Whether you are in B2B marketing or in the B2C sector, you cannot afford to neglect the important role an engaging community plays in your modern digital marketing strategy. While each brand and business may interact with a slightly different community, the core principles remain the same. Therefore, we wanted to talk about how you can leverage your brand community for social media marketing.

Here, we'll talk about:

• What is brand community marketing and why it is the new age strategy everyone is so excited about

• The 5 ways to develop, cultivate, and leverage a social media community

• What to look for when you hire a community manager

• How your community can end up fueling your social media marketing autonomously

Ready? Go!

What is Brand Community Marketing?

First thing first, what is brand community marketing?

We know what a brand is. We also know what a community is. Then the rest shouldn't be too hard to understand.

Simply put, a brand community helps you understand your brand loyalty. This community doesn't only include your previous clients, but anybody who has interacted with your brand — whether positively or negatively. Members of your brand community have an emotional connection with your brand. Again, this emotion isn't always a good feeling.

Simply think about how there are healthy and unhealthy (even toxic, sometimes) communities in real life.

The same goes for your business.

Who are My Community Members?

A healthy brand community should include the following populations:

• Members associated with your brand, such as your community manager.

• Collaborative partners, such as organizations that share your vision

• Brand advocates, such as brand ambassadors

• Potential customers/prospects who are often general followers

• Likeminded business professionals

Using your Community for Social Media Marketing

Now that you've build an engaging online community around your business, it's time to leverage its power to reach more people. Among the cool things you can do with a high-quality community, the most effective way is to leverage the community's influence to fuel your social media marketing efforts.

So, how can you drive social media engagement with your community?

Let Your Audience Guide

As a general rule, people are more motivated to engage with something relatable and interesting. We've long grown beyond the days of posting pointless motivational posts.

Nowadays, your social media content must resonate with your target audience. Even better, diversify your content based on platform, user behavior, and your audience's correspondent stage in the customer journey.

Get Into the Community

We all know we need to provide values, and we all think what we're doing is special.

While we believe your venture and mission is unique and valuable, you mustn't forget that there are plenty of others doing what you're doing — perhaps not identical, but definitely similar to some extent.

In this case, trying to out-scream each other will not win you more followers. Rather, it may annoy your audience and drive them away. So, what should you do? The smart way of driving community engagement on social media is getting into the community.

Specifically, you can

• Follow the trends your audience follows

• Engage with them directly, not only by creating tailored content but by actually communicate with them on an intimate, personable level

• Acknowledge members of your community for their contribution

Competitors are Also Collaborators?

Now, what about those competitors we were talking about?

Here's the thing — there are plenty of fish in the ocean. Nowadays, an aggressive competition mindset won't get you anywhere far. However, a collaborative mindset will help you build long-lasting relationships that continue to help you grow, even if you switch ventures in the future.

Therefore, treat your competitors as potential collaborators. Initiate conversations and sparkle discussions with them to leverage both of your communities and acquire massive results. Remember: two people are stronger than one fighting alone.

Encourage Community Advocacy

Building onto the collaborative mindset, your end goal is to build a community of advocates who will autonomously help promote your business because they truly love what you do. This is the same concept as the old-school word-of-mouth referral.

Popular ways to encourage community advocacy includes:

• Paid brand ambassador programs

• Engagement campaigns, such as giveaways requiring social media taggings

• College ambassador programs

• Leveraging employees as advocates

• Customer appreciation programs

Hire a Dedicated Community Manager

Building a community is only step one. For your social media marketing effort to fully benefit from your brand community, the real work goes into community nurturing.

Often, that means you should hire a dedicated community manager.

A community manager's duty include:

• maintaining engagement

• listening into your brand community

• moderating audience-created content and individual interactions

• identify new opportunities brought by the community

Conclusion

In short, to leverage your existing brand community for social media marketing, you must keep human relationships at the center and focus on nurturing your community via engagement and collaboration. Treat your community as content co-creator and hire a dedicated personnel to oversee the community. Make sure your social media posts are in line with both your brand voice and your audience's needs.