How to build a community around your brand in 6 steps

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I wrote about why building a community is important in a previous article – Why it is worth building a community around a brand. Today I will tell you how to do it and where to start.

First of all, remember a few key steps:

Find out as much as you can about your target group
Establish a context that applies to a specific area of your life
Define your community building goal
Define the channels in which you will communicate with them
Be authentic and open to communication
Have a plan and an idea for valuable and engaging content

How to build a community around your brand in 6 steps? Find out as much as you can about your target group

As with other communication activities, when building a community around your brand, the key is to properly define the target group and get to know it well. You need to determine what values these people follow, what their habits are, what inspires them and encourages them to act, and what does not.

The better you get to know the group of people you want to invite to your community, the easier it will be for you to find a common language with them, engage them and find out where they are.

Establish a context that applies to a specific area of your life

Have you already got to know your target group and their needs? Great, in the next step, define the “contact point”, i.e. the area in which the value you offer will respond to the group’s needs.

When defining this point, you should also define the context relating to a specific area of life. These may include, for example: health, exercise, diet, home care, free time and travel, fashion, hobbies and many, many other areas, depending on the need your product meets.

By defining a specific area of life in which your communication will focus, you will make it easier for the group to identify with your brand, you will be easier to be found by specific people, and you will also increase community involvement.

Define your community building goal

Many people define the goals of their activities as, for example, preparing a leaflet, setting up a social media profile, creating a website or mobile application, or recording a video spot. During my many meetings, brainstorming sessions and countless conversations, I often had to explain to people that these are tools, not goals. These are secondary issues, resulting from determining the effect (goal) that we want our actions to bring. Depending on the circumstances and market situation, the goal may be to acquire new customers, loyalize existing ones or even achieve a specific market share.

Community building should also have a purpose. Once you know your target group and their needs, and you have established the context relating to a specific area of life, setting your goal will be much easier.

Taking into account the needs of the target group and what and in what context your brand can offer this group, the goals may be various.

They are mainly based on values such as:

Inspiration – IKEA inspires its customers, creates countless interior designs – both in online communication channels and in its stores
Motivation – this is the goal of communities especially related to self-development, both mental and physical, a healthy lifestyle or sports.
Education – education is usually focused on communities built around difficult topics and those related to our health
Entertainment – this is the domain of communities where lifestyle reigns supreme and is targeted mainly at younger groups (mobile networks, Internet or TV providers)
Awareness – this goal is often set by the creators of communities related to niche or new issues, the subject of which is not generally accepted knowledge
Debunking myths – in societies it often happens that certain myths and so-called “urban legends” are born, which have little to do with the truth, but negatively affect the image of brands related to a given topic
And many others…

In the communication layer, the above values will probably interpenetrate to some extent to make it attractive, more interesting and diversified. This does not change the fact that a goal based on one of these values should always be one and specific. It’s like in a journey where we should have a fixed point on the map where we want to reach. During the journey, of course, we can deviate from the route to see something interesting, but knowing our destination, we always have a reference point to which we should return so as not to wake up at the end of the day, somewhere in the middle of an unknown field…

Define the channels in which you will communicate with them

For many people, building a community = a brand account on social media. Everyone is trying to outdo each other in creating posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and, more and more often, Tik Tok.

Of course, all this may make sense if it is the result of an analysis of the target group, life context and goals set for the community. Nevertheless, limiting ourselves within this framework is quite a simplification. The channels can equally well be thematic websites, mobile applications or, in the real world, sports competitions, concerts, congresses, lectures, workshops, rallies and any other events.

The key is an in-depth analysis of the target group, finding places where we can meet them and where they are most willing to communicate. It is also important to determine whether our context and goals are possible to achieve in given channels. On the one hand, it is not worth keeping open doors and it is good to rely on proven channels, but perhaps sometimes it is worth creating a new communication platform or dusting off long-forgotten methods. This should always be a decision supported by analyses, intellectual work and market research, and not just “I see it”.

Be authentic and open to communication

Authenticity is the key. When creating a community, you must pay special attention to being real, authentic and that your brand and the products or services it represents are actually related to the problems you want to solve in your community. Remember that building such a group is an ongoing process. The more time passes, the more lies and inaccuracies will come to light, and you will achieve the opposite effect than expected. Therefore, do not stretch the facts to suit your imagination. If your product does not fulfill specific functions, do not add a theory that will prove to everyone that it does.

Don’t try to create a story that will hide your product’s shortcomings, because sooner or later it will come to light. Better find a less spectacular, but authentic, proven and useful for the community asset and build a narrative around it.

It’s a bit like dietary supplements that appear like mushrooms after rain. In the case of a supplement, communication stating that the supplement has a slimming effect, for example, is prohibited. We can only say that a specific ingredient of this supplement has a slimming effect, but not that the supplement itself has such an effect. Why?

Because in the case of these supplements, the presence of the mentioned ingredient is so minimal that promoting the “performance” of the supplement, and not the properties of the ingredient it contains, is misleading people.

So remember! Be authentic, don’t exaggerate and stick to the facts. The community is much more trusted by those who are modest, do their job and provide help within the scope of their competences, than “stars” who say they can do anything.

Have a plan and an idea for valuable and engaging content

Last but not least, as the Americans would say, because valuable content is actually the key, and without it, creating any community, in any channel, will be impossible.

However, if we are talking about Americans… Since Bill Gates said “Content is King” in 1996, so much has been written about the importance of content that it would be difficult to write something innovative here, and it all sounds like reheated pork. Therefore, I will only attempt to summarize and illustrate how important the comprehensiveness of the community building process is.

Thanks to the fact that you got to know your target group well, perfectly matched the context and goals of the community to the strengths of your brand, and then determined the optimal communication channels, you are in a great starting position for building content. You have key knowledge that allows you to determine what type of content will be useful, valuable and engaging.

If you have performed the previous steps correctly, the information you have is so precise and accurate that the most interesting thing remains… Let your imagination run wild and come up with… Okay, it’s not that simple, but about how to build content and what are the most engaging forms of it, I could write another article…