Time Stamps:

• 00:19 – Welcome to 10 Minute Marketing
• 01:08 – What is a Brand Community?
• 02:48 – Building a Community with Social Media
• 06:38 – Varied Strategies for Growing Online Communities
• 08:42 – How to Cultivate a Community for Your Brand

In this episode, Sonja shares several key insights around a vital area that every brand should focus on: Building and engaging with communities. Whether your brand’s audience or community is online or in the “real” world, building a community will transform the way you interact with your audience. 

Sonja discusses the resources and tools that small businesses and popular brands use to engage their communities. Later in the episode, we dissect the art of initiating meaningful conversations that echo through the digital realm.

After this episode, anticipate a sneak peek into future discussions with entrepreneurs who share their triumphs and tactics in nurturing communities that are not just vibrant, but fiercely loyal. This is your roadmap to creating a brand presence that resonates authentically with its most valuable asset—its community.

Watch the episode!

Read The Full Transcript From This Episode (click to expand and read the full interview)

• • Sonja Crystal Williams: 0:11
    Hi everyone, welcome to today’s episode of 10 Minute Marketing. I’m your host, Sonja Crystal Williams. So there’s this theme that I’ve noticed this season as we’ve been recording podcast, a common thread that a lot of guests that we’ve had share and you’ll hear from them in some of our upcoming episodes and that thread is this drive, whether it be in person or online, but this drive for developing communities, for creating connection, for looking at opportunities to connect with new audiences or maybe even nurture the audiences you already have, and finding ways online to do that. So I want you to think about that, whether you’re in the seat of owning and operating a business, whether you are on the marketing team of a brand, and you’re thinking about what other ways can we tap into our audience? And the simple answer is build community right? So when I use the word build community, community means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I’m talking about building community in the sense of finding a way, within your niche, to connect your brand with your followers in a way that you can speak to them in a way that you can talk to them, and sometimes those communities look different just depending on what medium or what route you choose to connect. A simple example some people will say well, I have a community of listeners through my podcast and that, in fact, truly is a community. It is a community of listeners that you have. It’s one way communication. However, if you bridge that community into, let’s just say, for example, a Facebook group, now that becomes a community where there’s opportunity for two way conversation, and that’s a huge opportunity that a lot of brands can take advantage of. Am I building connection with my audience in a way that allows for there to be two way conversations? It’s no longer just me talking at them, but I’m talking to them, and I want you to also think about that in the broader sense, because probably one of the biggest, I’d say, challenges that I see a lot of teams that are managing social media accounts engage with, or the kind of the thing that I see happen a lot of cases, especially for brands that are just getting started on social media, is that the idea is post, post, post, post content, post content, create it, post it, turn the wheels, turn into a cycle, turn into that machine. But something I want you to think about is how I engaged, is my brand in the, even the online social media network that I’m on and think about, perhaps, if building connection with your audience is important and engaging with them is important to you as maybe one of the tenants or one of your goals of where you’re taking your brand this year, next year whenever, this month, next month, whenever, then ask yourself is this particular platform that I’m on, is this platform allowing me to build connection? Is it allowing me to build community and am I participating in that community? Okay, and so simple example would be really evaluating if we’re gonna have a presence on Instagram. Is the purpose of us being on Instagram to simply push out reels and get people to laugh and have fun and hit the like button? Or is it to get someone talking back to us? Is it to lead them somewhere? Is it to be open to them, asking questions or leave them down the path of a conversation? Is it to bring people together collectively? And so, as you are thinking strategically about your purpose on some of these networks, think about that too. Think about if, whether or not part of that purpose is to build connection, and there’s a lot of places where you can build community. If we’re thinking social networks, facebook groups is a part of that mix. If we’re thinking about other tools, even beyond the social media networks, and thinking into maybe even SMS or messaging apps, there’s a lot of tools that facilitate those conversation WhatsApp, telegram, groupme there’s lots of ways to get in front of our audience. If you have a course that your company has launched, you’re a course creator, you represent a course creator, you’re on the team working for a course creator, then there are other opportunities to facilitate those communities through some of those course creation tools like Mighty Networks or Kajabi or Thinkific right, just to name a few. And that’s what we’re getting to is to really think about how do I begin to build, maintain and foster an online community and really get clear on what that should look like, and think about how you’re gonna design and approach that community. And that design might include anything from tapping into your email list, perhaps even announcing the launch of some type of community. That might include tapping into your existing social media networks organically, into audiences that you have that already exist. It could also involve using paid ads as a way to reach new people who might have an interest in the audience. Or just growing simply word of mouth Old school, really spreading the word and then maybe nurturing the community in an online setting, even using Zoom as an example or Teams or anything like that to facilitate those conversations. So If I were to say again the thing that my guests have in common this season many of them is that they are in some way shaping, creating, building or nurturing thriving online communities some large, some big. But even when we think about that, even when we think about that, remember quality over quantity. You don’t have to have a community or build connections with you know 100,000 people to have impact. Even in large companies and with large brands, if you’re focused on a niche, that community might be a subset of people. A really great example I’ll share with you, coming from a larger company, is I’m in a group right now on Slack through ConvertKit, which is an email service provider, and Slack hosts small many meetups. There’s probably no more than about, I’d say, 20 of us in some of these meetups that they’ve been hosting on Zoom lately and then bridging those conversations once we talk in Zoom and meet other creators who use ConvertKit as an email platform. We’re also chatting in Slack in a group right. That’s a large company that’s taken down a subset of a particular niche of people who use the product and they’re nurturing those leads and, you know, probably potentially upselling in the process, but it’s an opportunity for them to build connection and be in tune with their audience, and that’s what you truly get out of creating or nurturing an online community. You have the opportunity to find more people and expose yourself to more people who have an interest in your niche. You also have an opportunity to nurture the audience that you have today that currently exists. Hear what’s on their mind, truly understand them, what makes them tick, what makes them make certain types of decisions, what gets them engaged, so that you can replicate that and go out and continue to find more people to join your audience who might seem or be similar to those characteristics of your ideal customers that you’re already building connection with. So those are my thoughts for today and I’ll leave you with knowing that stay tuned for the next few episodes. All right, I’ve got some great episodes coming up with entrepreneurs across the US and abroad In fact that are growing and building and nurturing and creating communities in different ways, and stay tuned so you can hear more about that Until next time. Thanks for listening, everyone.