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We encounter brands all day, in everything we do. Symbols, designs, names, slogans, colours – this is branding.
Beverland (2018) said that “people use brands to project whom we want to be, how we want to be perceived and how we want to feel about ourselves.” Your personal brand is everything that people think about you.
Subjective to each person, all you can do is create an impression through the actions you take and what you say on social media.
As a marketer or small business, it’s important to stay on top of all the latest trends in the fast-evolving world of social media. Luckily for you, I’ve compiled the biggest trends into this article for your convenience!
Bear in mind, you’ll find no reference to COVID-19. No quick fix marketing scams here to make a dollar out of this disaster! Many of the trends I will be discussing have been growing for the last couple of years, rather than the flavour of the month.
Each week, I talk about marketing theory as well as the practical implementation of a different marketing theory or topic. We don’t just want to talk about the “what”, we think it’s important to understand the “how” and “why”.
Social Media
The growth of social media
We all know what social media is, but how do we define it?
Social media is an online community, where people connect through electronic communication and share stories, ideas, opinions, thoughts and other content to generate discussion. It can be through a website or an app. Another characteristic is that users create service-specific profiles and can connect with other users, brands and join groups.
Over the short lifespan of social media (about 15 years), platforms have evolved, come, and gone. MySpace originally set the trend as the biggest social media network between 2005 and 2008. By the time the Facebook movie came out in 2010 called “The Social Network”, social media was a normal part of life for many people. Now, the number of internet users was 4.4 billion in 2019, and the number of people using social media was 3.5 billion.
“Social media is internet-based resources for sharing and discussing any topic. Any website which allows the customer to discuss their material, views, views and motivates connections and group developing can be classified as social media.” (Sajid, 2016)
According to Wikipedia, there is a general agreeance that social media includes the following: blogs, business networks, collaborative projects, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, products/services review, social bookmarking, social gaming, social networks, video sharing, and virtual worlds.
Social media has become an integral part of people’s lives and daily routines. Checking their social media accounts is the first thing many people do upon waking in the morning!
Over the past ten years, marketers have come to realise the importance of social media in peoples’ lives, and brands have saturated platforms like Facebook and Instagram with advertising and content to connect with their target customers. There is a lot of competition, so it is difficult to stand out without a strategy.
Choosing the right social media channel
Many brands rely on social media platforms as their major communication channel to reach their target audiences. The difficult part is, consumers are scattered over many social platforms. Social media is a dynamic and competitive space, any edge you have on your competitors in reaching your audience will give you an advantage.
Whilst the major platforms still dominate, there has been a rise in alternative platforms. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have seen drops in users, with younger audiences opting to spend time on other platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok.
Generally, marketers have concentrated a lot of their effort on major platforms such as Facebook. But every business will have multiple audiences, it is not just one type of person. Even if most of the characteristics of a consumer are similar, they will like to consume content in diverse ways. All popular Social media platforms all have one characteristic that makes them best-suited toward a particular form of content, which influences its type of users it has.
Segment your audience into distinct groups of customers, and then tailor your communication to suit the preferences of each group. Assuming your audience is one type of person means you are ignoring potential customers who might be hanging out somewhere else and likes a certain form of communication. The better you know the diverse types of people most likely to be your customer, and their preferences, better you can adjust your messaging and narratives to fit each segment.
Trust and goodwill are the basis of social media, which uses the “wisdom of crowds” in a collaborative manner. (Sajid, 2016)
LIKE! The rise of social media
As trends evolve on social media, so must the corresponding marketing. Over the past ten years, with the prominence of social media, the digital world has become saturated with brands’ marketing. Staying updated on the latest social media trends can help fuel your strategy and make you stand out in the crowd. Here are eight social media trends that you need to be aware of for 2020 and beyond.
Telling a human story…
Social media is synonymous with sharing our life experiences with friends and families. We share stories through our posts. Social media platforms are evolving with trends, allowing people to tell their stories in diverse ways. Video is continuing to increase in popularity as a way for people to share their narrative through platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.
Brands are following the lead and connecting with consumers on a more personal level through sharing more human stories of their own. Storytelling has become an important function of social media, as it feels real, immediate and personal. A brand can share their story in a number of ways, such as a creative mix of video, images and graphics.
Important elements of a brand story
Distributed through social media, stories tell the narrative behind the brand, which capture moments and experiences shared by consumers of a brand or product. A human face to a business and brand is helpful to increase trust and loyalty as it helps the brand seem more relatable. Using the personal brand of the business owner in marketing content is an effective way to humanise a business.
Influencers
Influencers are already all-over social media. They are probably most obvious on Instagram and YouTube. These people get paid massive amounts of money to promote brands in their content. It can be much cheaper than running ad campaigns with impressive results, so it has become increasingly popular with brands as a marketing tool.
Influencer marketing should continue to be popular. This is the use of social media figures or influencers”, who have a community around them, to essentially be a salesperson for the brand. They include brands in their content in a way that is more like product placement or product endorsement. less direct than traditional forms of advertising This is to help humanise a brand. To give it a human voice. They can influence their following through the trust they have already built with the platform. It comes across as a more authentic form of marketing, even though it is still just marketing!
Signs are that consumers might be starting to see through the strategy, however. There has been a rise in “fake likes” on platforms like Instagram, so using likes as engagement metrics to measure the value of the influencer. The use of “nano-influencers” is increasing, which are accounts with a few thousand followers, instead of millions. Brands are moving away from big influencers to networks of these small and relevant niche influencers.
Make a more meaningful connection with a more engaged audience, not just for the “likes”. These influencers get much higher engagement and cost much less. If you are considering influencer marketing, consider what they bring to your business and whether their audience is meaningful to your brand.
Video content
Most smartphones for more than $100–200 these days should come with a camera good enough to produce a video for social media. With the barrier to entry lower than ever, video content is becoming increasingly popular with people creating content as well as consumers. Whether it is short-form videos like those popular on TikTok or Stories or long-form content on YouTube. One study suggests that by 2022, 82% of all online content will be video content.
Platforms are introducing more features for video content, such as Instagram introducing landscape videos, which will make it easier to repurpose video already produced for other formats. TikTok has an insane growth with younger demographics, with over 1.5 Billion downloads. But marketers and brands cannot harness the potential yet. However, the platform is working on ways that brands engage with their consumers. If you are not using video already, you should be thinking about it.
A woman creating a video of a makeup tutorial
“Selfie videos” are drawing high user interest on social media. Like the selfie photo, the selfie video allows users to capture a moment in time, but the video format allows users to communicate in a deeper and more personal way than a photo ever could. Selfie videos tend to be less than 5 minutes long. Brands should look to create some content to connect with their audience via the ‘selfie” view of the lens. It will help you come across as more authentic, relatable and trustworthy.
Short-term content (Stories)
Short-term content (Ephemeral content) is available only for a short duration and disappears afterwards. “Stories” — which have become popular on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, are examples of this type of content and one of the biggest social media trends over the past few years. There are over a billion people combined using stories.
Some social media users spend hours lying on the couch watching friends’ and brand “stories” on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. One thing that makes Stories so attractive that they are short and engaging. You can add polls, questions, links and other content that allow you to go back and forth with your audience and makes it more exclusive. People’s attention spans are short on social media, so stories are a fast and convenient way to consume content.
Hyper-targeting & Personalisation
Hyper-targeting is a marketing strategy where a customer is pinpointed with targeted and relevant communication where they are most likely to see it. Google, websites, Social media… Over half of consumers think that the brand communication they receive is irrelevant. People are starting to expect to see advertising tailored to them. They want exclusive offers and discounts. It is a marketer’s job to meet those needs.
Every social media platform allows you to filter your audience with paid advertising. From geographic to specific market segments based on occupation, hobbies etc. Facebook recently roll-out personalised ad experiences that allows brands to advertise with dynamic ads that use changing formats and calls-to-action depending on the individual.
After the first targeting, you then retarget the same people with more relevant content. The more ads you click on, the better it will understand your online behaviour and preferences. The cycle continues. Often after shopping for a certain product or doing research on Google, you start seeing related advertising on Facebook? That is hyper-targeting. The same ad will not work for ten different buyers’ personas. So, create ten different adverts based on those personas, and then target those people in the right places at the right time. That is the idea. Customisation.
Local Targeting / Geo-tagging
Location-based targeting is used to reach out to people in a certain location. This is common on Instagram and in the use of “Stories” where a location (geo-tagging) is added to a post, to draw-in a local audience. Social platforms provide the option to search for posts from nearby places or specific locations. If you add locations to your content, it will show up in these search results, helping local people find your brand and content.
Geo-targeting works especially well for promoted posts to help you target the right audiences. For example, if you use the “boost post” option on Facebook, you can also select the locations that you want to target. Facebook will show your posts to users in those locations. Brands can also use geo-targeting to get more people to attend their local conferences and brand events. Or, they can use location filters in their social media ads, to advertise only to a relevant, local audience.
There are a lot of benefits of location-based targeting on social media and you simply need to know how to leverage it.
Niche communities
Community is important to consumers. They feel a sense of belonging from communicating with people with similar beliefs or goals. People use consumption as a vehicle to fit into a community that reinforces who they want to be. There are increased opportunities for brands to create communities for people that fulfil this desire. Brands that focus on niche groups build deep connections that are not possible when speaking with a wide audience.
Facebook Group marketing has become a valuable way to market to smaller and private communities. These communities are social groups created by brands to provide a networking platform for their customers. These are usually private groups that like-minded people can join to talk about their shared interests. Users discuss topics, share experiences, and seek solutions. As more people become concerned about their privacy, they engage a lot more in content in these private communities. Businesses can also use these communities as a source of market research and to launch new products.
Social media on mobile devices
Social Commerce Integration
People are becoming increasingly comfortable with the concept of social shopping. The recent introduction of Instagram shopping is an example of this. It allows brands to sell on the platform without having to send people to links and leave the platform.
Social media platforms have long been used to sell products, but as a gateway rather than on the platform itself. Now social media platforms are starting to become a mainstream retail channel like your website and offline stores, with increased social networks introducing features like shoppable posts. As social media continues to evolve, social commerce will continue to grow and give customers more options and ways to browse and buy within social networks.
Figures show 55% of online shoppers purchasing a social media channel, such as Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest in 2018.
· 87% of e-commerce shoppers believe social media helps them make a shopping decision.
· 40% of merchants use social media to generate sales.
· 30% of consumers say they would make purchases directly through social media platforms.
Technology — AR & VR
Social media will see a rise in the adoption of technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Platforms are trying to create more engaging experiences to compete with other social media platforms. Facebook, for example, has introduced a virtual world where people can connect, play games, and explore.
While the adoption of VR for social media in infancy, the use of AR has been around for a few years now. AR filters are used on several major platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, introduced to enhance the visual content by adding digital elements to it and changing the way things look. They have become hugely popular. We have all seen the filters with the bunny ears or crazy makeup.
AR is not just restricted to photo filters for fun. Platforms are trying to provide better shopping experiences to their customers. Checking out products in AR via Facebook messenger, for example trying on makeup products. Augmented reality can have a lot of potential social media applications for brands. The major platforms will keep producing interesting applications of AR and as technology continues to advance, VR.
Customer service
Social media has become more than just a place for people to connect with their friends and share photos and videos. As well as for retail, social media is now being commonly used by brands for customer service. This transition has happened over the past few years with customers reaching out to brands via social media as a more direct way to reach the brands. Brands started to respond and the use of messenger for communication has become more widespread.
It is not just some one-off cases where customers post their questions or complaints on social media and brands respond. Now, it has become a significant enough customer service channel for brands to recognise it as one. And, it is one of the most important customer service channels, owing to the massive repercussions of not handling a customer well in front of other users. So, it becomes even more important for brands to handle these customers well.
Thank you for reading! I hope you learnt something about social media and the trends business owners should be thinking about moving forward to best communicate to their target market.
Ten ways your business can create marketing content to reach more customers
Content marketing is a strategy focusing on creating, publishing, and distributing relevant and valuable marketing and brand content, designed to engage your target market. The aim is to connect with your audience and build relationships, instead of simply informing about new products and promotions. This week, I talk about what content marketing is and why your business needs to be doing it, as well as ten popular types of content marketing you can use to grow your brand.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing typically focuses on social media networks, using content such as video to start conversations, engaging your audience, creating brand awareness, increasing loyalty and driving leads. The aim is to add value for customers independently of any products sold, a value that will one day be reciprocated in sales results. The long-term goal is sales, but the short-term goal is engagement.
Brands share stories to make the audience more familiar with them. Content is relevant, compelling and aims to engage customers at the right point in their buying consideration process.
“Many long-term benefits such as building brand loyalty by engaging with the target audience with valuable content without employing promotional techniques” (Pulizzi 2012b)
For more about Content Marketing, including a 15 minute video, see 50 Weeks of Marketing.
The Rise of Content Marketing
Over the past ten years, social media communities have become more prominent, and the popularity of businesses using content marketing has exploded as a branding tool. The digital world is saturated with assorted brands, so to remain relevant businesses must start conversations with potential customers in the multiple ranges of social media communities.
Content marketing is so attractive because of the typical high return on investment compared to other forms of traditional advertising. On average, businesses using content marketing gain more than twice as many leads as those who do not.
“Content marketing has become a leading marketing technique in digital marketing communication and uses the point of view of consumers to build relationships by creating and sharing engaging content in social media that enhance their daily lives.”
Your Content Strategy
You should have some sort of plan or goal with your content creation strategy. Know what your goal is. Your content needs to align with the tone of your brand and how you want to promote your content. Who is your content designed to reach? Why will they benefit from your message? Consider you are speaking to (your target market), What is the best way to communicate to them, and where the best place to reach these people is. If you are focusing on the gaming community, you would focus on YouTube rather than LinkedIn for example.
Ten ways you can use content marketing
When you first start producing content, it is important to focus your time and energy on what you are good at and what type of content your target audience would most like to consume. What type of content are you good at creating? Are you good on camera? Graphic design skills?
It would make sense to utilise your skills and use that primarily. Use formats that your audience already uses. Does your audience like watching long-form tutorial videos such as on YouTube? Or do they prefer a vivid photo on Instagram or an Infographic on Pinterest?
Blogging
For many businesses, blogs are central to their content marketing strategy. The advantages of a blog are you can sit down and write it in a couple of hours, or even 20 minutes. The length can be under 1000 words. They are also great for SEO, which means Google finds them easily. Blogs also drive engagement and shares. Some studies suggest that around 60 per cent of online purchases are made because of a customer reading a blog and posting four blogs a week can increase your website traffic by more than three times those posting less than once a week.
Tips for writing your own blog:
· Supply value and expertise. This builds a stronger relationship with current customers and builds credibility with prospective customers.
· Build a relationship with your readers with consistent and high-quality posts drives great traffic to your site. Some tips for writing a blog:
· Post at least once a week. Leave it too long and you can lose any following you started. Consistency is key. Update old posts and those that have done well.
· Link to other content. You can link to external social media or other pages on your site such as free tools or similar blog posts.
· Call to action. Have one of these at the start and end of a blog. You want people to keep going further with you. The end goal is to leads or a sale. Some of the posts can be aimed at how you supply a solution to people or centred around your brand.
· Optimise your blog for keywords. This will help people find your blog, and help customers find you. Find out what people are searching for when they are looking for product/service like yours and create topic around the content they might be looking for.
Video
Videos are a great form of content to grab your audience’s attention and engage them quickly. People share videos more on social media than other forms of content. Video content is becoming increasingly popular in the age of the smartphone. A third of the time spent online is by people watching video content and four times more people would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. These could be a product review or a how-to video. Brands that use video can expect to see more than twice as much traffic from search engines and improve the average time spent on their web pages by just over double, and landing pages with video content has a higher conversion rate, garnering up to 80% increase.
To use videos in your content, you can post is straight to the platform, or host it on YouTube. When it is on YouTube, it is easy to embed the videos into blog posts. All videos should offer value, and at the end of every video, you should include a call to action to send them further along the sales funnel. Send them to your website or landing page for a product.
Such as this video on content marketing.
Social Media Posts
Posting on social media is by far the most popular form of content marketing. Many businesses post on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn daily, to help reach their audience and nurture relationships. Social media is so popular because it is easy to reach potential customers, without them having to go look for you. While they scroll through the platform feed, amongst posts from friends and colleagues, your post can come up.
The ability to reach new audiences is also a powerful advantage of using social media. Social media content can be used to drive sales, but social media should be used to start a conversation with consumers and engage your target audience. Make sure that you have a mix of promotional and informational content across your social media channels.
All other nine types of content listed in this article; you can link through your social media. It is an important gateway to further content that can lead to an eventual sale.
Infographics
Infographics are an image that uses information and visuals to explain how something works in a way that is visually interesting and easily digestible. An infographic aims to educate your audience by providing useful information that adds value. This increases your credibility as someone who could solve their problem.
Any information that would receive help from a visual aid would be an excellent choice for an infographic. It can help people through visualise data, for example, statistics could be summarised with visual representations, charts, and graphics. Infographics are often shared on social media, which is a useful source of backlinks (link to your website through the image. Keep your designs simple and clean with plenty of white space, and not overloaded with text. Organise it into sections if you need to make it easier to follow
This infographic from (via Domo) is a good example.
Long-form Content
Long-form content is similar to a blog or eBook. Hosted on your website, Long-form is a terrific way to drive traffic and build thought leadership on a certain topic. Create a “how-to guide” or “Ultimate Guide” is a popular form of long-form content. The length is usually between five and ten thousand words, separated into chapters like eBooks. Make it free and readily available on your website. Break it down into sections - each chapter a new page on your website. Promote it heavily to drive traffic to your website.
White Papers
White papers are an information-dense form of content that offers a detailed solution or data on a specific topic. Similarly, to eBooks, White Papers are a piece of long-form content, the main difference being that white papers are more data-driven, detail-focused and information-dense. White papers should focus on a frequent problem of your target market and offer a solution. Well suited for B2B (business to business), they are a great tool to sell your business’s products or services and build your credibility as a thought leader. Again, it is a piece of gated content on your website or landing page (also called a lead magnet) requiring the “lead” to supply information about themselves to access the piece of free content. Some businesses are willing to give up more information about themselves than just an email to access a white paper.
eBook
It might feel a little overwhelming to write an eBook, but it is easier than you think, and they are great long-term lead magnets. Some people assume you must write something that is a hundred-plus page long. Well, you do not. The reality is, a lot of eBooks can range from ten to thirty pages long. Whatever the length, it must supply value. Do not feel like you must add “fluff” to something because it is not long enough. Often, focused and concise is good. Just supply useful information and your insight into your target audience about their needs and challenges.
A lot of people offer a product or a solution at the end of an eBook, which is fine. But it should not be more than 5 per cent of the content. It is not about selling to your audience, it is about building a relationship with target consumers so that they trust your brand and come to you when they are ready to make a purchase.
Example of an eBook landing page:
eBook landing page
Again, eBook can be gated from your website, so you get an email in return. Writing an eBook can take a lot of time energy but can be outsourced. Often the leads that you will generate through this piece of gated content will provide an attractive return on investment.
Case Study
Case studies examine a specific business scenario in-depth, the case usually from your own business. The aim is to show your knowledge and how you supplied successful action, supplying social proof of the value you supply you customer or clients. Instead, done in a way that is not like an advertisement. It is how you supply a solution to a problem the reader may be having. You highlight how your service or product is applied to have a favourable outcome - help people understand how your business can help them and add value to them or their business. Helps build trust with new leads.
Case studies should follow this format:
· Summary of the study
· Explain the problem
· Explain your solution
· What were the results and why they matter?
Do not make your case study a boring summary of the results, write it like a story to engage the reader on the journey. If you can get a video testimonial from a client, that is a powerful form of case study content.
Check List
Checklists are a type of worksheet that supply a list of things to do in a step-by-step process to achieve some type of the desired outcome. These are great content assets for small businesses because they are easy to create and promote, yet still supply a significant value for the target audience. Checklist downloads are great lead magnets. They supply value as they are actionable, and supply a resource that users can utilise repeatedly, and they do not cost a lot of time or money.
Checklists should have a clean organization and have a concise copy. Lots of whitespaces and include your branding down the bottom. You can promote them at the end of blog posts for example and offer them in exchange for an email subscription sign-up.
Checkbox
Podcast / Interview
Interviews with industry experts, typically in the format of a podcast have grown in popularity in recent times. They are a long-form of content, and usually a discussion on a certain topic. This is a fantastic way to supply information to people who prefer to listen or watch as opposed to reading a long piece of writing. Again, they help to position your company as an expert in your industry. Podcasts have become a popular form of marketing content, which is an interview with someone interesting to say, usually 30 to 60 minutes long. Podcasts can be downloaded or streamed to a personal device for convenience.
You could utilise Facebook or LinkedIn Live, YouTube, have a transcript on your blog or you could be interviewed yourself by other podcasters or YouTubers. Make sure the material provides value for your target audience, choose interview subjects that can offer useful insight and information on the topics they care about.
That's it from this week's blog.
In summary, ten types of content your business should be using are:
· Blogging
· Video
· Social Media Posts
· Infographics
· White Paper
· Long-form Content
· Case Study
· eBook
· Checklist
· Podcast / Interview
To see more information about Content Marketing, including a 15 minute video, join 50 Weeks of Marketing. For 50 weeks, you receive a new marketing topic explained each week, sent right to your inbox,
A strong motivation for community membership peoples’ desire to interact with like-minded others. Gives people a sense of their authentic “true selves” as they feel a sense of belonging with the others in the community and believing in a common set of values. Having an experience of kinship and belong to a group, tribe, or community. Humans have a desire to be a recognized member of a community.
A sense of being ‘one’ is influential in the formation and maintenance of consumption communities.
Temporary communities such as those at concerts or those on a rafting trip are examples of extraordinary experiences in which participants experience strong bonds with other members.
Not all businesses are able to create a physical “extraordinary experience” for community members. But if it is possible, it is something to consider how you can do this.
Individuals can have a number of motivations for taking part in communities – some are looking for emotional support and encouragement, and others are just gathering information about a certain topic and have no desire to connect with people.
This blog is a portion of the week's content for Community.
To learn more, read the full article and watch a 15 minute video, sign up for 50 weeks of marketing.
What is community?
A community is a group of people that have a characteristic in common. The common characteristic could be having a certain interest – e.g. a favourite band, or a brand, it could be a geographical area.
Members of the community are committed to a set of shared values, and meanings. Three criteria of a community are locality, social interaction, and a social bond.
· Locality proves that the community is based upon a certain region that differentiates it from other communities.
· Social interaction refers to the means of relationship building among community members.
· Bond comes from the fact that membership in the community gives its member a feeling of comfort and a sense of belonging.
Members of a subculture must believe in a common set of values (Schouten & McAlexander, 1995).
An Indian Community
How community has evolved
In the age of the Internet, we are more connected as a human race than we ever have been before, people’s desire for social interaction and information has formed new social phenomena such as online communities. Communities on-line are quite different from those in the physical world.
Traditional boundaries have changed, and now you can get to know someone intimately online and feel like you have a strong bond with that person, even though you may have never met face-to-face. Participation in communities is also now a voluntary pursuit, while traditionally, geographical factors restrict community memberships.
Every community has frameworks, ideas, stories, experiences, lessons learned, and documents that community members share
Why community is important to marketers
Social networks are everywhere online and given the capability of technology for a low cost to businesses, it seems like a logical tool that brands can use. A community-based brand builds loyalty not by driving sales, but by helping people meet their needs. Community commitment increases brand loyalty.
If you have a strong brand community, you will have a strong brand. Customers expressing their who they are through your brand, because of their membership in your community is the goal.
Brand community members are important to brands as they buy more, and they are loyal. So, their marketing & lead generation cost is reduced. As members seek kinship, they adopt the “branded lifestyle” more and more to fit into the community and project a desired social identity. For new members of the subculture, brands act as a signal or ticket for group membership. Thus, brands with iconic connections to the community are adopted by new members to interact with the group.
It is important to research the best approach for your business and customers, given the amount of options, it is easy to invest in the wrong areas. You also risk investing in something that just ends up being market research, and not a genuine community where people connect and interact. They help people find solutions to their problems.
Marketers can find benefit in paying “attention to conditions that foster relational bonds leading to reliable repeat business.”
Creating a brand community is a tactic of relationship marketing, which is marketing activities that attract, develop, maintain, and enhance customer relationships (Grönroos, 1994).
What is community
Don’t over-manage your community - Conflict is Passion
Brand communities largely focus on the unifying characteristics of the community, but it is also important to embrace conflict amongst members. Communities and brands tend to avoid conflict, but it is important not to excessively control with community management. Do not put corporate interests over those of their customers. brand communities generate more value when companies create conditions in which communities can thrive, but members control them.
Communities are fundamentally political, “In-groups” need “out-groups” to define themselves.
Not everyone in the community will agree with each other, and brand communities thrive on conflict and contrast. Embrace the inner conflicts of your communities and it will thrive. Create a sense of contrast, conflict, and boundaries. For example, when a customer in the Apple community buys a Samsung product, they would be shunned into the out-group and alienated from the group. Similarly, PlayStation fans do not like Xbox fans.
Not everyone will value social interaction, or all care strongly about one certain cause. Each community will have its own norms and expectations and conflict based on these.
Thank you for reading.
This is only a small portion of the content for community as this week's topic for 50 weeks of marketing, sign up to get each week's topic sent directly to your inbox.
