Building loyal fan bases that turn into a community
There is no special drug or hack to building your brand and community. The statement, “the patient dog eats the fattest bone” is for businesses as well.
You can hire one of the best SEO content writers and your website or the content would not still rank first. This may come as a shock to you.
It means you can get a social media manager, an SEO expert and still not get results immediately. A lot of your content marketing results come from the distribution of content.
Content development and posting on social media won’t be enough to get engagements. Platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are designing usage of their platform in a way that ensures users can’t go out.
Distributing content
CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders must devise better ways of distributing content and it takes time. The same thing goes for your branding and community building. In our line of work (marketing), most people just want results now without thinking about what it takes to build a brand and a community of die-hard fans.
To start creating die-hard fans; you need to squeeze the life out of the media that you own.
For instance, as a business do you own an email list? If you do own one; how are you communicating with your audience? Did you buy your list from an email marketer promising you 10X ROI (Return on investment)?
Growing Your E-mail List
Growing your email list requires tactic and we would mention a few ways to help you get started:
1. Host webinars or shows: This is one of the most genuine ways to get people interested in your brand. As a software solutions company; can you offer free trials or bring industry leaders in your sector together for free or even paid?
A lot of people would be willing to give up their email address or contact to an interesting objective.
2. Landing Page pop-ups: Landing pages are sometimes confused with business homepages. A business home page or website specifically refers to what you offer, who you are etc. while a Landing page is specifically designed towards one objective which includes converting visitors to prospects by leaving irresistible offers. These irresistible offers encourage people to drop of their email addresses or contact.
3. Design Do-it-yourself templates: Do-it-yourself templates are viable options for building an email list. These businesses can create an excel sheet that allows people to calculate how their finances are doing. They don’t actually have to tell them to buy their CRM (Customer Relationship Management tool).
The CRM tool will be an option to upsell to your email list for those who subscribed for the templates. Email lists are one of the tools that can change your business today and help build a community of loyal fans. However, you can’t just get the results in a jiffy.
The second best way to create a loyal fan base is irresistible content
People only have a few sections for you to gain their attention. If you can gain attention you can get people to devour your content and share.
There is so much boring and same old content out there being regurgitated. We see things like how to makeup, three ways to do make-up, the make-up that you need, etc. We can’t reach a content peak if we are not devising new growth methods. One of them which is incorporating storytelling.
Storytelling is not about sharing fantasy stories but about designing your content to reflect real-life situations. It is a way to showcase how your products understand these realities. Perhaps some of you may remember Michael Power, the hero who saved his loved one in a sequence of Guinness advert that ran for several months. They wanted us to feel an emotional connection to the character and it worked like a charm.
If we listed out much of this content; either through songs or videos – there is only one thing consistent. This consistent feature is storytelling.
How then should you tell better stories through your content?
Here’s how you can tell better stories:
1. Tell stories through the eyes of the user: look for common experiences and interests that the users of your product share and build a narrative with that. For instance, if your audience is job seekers then the focus of your storytelling should be how John Smith could not land a job or how he landed his dream job. These are stories your audience can relate to.
2. Be human: The challenge here is that are we willing to allow our creative expression to flow. Have you ever thought of creating an avatar whose sole aim to help your customers and share exciting options? Have you ever done that to even answer the popular question or create content that puts a human face to the company?
We believe some of you may know Aisha from Carbon payment solutions. If you don’t then maybe Ope from Cowrywise would spark a thought. These are personalities created by organizations that are looking to be more human. Last we heard, Ope was seen sharing birthday cakes.
Conclusion
Building a community is not what you and I make it to be. It is the very heart of your content plan and not a mumbo jumbo of statistics but relevant and realistic to today’s consumers.
