Community Building 101 with the Hüify Squires

What is Community Building?

Community building is all about creating a feeling of association and involvement with a certain group. This ‘group’ can be a business, a brand name, or just a body of people with similar interests. The goal behind community building is to develop a close-knit group of followers who are interested in your group’s activities and who are active when your group makes decisions. In turn, these people are likely to be loyal customers, help promote your brand, and stand up for your company’s products or services.

Online Community Building, specifically, involves connecting with your followers, friends, and fans and building relationships with them via social media platforms. It allows individuals to share information and communicate with their fans, helping to build and humanize these relationships. Fans will ideally become brand advocates and communicate their opinions and share anything they find interesting to their personal social network. Communication is quick and easy through online social platforms, which enables groups & businesses to efficiently grow their community.

Who Needs Community Building?

Online Community building can benefit virtually any person or group with an idea that they want to promote. Whether you are in a garage band, starting a marketing agency, or trying to find duck-hunting enthusiasts online, community building can help you gain exposure and attract dedicated followers. Online community building can allow these groups to build fans across the globe instead of being restricted to smaller local areas.

How Does One Build an Online Community?

The first step to developing an online community for your business is to figure out what you consider your company’s core values and principles. Once you’ve established the main message your company wants to supplement with its product or service, it becomes much easier to procure an audience.

The next step is to create content. It is important to create something your fans and followers will find
relevant and useful so that they will want to follow you and routinely

check in to learn more. It is also important to be consistently updating and actively communicating on platforms so that fans feel the community is current and relatable. While having great content is considered the backbone of building an online community, building relationships with members and engaging in back-and-forth conversation is also essential.

How is Your Community Doing?

Google, bitly, Facebook and many other sites make it easy to track views and traffic to your sites. These sites also allow fan feedback and open communication so you’re aware who is a part of your community and what they think about it. Your ultimate goal is to reach as many meaningful viewers as possible so that when you create content your fans will want to share it with others. This, in turn, will help your company grow.