social media & social networks

Community marketing: what is a community and how to nurture it

Community marketing: What is (really) a community? What brands have some and what don’t? I have been involved in community management from day one and I can pride myself on training a great number of Community Managers from the very early days of social media, that is to say when it wasn’t even called that –  way. CMAD (Aka Community Management Appreciation Day) is probably an ideal opportunity for us to dwell on the very denomination of “Community Management”, the significance of the word “community” and how one nurtures such a community in a commercial environment?

CM: what is a community and how to nurture it

Community marketing
Community marketing: what is really a community

Communities are built around passion. Passion is not always well understood by outsiders of that community. In fact, communities often look weird or even incomprehensible, unless you are part of it.

Community marketing basics

When Alpha Romeo launched its new range of cars at the end of 1990s and gathered focus groups of faithful customers, the latter had to explain to an fire EU engineers that the brands numberplates had to be located on the side of the car, not in the middle.

Community feeling and common brand values were better shared within those groups of brand fanatics, then within the company itself. A true sign that something was wrong there. Passion, like the devil, is in the details.

Mutual help: community members often seek to help each other for no other reason than fuelling their passion and their obvious motivation to be recognised as a group member. Often, communities require no compensation. In fact they never do. I have even seen cases when trying to offer gifts to the members of a tightly knit community of expert bloggers, I had managed to, almost, damage the community spirit within this group. Fortunately, I managed to keep it at that and I retained my gifts and budgets for other occasions. All community members want is to be acknowledged, not compensated.
Mutual benefit: communities exist when the members derive advantages from being part of that group. It doesn’t need to be much. It may be about recognition, the fact that one belongs or is useful to a group, or just the fact that you like something very much, even a brand, and are part of something.

Community marketing: nurturing communities

in essence, you can’t create a community, but you can ensure that your brand, your content, your actions all make it possible for groups to be formed and that members enjoy being part of the community, if they so decide. You can’t create a community, but you may facilitate and encourage community creation and nurture the community once it exists. In essence, this is our role as “Community Managers”. Community Management should be renamed “Community Facilitation” for all I know.

Many ways of managing/nurturing communities exist

As a matter-of-fact, there are as many ways to facilitate a community as there are brands and verticals. No two companies are the same, all sorts of techniques and ways of handling communities exist.

On CMAD, which is due to take place on January 26 at 09:00 am GMT (10:00 am CET), I will facilitate a roundtable dedicated to that topic and I will invite various European experts to join me in a one-hour session on Google hangouts. Make sure you are part of this.

Yann Gourvennec
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Yann Gourvennec

Yann Gourvennec created visionarymarketing.com in 1996. He is a speaker and author of 6 books. In 2014 he went from intrapreneur to entrepreneur, when he created his digital marketing agency. ———————————————————— Yann Gourvennec a créé visionarymarketing.com en 1996. Il est conférencier et auteur de 6 livres. En 2014, il est passé d'intrapreneur à entrepreneur en créant son agence de marketing numérique. More »
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