60% of businesses already own a branded community – and that number is only growing. With over 30% of of a company’s revenue being directly influenced by branded communities, more businesses than ever are choosing to harness their power.
These community spaces drive engagement, which helps build brand loyalty and secure those all-important sales. Brand communities are vital for rewarding your most loyal customers, and going beyond the typical customer-brand relationship. If you want to strengthen customers’ bonds with your brand and ensure they keep coming back for more, here are ten examples of brand communities that drive wild engagement.
The following brand communities utilize specific strategies to encourage community engagement and create a thriving and sustainable community. By implementing these techniques, you can do the same.
Peloton is a fitness brand that predominantly sells indoor bikes and treadmills to fitness enthusiasts. They originally created their community to connect with fitness enthusiasts, motivating them to embrace their fitness journey and reach their goals via there own products.
Peloton uses their community to highlight the brand’s values, partnering with a variety of nonprofit organizations and brand ambassadors to bring positive change to communities around them. This builds trust with their community members and their wider audience, turning them into paying customers.
LEGO is known for their iconic children’s building toys, recognizeable all over the world. They’ve partnered with popular brands such as Harry Potter, Star Wars, Batman and more to appeal to a wide range of children with different interests.
LEGO ideas builds on the community that comes with creating such a well-loved children’s toy, encouraging LEGO enthusiasts to submit designs of their own and vote on other users’ projects. The community then goes one step further, as winning designs can be turned into official LEGO sets.
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Fitbit is a product that users can wear to track their health and fitness. It monitors heartbeat, steps, calories, and even sleep. Fitbit’s community is designed to help its users achieve their fitness goals, in whatever form that looks like, by providing motivation and support.
Fitbit’s blog, The Pulse, offers tips, tricks, and helpful information. It also provides a place for users to give feedback and ask questions about the product.
Sephora is an established and well-loved beauty brand that sells a range of different products from lipsticks and lip tints to mascara and eyeshadow. Their community, Sephora Beauty Insider, offers a space for beauty enthusiasts to ask questions, share tips, and discuss their favorite make up, helping to create deeper connections with other Sephora fans and the brand itself.
The Microsoft Tech Community is a popular platform built for developers and IT professionals. Users can share their knowledge with other members, ask questions, get answers, and even collaborate with Microsoft technologies.
Harley Davidson is famous for their iconic motorcycles. The Harley Owners Group (HOG) is a community designed to bring together both owners and fans of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, creating a space for them to connect with each another and this iconic, time-tested brand.
Membership to this community brings free access to the Harley Owners Group Magazine, the H-D Museum, exclusive events, and more.
Into the Gloss, created and managed by Glossier, initially began as a beauty blog where Glossier fans could find product recommendations, tips, and exclusive interviews with beauty insiders and influencers. Since then, Into the Gloss has developed into a thriving and vibrant community filled with beauty lovers worldwide.
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Airbnb’s Community Center is the perfect place for hosts to connect, share stories, and offer each other advice and support, from listings and bookings to building a business. The goal of the community center is to provide a safe space that can help Airbnb hosts optimize their space and grow.
Spotify, the music streaming giant, has a space where users can discuss music, audiobooks, and podcasts, share their favorite playlists, vote for ideas, and troubleshoot any issues they may be having regarding Spotify. They even have a tracker that lets users know how many questions have been asked and answered within the community.
The GoPro Community is a platform designed specifically for GoPro users, providing a space where they can share their videos, talk about their GoPro experiences, get help and advice on both the GoPro and the app, and even share tips with other users.
The brand community examples above may all belong to different niches, from beauty and make-up to fitness, but they all have one thing in common: they all deploy similar techniques to help their community thrive, grow, and become successful. Here are some common successful factors and how they contribute to a thriving and sustainable community.
Many brand communities employ niche-specific strategies and features designed to drive conversations and encourage user engagement. Some offer users exclusive access to specific classes and workshops, such as the Peloton Community fitness classes, where others may have designed specific spaces where users can ask questions and discuss topics that interest them, such as Harley-Davidson’s community.
It’s important to continue to actively encourage engagement, as this is the main thing that will contribute to a sustainable, paying community. Engaged members are more likely to stay loyal to the brand, which will result in reduced churn rates. By providing a space where community members feel they can interact with like-minded individuals, you encourage them to keep coming back and keep your brand at the forefront of their minds.
Brand communities provide a place where brands can offer additional value to their most loyal customers. Many of the brands above provide additional tips, tricks, techniques, workshops, and advice that users wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere.
Furthermore, branded communities provide value in terms of support and advice, whether from other community members or industry experts. This strengthens community members’ loyalty to the community and makes them feel like they’re getting their time and money’s worth.
User-generated content is important for any brand. UGC can enhance community involvement, and make members feel like they’re truly part of the community, whether that’s through sharing videos from their GoPro or swapping their beauty routines and top tips with others. This, in turn, strengthens the community and drives engagement.
Loyalty programs and rewards are a great strategy for enhancing community involvement. When members feel like they’re being rewarded, this makes them more likely to interact with the wider community to seek out recognition. Furthermore, it can push others to interact more, too, when they see other community members being praised.
Rewards can come in many different forms, including community leaderboards that congratulate the top contributors or as discounts and offers when members sign up for newsletters. All of this can contribute to stronger brand loyalty, as it shows that the brand likes to give back to its members.
Implementing the above successful strategies to your brand community will help you drive wild engagement and build a sustainable space for followers of your brand. Here’s some best practices that can help you implement them.
To foster engagement and encourage participation, it’s important to pick strategies that work specifically for your brand. For example, if you’re a make up or beauty brand, then the strategies from Glossier and Sephora might be a good fit for you. Create a blog or a newsletter with make-up tips, tricks and techniques that your target audience will get value out of.
However, if your brand centers around fitness coaching, cooking or a creative hobby (such as painting or drawing), then tutorials, online workshops and how-tos are a good way to enrich your community and encourage engagement.
Don’t forget to track your engagement and growth through community analytics.
Content will soon lose its exclusivity if customers can access the same information on your social media channels. Make sure you’re providing content that is exclusive to your community, whether that’s on your community blog, on a specific platform like Teach.io, or within your newsletter. This will help improve engagement and retention rates.
To drive engagement, it’s important that your community’s atmosphere is supportive and encouraging, regardless of your niche. Provide spaces for community members to offer advice, ask questions and reach out for support from both industry experts and community members. This will help build bonds within the community and provide overall customer satisfaction, driving engagement to new heights.
Teach.io is a fantastic platform to help brands and educators drive engagement. Community managers can post content (such as videos and articles), gather feedback through polls, and engage with the community through one-to-one conversations and group messaging. Create live events with industry experts and ensure your whole community remains in sync with the built-in calendar.
Driving community engagement can be a challenge, especially if you’ve just started to build your community, but it’s not impossible. Learning from established and successful brand communities, such as Glossier, Harley-Davidson, GoPro and more can help you harness the right strategies to increase your engagement. Using the examples we’ve provided above, you can take actionable steps towards building a successful online community.
