Human nature often craves shared connections and a sense of belonging and we find it in almost everywhere we can: church, workplace, social gathering, and now online – in smaller communities.
Recently, you will notice the shift of social media platforms from pushing content to a large pool of people with different interests to creating more engaging and meaningful ways to share our innermost thoughts within a deeply connected community of like minds.
This has led to a significant increase in micro-communities, such as Twitter Space, Facebook groups, Discord, Reddit, and Instagram channels, allowing people to find groups that resonate with them which promote genuine engagement.
So, how can brands tap into these growing trends to promote an authentic and effective approach to engagement.
The Rise of Micro-Communities
Brands and individuals alike are now embracing micro-communities with platforms like Quora, Reddit, Discord, and Telegram seeing significant increase in users as they join specific discussion groups.
These platforms, also referred to as micro social media platforms or small online groups/channels, provide a more intimate space to connect deeply with people of like minds away from the niche or general online netizens. Users and brands alike also have the opportunity to escape from social media feeds overwhelmed with viral content, information overload, and irrelevant ads, creating a personal approach to enhance credibility.
Moreover, a report shows that 41% of consumers trust recommendations from online micro-community members as much as personal people. This creates a growing need for brands and marketers to explore this communication channel, build brand loyalty and trust with their Target audience.
How Brands Can Leverage Micro-Communities on Social Platforms
As proven, the value micro-communities provide for brands encompasses building trust, credibility, and authority. They are another effective avenue to enhance brand awareness as businesses are introduced to an engaged and motivated audience with similar values and ideology. Therefore, these small communities can work as a strategy to generate quality leads and increase sales. Reddit has more than 1.6% of social media website traffic in only the United States.
Many successful brands have jumped in on this trend, benefitting from more personalized and targeted online marketing efforts. Here are different ways you can leverage these small focus groups to achieve significant results as a brand.
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Identify Your Audience
We believed that before you got to the point of creating or joining a micro-community, you already defined and understood your audience. However, you still need to do your research to identify the ideal communities to create or join, considering their hobbies and interests.
Leveraging your audience insight features, surveys, and social media listening tools will help you understand your ideal customers and what they are actively discussing. Therefore, establishing this level of closeness with your target audience will position micro communities as an effective marketing strategy.
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Engage with Relevant Content
Once you have decided to take the bull by the horn, first kick off by joining already existing groups/spaces that align with your brand. This is not to say that you cannot open your own community as a first step, especially if your brand is popular. Platforms such as Facebook groups, Telegram, Reddit, and Discord enable you to create private communities to connect with your target audience. For newer brands, you can offer a discount off their next purchase as a reward to join your group.
The next steps will be to actively engage in conversations, share relevant content, and establish relationships with community members. This goes beyond sharing general posts as members will resonate more with helpful tips, stories, and resources.
Over time, you will gain the trust, interest and loyalty of members of these micro communities. This approach converts better than outrightly selling to them.
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Offers And Promotions
Create exclusive offers tailored to micro-communities to make members feel valued and seen. Limited-time discounts, early access, or member-only bundles are some of the offers that encourage engagement and promote word-of-mouth marketing within relevant small groups.
When the offer reflects the community’s interests, it feels personal and not spammy. And as earlier explained, it helps in increasing loyalty and deeper connection between brands and community members.
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User-Generated Content
Encouraging micro-community members to share their own content like posts, videos, photos, or personal stories also goes a long way to build authenticity and trust. Asides from boosting engagement, it will organically convert your members into brand advocates.
Brands can leverage these UGC content to understand real-life experiences in engaging with your product or service..Furthermore,User-generated content from community members significantly contributes to brand trust and credibility, especially for anyone searching for your product or service during the marketing journey.
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Redefine Product Strategy
Micro-communities offer direct insight into the core needs of your target audiences. Allowing community members to share their feedback and reviews about your products or industry will provide you with organic insights and trends to refine product features, develop new offerings, and maybe explore possible collaborations..
This community-driven approach ensures the product fits real needs, increases and reduces the risk of market misalignment.
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Collaborations And Partnerships
As a brand, you can also collaborate with influencers, creators, or leaders with a strong following within micro-communities. These collaborations will allow you to effectively tap into the pre-existing followers who have established trust with the influencer, making promotions feel more like personal recommendations than advertisement.
Therefore, find relevant influencers within your niche or community that aligns with your brand’s objectives and value to help increase brand credibility.
Next Steps for Brands
Micro communities are not replacing existing social media platforms but creating a more meaningful connection and loyalty between brands and consumers. Therefore, invest in this growing trend to gain a significant advantage in your industry.
Regularly monitor your feedback and engagement metrics in these small platforms and use these insights to tweak their strategies to achieve maximum results. Fortunately, these micro platforms are most likely to regularly introduce more features to better support these communities.
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