Marketing your brand is no longer successful because of what you push out in terms of advertising. Its success depends more than ever on how you interact with customers and potential customers, and building a brand community is a strong way to demonstrate your commitment to conversation and engagement.

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Where will your brand community be?

Building a brand community is not as easy as creating a Facebook page and then letting people who like it talk to each other. That won’t happen without substantial effort from you to help develop conversations and make the community a useful place which will draw people back to it.

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It may not be that Facebook is the best place for your brand community. Consider where your online audience already spends time and how you could develop a community there. For instance, Generation Z customers love Instagram so brands can use that platform to connect with influencers and customers and drive huge levels of sales according to Social Media Today.

If you want to target Baby Boomers or Gen X, think about how you could use YouTube since over 80% of its users are between the ages of 45 and 64.

Making a brand community work

You’ll need to work hard to build a following on any YouTube, Instagram or Facebook community you create. Gloucestershire branding agency Really Helpful Marketing Co reallyhelpfulmarketing.co.uk/brand-development/ explains how important distinctive design and compelling copy are to make you stand out.

You’ll also want to raise awareness of your online communities to existing contacts via email marketing or your blog, and then you may want to pay for adverts to show your community to a wider audience.

Once you have a following, you’ll get people asking questions, wanting issues to be resolved or commenting positive and possibly negative things. All of these need responses and they’ll need to be addressed quickly in order that things don’t escalate with other people joining in the conversation to chase a response.

Create content such as videos, images, blog posts and quotes that will help your community understand your brand and your products or services and encourage them towards making a purchase. And say thanks to followers who post their own content featuring your brand.

There can be great rewards from building an online brand community.