Social media community - Why are social media communities important? Social media community engagement, Community online, Social media community online management tools
You've probably noticed that there are a lot of brand pages and community pages on social media.
There are Facebook pages where you can promote a specific brand. Assume that a biking brand has a page where all customers who are either paying customers of this biking brand or people who are influenced by biking are members of this community online.
When it comes to marketing, such online communities are extremely valuable. These communities allow customers to play different roles other than being transactional people who buy your product and pay you money.
What are the different roles that the community can play online?
If you provide the right virtual customer environment or the right online community on a social media platform, a customer can play the roles of product conceptualizer, product designer, product tester, product support specialist, and product marketer.
Product Conceptualizer
Many times, it is critical for marketers and businesses to gather new ideas, and how will you be able to gather these new ideas if you have already exhausted all of your internal ideas?
Assume you work for a large corporation. You are a very large organization with a very strong research and development team.
Now, everyone in your organization has been thinking about what new things to add to the product and what kind of advancements to make to the product, but you've run out of ideas.
You are incapable of thinking outside the box. Now is the time to enlist the help of the customer to think for you.
As a result, the customer is frequently asked to generate ideas. You can host a small event if you have a virtual community, such as a Facebook community or a community on any social media platform.
You can hold a small competition in which customers are asked to submit ideas for the product, such as what the new product should look like, what needs should be addressed, and what advancements should be made in the existing product, among other things.
Customers can be asked for ideas, and the ideas that they provide can often be evaluated, with one of these customers receiving an award. So the customer can now provide a conceptualization of what the product should be.
Product Designer
In marketing, there is also an intriguing concept known as co-creation, in which the customer and the manufacturer collaborate to create new value or new products.
Once a customer has provided you with an idea for a product, the customer can now be involved in the design of the actual product.
Customers are frequently people who are extremely enthusiastic about the product. Assume we were talking about telescopes earlier.
So, if you are a telescope manufacturer and want to have telescopes that go beyond the existing range of telescopes that consumers can buy, you might want to bring in the expertise of a customer who can come on board with your design team and create the type of new product that the customer might want to use.
So some customers who are extremely knowledgeable, who have the expertise, can be provided with social media community management tools, or they can be part of your development team and design the entire product for you.
So the second role that customers can play is that of product designers.
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Product Tester
Customers can also volunteer to be product testers.
Consider this: if you have an online social media community engagement, you can most likely test the new product with the members of that community.
You can grant them special access to Beta versions of your application. You can give them access to some type of content that you created and are testing to see if it will work or not.
If you have a new product on the horizon, these people may be asked to come to test it and provide feedback.
If you're thinking about doing a focus group interview, you can bring these people on board and then ask them to discuss the new product and gather insights from them.
So, in all of these ways, consumers in a social community, such as a Facebook community, can also become product testers.
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Product Support Specialist
In many cases, you will notice that when consumers are given the opportunity to be a part of a community, they will begin to solve many of the problems that other consumers are experiencing.
For example, if you are a member of a community of people who are interested in photography, because I, as a camera manufacturer, have created this community on Facebook where a lot of my customers and prospective customers or photography enthusiasts are members, and I, as a customer, haven't been able to figure out how to take photos with this camera.
Rather than going directly to the company and asking for insights or technical support, I can come to this platform, talk about it with other customers, and other customers who are on this platform will now gladly assist me.
So the company has created a new support mechanism and a new support specialist without actually spending any money because they have a social community or an online community.
As a result, customers can play the role of support specialists.
Product Marketer
Finally, many of these customers will now be sharing content that you provide, making recommendations, and creating a lot of content on their own about how the product is and how it is useful to them or other customers.
As a result, they play the role of product marketers.
Conclusion
So, once again, let me try to summarise the various roles that customers play in a social community.
They can be product conceptualizers. They could be product designers. They can be product testers. They can work as support representatives, customers, or marketers.
So, having a virtual or online community allows you to achieve all of these different elements, which is why many brands today are attempting to create virtual communities.
They want you to be a part of the virtual community because they want to learn more about you or use your expertise in various areas. You can do all of these different things.
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