Create community through social networks

 How to Create community through social networks

Platforms which can offer a presence for companies are Facebook, 
Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. Other social media platforms do exist, but they 
tend to have a smaller audience reach as they have a niche focus. The most commonly used 
options are:

1 Facebook company page. These are popular with customers for many types of compa-
nies as catalogued by Social Bakers (www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook). 
Facebook pages are designed to help businesses engage an audience and so promote 
their products and services. The members of the page are referred to as ‘fans’ who 
‘Like’ the page. These fans can then receive status update information from the busi-
ness page within their news feeds. Paid Facebook ads can be used to recruit new fans, 
but fans will also be attracted as other fans like the page or share information.

2 Twitter page. Twitter enables companies to set up their own page with communication 
made through messages that can contain up to 140 characters. Currently the pages for 
companies are the same as those for individuals with a short bio featuring the company. 
Crucially for communication, as with Facebook status updates, these messages can 
contain links through to the company website which contain relevant content or offers 
to engage the audience. Twitter is also commonly used for customer service. Some 
companies such as retailers Dell and ASOS have separate channels for customer offers 
and support.

3 LinkedIn Company pages and groups. LinkedIn is the most popular network to track 
and maintain professional contacts within the business world. Therefore, it is often 
utilised by academics, corporate executives and professionals. It allows users to promote 
their experience and expertise through resumes and professional recommendations. 
Companies can set up a company page which. similar to other networks, has status 
updates to communicate new products and services and users can comment on these. 
Many companies also set up their own group on LinkedIn which can cover a topic but 
is branded by the company. For example, jobs company OnlyMarketingJobs.com set up 
a group called Digital/Online Marketing Professionals (DOMP) which raises awareness 
of the brand although discussions are about digital marketing practice more widely.

4 Google+. Google+ is more recently established and also has company pages from 
companies like H&M and Cadbury. While these ‘flagship’ company pages are popular, 
others are less so and in 2014 Google declared that it wasn’t seeking to rival Facebook 
with Google+.

5 YouTube channels. These enable companies to post and host videos which users can 
comment on. The level of usage of these channels tends to be lower than that for other 
social networks so consequently they are not so widely used.
Before investing a lot of time in trying to build a community within a social network, 
it’s important for business to establish strategic priorities and processes that will give the 
best results. (We covered some of these decisions 

Creating your own presence

If a company sets up a community facility on its own site or sets up a separately branded 
community like the American Express Open Forum  which is 
targeted towards small and medium-sized businesses, it is more closely aligned to the goals 
and brand values of the website. Since registered members of the community will be on 
the company database, the community will provide opportunities for email marketing 
and research about the company and its products as part of the learning relationship. 
However, the brand may be damaged if customers criticise products, so some modera-
tion is requigave a good example of a community 
created by their brand on their site. Rather than having a separate community section, the 
community is integrated within the context of each car as a ‘second opinions’ review menu 
option in the context of each car. Interestingly, some negative comments are permitted to 
make the discussion more meaningful. However, they have not continued this approach 
at the time of writing this edition. Another approach used by Kia (www.kia.co.uk) is to 
feature selected reviews from an independent review service (www.revoo.com).
A potential problem with a company-hosted forum is that it may be unable to get suffi-
cient people to contribute to give the community ‘critical mass’. Communities are best 
suited to high-involvement brands, such as a professional body like CIPD, or those related 
to sports and hobbies and business-to-business.
Marketing to consumers using independent social networks
One potential benefit of marketing to virtual communities is that they are naturally 
formed around problems shared, benefits sought, interests etc. and so are naturally 
self-segmented. Segmentation develops organically around particular topics and inter-
ests – e.g. aficionados of quality coffee might debate the merits of various strains of 
coffee beans, of methods of preparation, of coffee machines and of service quality at 
coffee shop brands such as Starbucks. The owners of many specialist communities could 
be seeking advertising revenue (see Case Study 8 on Facebook), so they may accept links 
to merchants and display advertising if the match of product/service and community 
interests is close enough and the advertising doesn’t divert from the community. Although 
social networks such as Facebook and Google+ use advertising as a revenue source, for 
the advertisers responses tend to be low because the focus of users is on interacting, not 
on the ads.
Customer experience – the missing element required 
for customer loyalty
We have in this chapter shown how delivering relevant timely communications as part 
of permission marketing is important to developing loyalty. However, even the most 
relevant communications will fail if another key factor is not taken into account – this 
is the customer experience. If a first-time or repeat customer experience is poor due to 
a slow-to-download difficult-to-use site, then it is unlikely that loyalty from the online 
customer will develop. In the next chapter we review techniques used to help develop this 
experience.

Managing the digital customer experience for a brand used to be relatively straightforward; 
businesses simply had a website and an email newsletter alongside offline channels to sale. 
Today, the picture is far more complex, with the combination of touchpoints where mar-
keters seek to influence consumers stretching across paid, earned and owned media on dif-
ferent devices. Consider the customer-facing touchpoints of a brand’s online experience. 
These can include a desktop or mobile optimised site, mobile apps and company pages 
on social media. Company pages on social media today have a strong visual, interactive 
emphasis including Facebook or Google+ (text updates, video and image posts plus apps), 
Twitter (text updates can include images; video and Twitter cards enable interaction), 
LinkedIn (company pages and groups), YouTube (branded video channels), Instagram and 
Pinterest (image emphasis). Most companies seek to maintain a presence across all seven 
of these networks, although LinkedIn may be limited to careers. Even within offline chan-
nels, digital devices are being used to supplement the digital experience, as shown in Mini 
case study 7.1 on NFC in-store integration. For example, Debenhams, a leading UK retail 
adopter of mobile, shared this retrospective of their mobile development over the last two 
years or so. Speaking at the 2014 Mobile Marketing conference, Debenhams’ mobile mar-
keting manager, Sarah Bailie, explained: 
 Integrating online in store should be top priority for all multichannel retailers looking to 
create an experiential and destination shopping experience. Debenhams’ most valuable 
customers engage with the brand via multiple channels. 
 Creating effective digital experiences 
 Given the popularity of digital devices for finding out about brands and services, improv-
ing the capability to create and maintain these effective online brand presences is a key 
part of digital marketing. In the introduction we have described the range of different 
types of digital devices that offer digital interactions between a brand and its audience. For 
most businesses, the majority of interactions still occur on desktop and mobile websites, 
so this is where we focus in this chapter. Although social media have grown in importance, 
they are relatively unimportant in prompting website visits. ‘Effective’ means that the pres-
ence must deliver relevance and a satisfactory digital customer experience for its audience. 
At the same time, ‘effective’ means the presence must support and add value to the brand 
to deliver results for the company. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is increasingly being 
used by companies to improve the commercial contribution of online presence to a busi-
ness, as the Smart Insights interview introducing this chapter shows. 
 In this chapter, we will explore different practical actions that companies can take to 
create and maintain satisfactory online experiences. An indication of the need to produce 
a customer-centric online presence is given by Alison Lancaster, at the time the head of 
marketing and catalogues at John Lewis Direct and then marketing director who said: 
 A good site should always begin with the user. Understand who the customer is, how 
they use the channel to shop, and understand how the marketplace works in that cate-
gory. This includes understanding who your competitors are and how they operate online. 
You need continuous research, feedback and usability testing to continue to monitor and 
evolve the customer experience online. Customers want convenience and ease of order-
ing. They want a site that is quick to download, well-structured and easy to navigate.