Rev & Reach Episode 17 – Building a Brand Community: How-To & Why-To

00:08

LORI: Hello. I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev and Reach from PopSpeed Digital Marketing. I am here today to talk to you about community. I am actually wearing my Peloton shirt, because Peloton is one of my absolute favorite communities, and I really love what they’ve done with their brand, and how they use social media and digital not just to sell but to build community.

00:36
Because when your brand becomes a place where people feel like they belong, they’re comfortable. There’s no better way to market. There’s no better marketing for loyal customers and a loyal source of referrals than creating a community. So we’re going to talk about Peloton, we’re going to talk about LEGO Ideas, and we’re going to talk about Glossier and, you know, also some ideas for small local businesses.

01:00
So let’s jump right in with why is community a brand superpower? Well, we are human beings. We have biological needs for connection.People have never been a solo survival, you know, type of being. We have always lived in groups, in tribes, in collaborative efforts. And so community is important to us, even though we don’t really realize it anymore. We kind of, we think we’ve evolved past our biological instincts, but honestly we haven’t.

01:37
And so in marketing terms, what we’re talking about with community is that you’re building a loyal follower community of your customers that have a shared identity, they have a really strong connection, and they love your brand. And the reason that matters is because they’re loyal. They repeat-buy from you, they refer other people to your company, they share your content on social media, they share their experiences with your brand on social media, and they give you real time feedback. They’ll tell you what they like and don’t like, and honestly, it’s really great to hear what they don’t like, so you as a brand can know what you need to change.

02:20
So I would look at it from a traditional marketing lens. There’s what they call push marketing, and what that is is when you take your product and its benefits to the consumer and you push them out there via messaging platforms like broadcast television, billboards, magazines, where you’re basically putting the message in front of as many people as possible, hoping that they will engage and buy your product.

02:46
Now with social media, digital marketing, community… it’s a two-way street. It goes back and forth, and you can connect with that consumer personally pretty easily through your social media team. If you’ve got a strong social media team, which you should have, or if you’re doing it yourself, then you’ve got to be the one to do it. But that two-way engagement is really, really wonderful in the world of marketing, and it’s an easy way to do it on social.

03:12
Let’s talk about a couple of big brand examples. I am huge on Peloton. I think I have now a 250-week streak on the bike. I have always loved their brand. I love the product. It’s beautifully made. I’m not being paid by them—I’m not—but it’s near and dear to me, because when I went through breast cancer treatment, and when I was going through treatment, I was working with this awesome guy, Joe, and Joe’s wife was having a baby, and he was getting her a push present, which was a big piece of jewelry, because, you know, you go through a lot when you have a baby. And I was going through chemotherapy at the time, and I was like, huh, if she can get a push present, then I should be able to get a chemo present, right? And I took that to heart. And I got my Peloton in 2019, and I became a part of a community. I became, you know, somebody that was almost infatuated with the brand at first, wearing the clothes, riding the bike, had my favorite instructors on Instagram, commenting on their things. I mean, I was just really, really into it, and I still am, but just not quite as infatuated as I was.

04:26
But what they have done is, they keep people riding by keeping it interesting. It changes day to day. There’s always new content, there’s always new instructional material for you to engage in. They come at you from a couple different ways. They have the traditional rides with the instructor. They have rides where you go through the countryside in different countries. They have, you know, video game style rides. The instructors are all different kinds of people, from, you know, traditional conservative to, you know, a little wild and, you know, New Age, punk kind of people.

04:58
So it’s a really wonderful, everyone is accepted, you know, “Together We Go Far” community, and they’ve done that in a lot of different ways. When you get the bike and you get into the experience, you start riding, you find your instructors you like. They start telling you, hey, I asked a question on Instagram the other day. Go answer it. And so that pushes you to Instagram to engage with that instructor who is a representative of the brand. They have amazing clothing. So the Peloton community, if you’re a huge fan, you can basically wear all kinds of wonderful clothing that they have released. And when you do your 100th ride, your century ride, you get a century ride t-shirt. I mean, it’s just a nice t-shirt. It has Peloton on it. It feels like you accomplished something when you rode 100 rides when you first get the bike.

05:50
So all those things really pull people together in a community kind of feeling. And even on the rides, if you’re riding, you see everybody else that’s riding at the same time you are. So you can give them high fives. So you’ll go on the bike, and you’ll have 10 people giving you high fives. You can ride with other people, you know. I mean, there’s just all kinds of interesting things you can do there. So, community: Peloton is a stellar example.

06:15
Now, LEGO Ideas: another product, letting their fans take the lead, and what they’re doing is they’re really listening, and they’re allowing the fans to build products and then taking those products and selling them and packaging and making them a part of the line of what they sell. So when you’re listening, and they know you’re listening, not only are you getting incredible market research to help inform your product line, your all of everything that you do, basically, but you’re inspiring loyalty, because when your consumer feels seen, it draws them towards you. I mean, it’s just inevitable.

06:54
Another brand, we’ll just touch on really quickly, is Glossier. They have built their brand around beauty enthusiasts, so enthusiasts and influencers talking to each other about their products, demoing their products, unboxing their products. You know, engaging and actually using the products is much better and much more credible these days, encouraging beauty enthusiasts to talk about the product and letting that be a huge chunk of the content that they share with unboxings, with, you know, just reviews, testimonials, things like that.

07:33
It’s not just the company putting out the story. It’s the consumers putting out the customer experience story. And it’s so much more powerful than anything polished that a brand can do. For example, with AI getting more and more prominent, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting used to seeing AI images in my feed regularly. And when I go to stock image houses, a lot of the places that we get stock images from, they’re using AI. Fortunately, there are some that are dedicated to not using AI, so you can count on whatever it is that you’re showing being actual, real life. AI is going to cause people to not trust what’s perfect and polished, and that will push them more toward what’s authentic and real. And what’s authentic and real is your consumers talking about your product with each other, or, you know, in your content that you put up on the digital platforms.

08:33
So now let’s talk about this: How does this translate to small to mid-sized businesses? Good question. You really don’t need millions of customers to create community. I’ll give you an example. We’ve had a dental practice and have dental clients in our on our client roster for a while now, and there’s one practice out there—I don’t know how they’re doing it, because it’s really hard to do—that actually has an online community on Facebook that’s all about full arch dental implants.

09:03
They’re not dentures. They’re very small bridges. And they are actually—they use posts to put them into the jaw, and they’re very much like your natural teeth, but it’s a huge surgery. I mean, some people end up having all their teeth pulled, or maybe 10 or 12 teeth, which is a lot, and then, you know, you don’t really know how they’re going to feel or fit, and they’re expensive, so is it worth the investment?

09:28
So this one practice that was a competitor of the practice that we were serving about three or three years ago, I think, had the most engaged Facebook community I have ever seen, and they had brand ambassadors that were in there. So what they would do is, when someone came in for a consult, they would say, “Hey, join this Facebook group, and you’ll be able to talk to people who have had this done, and, you know, get their experiences and let them answer your questions.” And in that same group, they had ambassadors, they had five or six people that, to me, were very obviously paid to be there. Now, they were actual patients of the practice, but they were attractive, they were, you know, photogenic, they were outgoing and positive. Well, guess what? Most practices have those people. Most practices have dental patients that are really enthusiastic and really like them—take advantage of that and pay them.

10:29
You can pay them $250 a month for maybe one post a week, or, you know, sharing your content out to their feeds. You can make whatever arrangement you want with them to be ambassadors of your business. So find those happy customers. Ask them if they’ll participate. Ask them if they’re willing to help you in your marketing by sharing their experience on an ongoing basis. And you can do that in Facebook groups. It would be great for a local yoga studio. Maybe in that group, they could share playlists and recipes and just encouragement and oh, if a class got canceled, that could all go into a Facebook group that has all of those yoga studio clients knowing what’s happening and feeling more connected and actually getting more from their experience as a customer at that yoga studio than they might otherwise.

11:19
Another thing that I thought was a really cool idea is nonprofits using Instagram stories to share rituals in their specific area. For example, if you were a, you know, you support cancer patients, maybe you have a weekly gratitude prompt or a weekly health tip or a weekly fact on cancer, something like that that you could put on Instagram, and it becomes something that everyone that follows you relates to, or you ask your audience on Instagram, or whatever channels you’re using, to provide their own rituals. What do you do to get out of a funk when maybe you’re a cancer patient, you know, and you’re just feeling really crappy? What do you do to get yourself back in a better mood, maybe feeling better physically, and get people to share the conversation there on Instagram. And you may have to seed it a little bit. You may have to reach out to some of your fans and say, “Hey, would you mind commenting on this? We’re trying to get some good conversation going so that, you know, there’s some activity.” So again, ambassadors are amazing for doing that. You hire an ambassador for $250 to, you know, $350 a month, you can get participation from them that will really help the effort.

12:33
So it’s about facilitating conversation and belonging. These kinds of things. Community is not about pumping out promotional content to the audience that you build. Community is about creating that commonality in the people that buy your product or service. So how do you build a digital community? This is a kind of a process you’ll need to go through. So you’re going to define your tribe. Who do you connect with? Is it parents? Maybe it’s moms of, you know, kids who play travel hockey? Is it fitness enthusiasts? Is it, you know, 50-year-old women who need to lose 30 pounds, and they’re just so disgusted by menopause. I know someone who serves that audience. Is it people who, you know, their smile is just not making them happy. It’s not white enough. It’s, you know, they have some work they need done. Who are those people? Write that down.

13:28
What is the right platform to interact with them? Our dental clients—Facebook is fantastic. Facebook and Instagram pretty much puts us in the feeds of younger people, older people, and when you do it right, you can kind of customize your message a little bit for one or the other and get really good results with similar content. So pick the right platform. Are you going to be using Facebook groups? Discord is an option. You can create a community over there. The downside of that is that people have to consciously create their own Discord account to participate. Then they have—some of them may have to go there regularly, and they may not go there for any other reason but your community, and that could be a heavy lift. If you have a real techie kind of audience, that may work really well because everybody’s using Discord, maybe an audience of moms, not so much.

14:23
So LinkedIn polls are another way to, you know, continually serve a series-oriented content to a specific audience and get them to engage with you and tell you what they think. So there’s a lot of different ways to do it. You want to encourage participation in all of your social. Ask questions, make challenges, ask people if they will, you know, share a photo of their dog eating your—you know, dog treat that you make at your bakery.

Send people surprise and delight kits. Now, this is really fun. If you have somebody who is always out there sharing photos from your restaurant, or, you know, in the lobby of your dental practice, saying, “Hey, it’s where I’m getting my teeth done today,” you know—people that are there, we call them your top fans, engage with them beyond just, “Oh, thanks for commenting,” or, “Yeah, we really like that you like us.” Go beyond that. Private message that person and once they’ve commented on your content on Facebook—and I think most of the other channels, you can private message them—and ask them if they would mind if you sent them a package.

15:32
I used to work for a bigger agency, and we worked on Kimberly Clark products, and a lot of the products were in the health and wellness space. So when we had five or six people that were always sharing our content and always answering our, you know, polls and everything, we knew who they were. We would put together just, you know—it was very grassroots, it was nothing fancy—buy some fancy boxes off the internet, some that were in the brand’s colors, I think we had pink, and then we would get some nice, you know, film, different colors that matched the brand’s colors, and maybe it’s, you know, the product, some coupons, some related things, like if it’s a fitness brand, maybe you put a fitness band, and you put your product, and some coupons, and some sunscreen, and maybe one of those cooling towels, you know, that also is branded. So—and we call it a surprise and delight—you just reach out to that really intense fan and say, “Hey, we think you’re awesome. Can we send you a little package for how good you are to our brand online?” They will go wild. They’ll do opening videos. They’ll do those unboxing videos and put those up. All their friends will see what you did. A lot of times, people hang out with people in the same demographic that you’re trying to reach.

16:52
So, if you’re trying to reach teachers, and you send a really cool package out to a teacher, she’s going to open it, she’s going to unbox it on her social media, and a lot of her teacher friends are going to see it. So it may be a small thing. It’s not hard to do, it’s not expensive. It takes some effort, and it’s huge when it comes to building community online.

Be present always. Be on your social channels. Be on them at least a couple times a day, drop in and see what’s happening. Is somebody, you know, getting into a little spat over something? Did somebody make a nasty comment? Do you need to answer a complaint about your product? Doing that publicly can be really good for the brand, because it shows that you’re responsive. You can straight off bat say, “That’s not what we want to have happen. We’re so sorry. Can we private message you so that we can get more information and make this right?” And when a consumer sees that and it comes in, you know, half an hour after they posted it, you’re responsive. You’re also showing that that’s not usually how things are done, and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to make it right.

So that’s a really important part of it is community management. You can’t have a community if you’re not out there in it, engaging and commenting and talking to the consumers who post about you or who put things on your content, you know, who post comments and things like that. So always be present. Make your people feel seen. Make those people that comment feel like you appreciate them and you understand and that you’re happy that they decided to take that extra effort to engage with you.

18:34
And the last thing we’ll say about building a digital community is to make sure you reward your community. Make sure what you’re sharing with them is helpful information. Early access to deals: if you’re a dental practice and you have a special offer going out, announce it in the community and give them a couple days to set up their appointments to take advantage of it before you put it out into the general public. And it really does help the people feel special when you share, you know, insider tips, when you give them early access to discounts and special things, and when you simply say, “God, we love you guys. We’re so happy that you have stayed connected to us instead of being a one and done customer, and we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure that our relationship continues to be positive.” Put those kind of gratitude messages in there.

Engage. Start conversation starters that let you and your community get to know each other a little bit better. Try those—you know, “Have you ever, you know, have you ever done this? If so, tell us about in the comments. We’d love to hear.” If you can make it fun, make it funny, that’s even better. New moms—oh my god—new moms are just a huge marketing audience for a lot of different companies, and they have a ton of questions. So if you are a company brand that serves new moms, get into those groups on Facebook. That’s the other thing you can do. Get into those groups and participate as an individual, and you can say, “I represent a brand,” but don’t sell. Just be there, share useful, helpful information and go from there.

Just recently, we took on a project, matter of fact, that was for a resort in Florida, and they’re a—what do you call it? They’re a co-op, I think—no, they’re a timeshare. And as a timeshare, they rarely have openings, and it’s this really cool part of the beach, it’s very, you know, very quiet, and the sunsets are amazing, and you just can’t get in because they’re a timeshare, and the weeks are all purchased by the owners. So they have, I think, a bunch of units coming available in September, October, for just two weeks. And so what our client paid us to do was go in and join all the groups related to and surrounding the city that this resort is in.

21:00
For example, I love Sarasota. The resort is in Sarasota. I love the Lido Keys. You know, there’s all kinds of different groups related to those two topics. And I went into the groups and said, hey guys, as myself, just want to let everybody know, if you have guests coming down or you’re interested in spending time, it’s—they had these two weeks open. It never happens. Get your reservation in now, and posted some beautiful sunset photos. I mean, these photos themselves were worth the look at the post, right? They were stunning. And we got 99 people to go to that resort reservation page, which was pretty impressive for, you know, maybe an hour of work. So you can take advantage of communities by actually creating one. You can also participate in them for more promotional opportunities, as long as you’re not selling too hard.

So to wrap this up, communities are built when brands create a space for people to connect with each other and to share their experiences. It’s not you pushing out content, it’s you interacting and engaging, and it’s a two-way conversation. So I’m going to encourage you to take a look at your own social media, and are you just posting content and just shoving things out there? Or are you creating a two way conversation? I’d love to hear about it. I am an open networker on LinkedIn. If you would like to communicate with me and answer that question—are you just posting, or are you building a place where people want to hang out, where they want to meet other people that are brand enthusiasts?

If you’d like to answer that question, please engage with me on LinkedIn. I’m an open networker there, so thank you for joining me for this episode. I know Kiley is not here. Kiley Metcalfe is usually my partner in crime on this podcast, but she just had a baby. Baby was born healthy. Mama’s healthy. Everything’s fine. It was about a week ago. Everything’s good, and so I’m going to be by myself for as long as she decides she needs to take for maternity leave, which however long that is, I get it. So again, Lori Jo Vest, Rev and Reach. We really appreciate you being here to listen to our marketing tips and the helpful information we share to assist you in getting more ROI from your digital marketing and social media efforts. I’ll be back soon with another episode. Take care!