by Asif Choudry
PR and marketing campaigns too often use broadcast and sales techniques to engage with audiences. The most effective way to build a brand is through long-term relationships developed from community building.
You’ll learn:
• How being part of a community addresses our emotional needs
• Why a multi-channel approach is more effective when community building
• The level of commitment required to successfully run a community
Seth Godin wrote: “How do we find the right people on the right day in a way that creates value for them and for us? How do we deliver the right service to the right audience in the right way? The rising stars of our economy are in this business now, even more than production or finance.
“If you’re seeking to build awareness, consider building a community instead.”
Throughout my career I’ve met many amazing people working in communications and marketing and they are masters of telling great stories about their organisations, colleagues or clients. However, they are too modest to shout about the value they bring to the table.
I wanted to create a community that celebrated their hero status and brought together like-minded people both in real life and virtually to share ideas, best practice and support each other. This is how #CommsHero was born.
Before writing this, I hadn’t thought formally about how to build a community, it’s just something I’d done naturally from working in sales and marketing for 25 years. My job is to network, build and engage with networks, start conversations, nurture relationships and often work on projects with people from my networks that have become clients.
Networking or community building
Over recent years, the term networking has been superseded by community building. Perhaps this is down to ‘networking’ now exclusively being attributed to groups of salespeople meeting at Chamber of Commerce breakfasts or BNI meetings.
You may recognise this diagram of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
FIGURE 1 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
After physiological and safety needs have been fulfilled, the third level of human needs is social and involves feelings of belongingness and love. The need for interpersonal relationships motivates behaviour.
Affiliating means being part of a group, such as family, friends or work. Everyone wants to be part of a group
It was that sense of belonging that I felt was missing from a comms community that shared many common goals but was divided by aspects such as geography, job title, sector and professional body membership.
I have worked with many comms people across all those aspects and never considered them different. It was this factor that inspired me to do something about this and the concept of #CommsHero was founded in 2014.
Fast forward to 2020 and the community has over 10,000 followers on Twitter and will be hosting the 13th event, which is a week-long virtual gathering with thirty speakers talking about a variety of comms topics.
I aim to make this the start of an annual week-long event where members of the #CommsHero community remind themselves of the amazing work they do. Here are my tips on how to build a community of heroes.
Be multichannel
The digital world has enabled us to reach many people quickly. However, there is no shortcut to building a following and you should use all the channels available.
Years of relationship building as part of my job helped me to start the #CommsHero community with a small group of advocates and brand champions. #CommsHero exists mainly online using Twitter.
Marketing is more than just Twitter, although it does play a big part in how the community is continually engaged @CommsHero.
Multichannel is important and using the right channels for the right people is how to get your message heard. We have used personalised print, handwritten letters, Twitter, LinkedIn, photos, videos and speaking to people in real life (yes, this is what we actually did before email and social media).
It takes time and effort
Devoting time to engaging your community does matter (and not just when you want something from them either). If you are committed to building your community, you must be willing to ‘put a shift in’. Those long hours outside of the day job creating and having conversations with people does pay off. It gets you loyalty and exposure to an ever-increasing network of people. Those fans are more likely to listen and support you when it is your time.
Be there for your community
Do not let digital technology make you lazy. If you are posting content to create engagement, make sure you are present regularly to reply. #CommsHero does not do automated responses or scheduled tweets. Every engagement is by a human and that guarantees authenticity. There are many opportunities to be there for your community and these include birthdays, job posts, celebrating good work, talking about pets, children, life – the list is endless.
Dare to be different
There is lots of noise out there and being the most-worthy campaign does not guarantee you will be heard. Focus on crafting creative and engaging content that will make you stand out. This content must be kept fresh and although the #CommsHero logo remains the same, the look of the brand has evolved over six years. However, how the brand makes you feel has never changed.
Being different requires commitment. For example, handwriting letters (in this instance one to every attendee of a #CommsHero event and those lucky recipients of swag). I had forgotten what it is like to get writer’s cramp, but it is worth every bit of pain as the engagement and response has always been amazing.
Make it a real live thing
#CommsHero has hosted an event every year since starting in 2014. In some years we have hosted three or four in different parts of the UK. Bringing your online community together to meet each other and further cement those online relationships is amazing to see in action. A key factor is to make this type of gathering fun, worthwhile, accessible and value for money. Many blogs have been written by #CommsHero attendees that suggests this has been achieved and they can be found here https://commshero.com/blog/.
Get your community involved
We have invited members of the #CommsHero community to take over the Twitter account.
@AmandaColeman is one example of this and she blogged about this experience.
https://amandacomms1.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/social-media-heroes-or-villains/
Some of the speakers for the events have been chosen from the #CommsHero community. Also, others have volunteered to facilitate parts of the events or write blogs that are published on www.commshero.com. This gives the community members the chance to really be involved.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea
Being a community builder requires you to develop a thick skin. You cannot and will not please everyone and that can sometimes affect you personally.
My first experience of ‘haters’ was after the first event in 2014 but as you can see, the following has grown and #CommsHero goes from strength to strength. Your loyal following from the community will get you through any of these times and that is why it is important to invest in those relationships.
Overall, being the founder of a growing community is a great responsibility and it comes with many rewards. The positive feedback received from the many people who have engaged with #CommsHero since 2014 has been a constant source of inspiration to keep it going. I would recommend community building to everyone but make sure you’re in it for the long-term. You will make many friends and possibly a few enemies, however the good far outweighs the bad.
During my research I found these useful articles on community building:
• The 10 step process for building a thriving community from scratch
https://cmxhub.com/build-a-thriving-community-from-scratch/
• How to build a strong community https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310613
Asif Choudry is Sales & Marketing Director with resource, an award-winning creative marketing and print provider. He is a CIM Fellow and Chartered Marketer. He is the founder of #CommsHero
(@CommsHero), the award winning conference that is a community celebrating the heroics comms people perform every day. Although a big fan of social media, he’s not afraid to use tried and tested comms channels like meeting IRL (In Real Life), speaking on the phone and handwriting a letter or three.
Twitter: @AsifChoudry
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/asifchoudry/
Web: weareresource.co.uk/