How to Grow Your Business Using Social Media

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Business & Social Media Marketing Articles

Social Media Marketing: 8 Reasons to Build an Online Community Around Your Products & Services

Whether you’re marketing and selling to consumers or businesses, you’re finding that buyers are few and far between during this rocky economy.

People still buying these days are carefully evaluating options before choosing.  Even as small business owners are dealing with lost sales, the Web 2.0 world is producing more social media websites daily.  Empowered consumers and businesses have more options than ever to learn about products and services.

In addition to staying connected with friends and family, social media and social networking web sites help customers check out products before buying.  Some social networking and social media sites are where people interact by sharing opinions, preferences and experiences.

Consumers can click over to Yelp San Diego (or other city) for reviews of local services and restaurants among others. Technology decision makers use ITToolbox.com for peer opinions about the quality of each vendor’s products/services and even about which company white papers are worth reading.

Wouldn’t you like to host a web site that your prospects and customers trusted for help solving problems?  A website with lots of “how-to” content that offers help and assistance when solving problems?  An online gathering place where your best customers rave about your products?  Publicly?  What’s not to love?

It’s time to rethink your small business marketing.  Turbo-charge your company’s reputation.  Build an online community around your products and your services.  Around your raving fan customers that love using your solutions.  

And a recap of reasons I believe now is the time to make the leap to community building as a growth strategy.  Especially when customers are making fewer purchases.  Now’s the time to stand out.    

What is an online customer community?
Online customer communities are websites that are hosted by a business for the use and benefit of its customers and users.  These are websites that do not (directly) market and sell your products and services.  Online customer community sites provide a forum where buyers, users, fans of products and services come to:

• Find answers, new ideas and solutions to problems when using your solutions

• Share experiences and expertise

• Connect with other like minded people who love to use digital cameras, need to solve invoicing problems for their small business and collaborate

• Learn from the expertise of the host company and, best of all, from each other

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?  How cool for your company to offer this benefit


7 Reasons To Build An Online Customer Community

1.    Stand out from the competition. The ability to win customers and sales using traditional one-way marketing is over. Yep boys and girls, it’s true.  The age of using a megaphone to shout into the marketplace about how wonderful your products and services are has gone the way of the boom box.   Corporate-speak press releases, advertising, trade show exhibits and slick 4-color brochures alone won’t bring in the suspects, prospects and leads.  Online customer communities provide an excellent way for your business to share content, knowledge and engage in two-way interactions with customers and prospects.

2.    Authentic two-way conversations are the new reality for successful marketing and business growth. You’ll benefit from building for your company as many opportunities as possible for getting closer to the ‘3-foot sales conversation’ with your prospects online when they are searching for solutions.  Authentic conversations are the foundation for building good customer relationships and we all know that customer relationships result in lead generation.  Conversations about how your solutions help buyers solve problems and meet goals.

3.   Encourage word of mouth.   Word of mouth is the best marketing.  Ever.  When buying, we all prefer to have a recommendation about a company or product from a trusted friend or colleague (word of mouth).  Online customer community websites offer a great place for your best customers to post testimonials about great experiences with your company.  They also offer the

4.    Build trust. Be the first in your industry or area to offer a community web site that provides a forum, a platform, where users and customers can experience genuine help.  You’re not selling in your online community.  You’re building trust and credibility by taking the time to offer unbiased help.  You’re offering an online destination that users, customers, prospects rely on as a trusted source for questions and answers.

5.    Deepen customer loyalty.  In addition to helping you attract new customers, an online community provides value to your existing customers.  You become an ongoing trusted resource for information. Not just a provider of wonderful products and services.

6.    Make it easier for prospects to find you.  A second Internet presence.  It’s like having a Starbuck’s store at one end of the mall and a Starbuck’s cart at the other end.  Two opportunities for coffer lovers/customers to find you.

7.   Turn customer support into a competitive advantage.  An online customer community differentiates you from your competition and (bonus) results in savings in customer support costs.   

Go beyond the common ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ page.  In an online community, or forum, customers can answer each other’s questions.  Sometimes the best answer will come from your customers and not from your staff.  Combine customer service and social marketing like Zappos (blog posts about customer service employees) and Freshbooks’ (Painless Billing) Community Website. Intuit has been doing this for years with Intuit Community including “Help to Start and Grow a Small Business”, Community Forums for Accountants (Quick Books Support) and Quicken Forums.