No community is an island(unless it’s an island community)

Why create a community?With community heralded as the answer to building

the deeper and more sustained engagement the

benefits certainly stack up nicely on paper. Active

communities bring finger-on-the-pulse insight into

the needs, mood, and sentiment of your audience.

They can be a source of new ideas for product and

service development, as well as provide instant

validation to those offered up by the brand itself.

Some are making communities work as a source of

leads and referral and many see them as a way of

improving customer service efficiency and support

through self-service. They certainly give the means

to communicate and amplify messaging without

reliance on third party media. Happy days.

There is a lot of really positive community activity

happening, but in equal measure there are many,

all too visible, casualties of those that just haven’t

got it. So the question is, are these benefits being

realised? Is there any best practice to apply?

Best practice?Two strands of community marketing have evolved:

• Getting involved in the existing organic

communities created and hosted by

their members.

• The planned creation of dedicated brand-led

communities, hosted by the brand, essentially

for the brand.

The first is about mapping what conversations are

going on and understanding when the brand has

permission to be involved. On the one hand this

might just be individuals joining in as active and

valued participants of the community, not passive

watchers, or worse still hijackers. This cannot be

campaigned, neither can you develop a strategy

for it: you need to develop a behavioural framework

for the brand and its people. On the other it might

be feeding these conversations with relevant,

compelling content that supports the reason for the

community to exist.

This isn’t just advertising by other means; it is about

developing an ongoing editorial framework and

content roadmap.

Developing a dedicated branded community requires

a more structured approach. You need to be clear who

the members of the community should be. What do

they get out of it, and what do you expect them to do

in return? Then you can start worrying about where

the community exists, and how its members interact.

This isn’t as simple as just adopting one of the many

community platforms that have sprung up and giving

one person the job of managing the community.

No community is an islandThe key learning is that no community stands alone.

They are all connected as are the people within

them. A community cannot be manufactured, but

you can create the environment (platform+content)

for a community to flourish. But this environment

should not be seen as an end in itself.

The community should be seen as the end result

of a structured framework for thinking about the

market, a set of behaviours that define the brand’s

actions and those of its representatives. Certainly

those that see community not as a bolt-on,

standalone business activity but an integral part of

business as usual are enjoying the spoils.

And ROI?There are many examples where specific objectives

and returns from community activity can be cited.

As ever, what is really needed is a clear metric

and method for assessing the total value a brand

creates through its community. The notion of ‘social

currency’ is starting to make some in roads here and

is an area to watch closely.

Jeremy Baldwin Business Development Director

Agree/Disagree? Let Jeremy know: jeremy.baldwin@brightblueday.co.uk

To find out more please call 01202 669090 or visit brightblueday.co.uk

It is easy to see why the concept of branded communities is so attractive to marketers. It provides a nice, neat response to the new communications landscape brought about by the social web, where consumers are now fans, customers have become followers and both have become active contributors.