Growing up in a small rural town, the common interests of which to base my community were limited, circumstantial, and mostly geographic.
“We ride the same bus to school and have the same teacher? Wow, we have so much in common!”
But today, with the invention and dissemination of the Internet, people from all corners of the world are able to form communities based on whatever truly interests them and are no longer restricted by what geographically limits them.
Organizing niche online communities is a new frontier in business and marketing. The academic world is exploring and conducting research on this topic and the coming results are sure to give a better understanding of the phenomenon that so many of us are already participating in.
The Journal of Service Management published an article titled Managing Brands and Customer Engagement in Online Brand Communities. I found the article to be eye-opening and encourage anyone interested in working with online communities to read the full paper here.
Getting Started With Online Brand Communities
Brand communities existed before the advent of the Internet. These are communities formed by brand-customer engagement. You’ve probably participated in some level of a traditional brand community, be it as simple as a loyalty program at a movie theater or a sports car club.
Naturally, an online brand community occurs when that brand-customer engagement happens online. Social media made this abundantly possible and marketing teams have been more and more creative in using these tools to further their online brand communities.
To meet the needs of customers in this customer-brand online engagement, it is helpful to understand what drives a customer to engage in the first place.
The review of online brand community research found that there are three main “drivers” that push customers across the threshold from not engaging to being part of the online brand community. These are:
1. Brand-related Drivers
2. Social Drivers
3. Functional Drivers
Let’s take a closer look.
BRAND RELATED DRIVERS
There are two kinds of brand-related drivers; the first being brand identification or when a person has a personal identification with the brand. This is when your customer feels that your brand is part of who they are.
Think of a musician who would say “I play a Fender guitar and it is my passion and livelihood, it is who I am!” The musician is driven to participate in the Fender online brand community because it is a space with other passionate Fender enthusiasts to share and reaffirm their identity.
Then there is the brand’s symbolic function. A customer may be driven to engage with an online brand community if they believe in what the brand stands for. I personally am a fan of the Rubik’s Cube. It’s a symbol for logic and more broadly intellect.
In either brand-related driver, the motivation is within the customer because of their devotion to the product.
SOCIAL DRIVERS
When I lived in Washington, D.C., one of my favorite events was the National Book Festival. I was “driven” to attend the festival each year because of the social benefits.
There, I could browse recently published books and participate in the author’s Q&A session. Attendees would chat while waiting in signing lines which was a great place to get recommendations for similar books.
This, of course, was a traditional brand community (the brand being the National Book Festival) but the social drivers are the same for online brand communities as well.
Customers are motivated to engage with online brand communities to receive social benefits. In the example above these would be the exposure to new books, the Q&A session, and more book recommendations.
There’s also the social identity that comes along with participating in a brand community either on or offline. Customers who engage in your online brand community can be driven to receive the affirmation that they are part of a larger whole.
FUNCTIONAL DRIVERS
How many times have you seen an advertisement to get 10% off your next purchase just by “Liking” the companies Facebook page or following them on Twitter?
Have you ever logged into Microsoft’s support community for assistance in animating your power point presentation?
Did you spend time reading reviews of the last big product you purchased online?
All of these are examples of functional benefits that drive customers to engage with your online brand community. By offering something of value to your consumer, they are likely to engage and in turn contribute to the community with their insight and promotion of the product.
What is Driving YOUR Customers?
But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Before you ask something of your customers, ask yourself, or better yet, ask your customers, if they are driven to participate in your online brand community because of the brand-related drivers, social drivers or functional drivers, or maybe a little of each?
Understanding what is driving their engagement, will help you determine how you can better meet their needs.
Again, to read the full paper, Managing Brands and Customer Engagement in Online Brand Communities, click here. Or check back next week to read about the next section, outcomes.