t only highlight your expertise it also helps you to strengthen relationships with your target audience. When you focus on actually helping your audience instead of using marketing jargon – you’re much more likely to build loyalty.
3. Be accessible
Nobody likes to be ignored so making sure you participate in your online community and show up on a regular basis will help others to build trust with you. It will also add a human element to your marketing and creates a sense of authenticity – something that people absolutely love. After all, people buy from people.
4. Create raving fans
There’s no denying that word of mouth marketing is the most powerful marketing tool. People trust their friends, family, and peers. You can use this to your advantage by discovering the positive influencers within your community and choosing to engage with them to establish a mutually beneficial relationship in the form of discounts or becoming an affiliate. This makes them feel like a part of your team and helps you to grow your business organically.
5. Advertise in an informative way
Providing value to your audience by advertising in an informative way is a great way to educate your audience on what you offer without coming across as sleazy. When you answer FAQ’s for example or talk about changes in your industry – you’re keeping people engaged without forcing them to buy your product or service.
6. Stay consistent
If people aren’t showing up straight away – don’t lose hope. When you remain consistent with your approach and with the content you publish, your community will grow and people will naturally build trust with what you’re doing.
7. Engage
Finding ways to engage with your audience in a way that works for them is crucial. Are your audience busy and on the go? If so, maybe videos will be faster than publishing blog posts. If you’re a community about a book club for example then maybe your audience will prefer to read and blog posts will be more appreciated by them. Making use of a Poll feature is a great way to find out what type of content your community most values and to drive more interactions.