This is an article “How Communities Help Your Business” by Marc Primo
Businesses have long learned how communities help them build strong ties with their customers and partners. With the feedback they get from stakeholders, today’s entrepreneurs are able to improve the way they run their business, exchange thought leadership insights, and work in a more collaborative environment. As they say, more heads are better than one, and communities can certainly offer a lot for your business if you know how to get along well with people.
Building a structured community that can help your business starts with how you define your goals, values, and mission. Some opt for meaningful corporate citizenship ventures while others simply engage their followers in online communities to promote loyalty and support. Either way, communities can make or break a business knowing how to foster stronger ties is the first step in making everyone around you help out in achieving your goals.
Customer communication
If your business is online, having a reliable customer service hotline can help you address your customers pain points and offer solutions in real time. Always anticipate questions and requests for assistance from your customers and have your employees trained on effective customer service management who can answer the basic queries about your product.
When it comes to more serious matters about your business like for example cases of reputational attacks and crisis management, assemble a public relations team who can draft holding statements in case there’s a need.
Communicating with your stakeholders is very important and you want the right teams to address every question they might ask. Keep yourself aware of what’s happening around your business and break bread with the right people from your community so you can ask for help and support as necessary, or extend the same to the community when they are the ones who need it.
Corporate social responsibility
Prominent companies set themselves apart by allocating a slice of their overall budget for corporate social responsibility programs. These programs help build brands, establish networks, and reflect your business as one of the good guys who are looking out for their customers.
Doing such programs as fundraisers, community marathons, and green initiatives bring people together to discuss problems and formulate solutions while your business is at the center doing the important pivots. Best of all, these programs associate your brand to important programs that create some good for the community and gain stronger support as they go on for longer campaigns, and even give you the leverage in conducting crowdsourcing projects wherein more people are lending their helping hands for your mutual goals. In turn, this gives them a sense of involvement in your business and that awesome feeling of accomplishing something important.
Thought leadership
Being a significant part of the community also gives you a voice to share your ideas and solutions to a greater number of people. It can help turn you from a businessman to a trusted advisor who can address people’s concerns and help them out.
Thought leadership is one of the many ways you can also build your brand via online posts and PR articles on broadsheets. Joining relevant communities that support your bid in being a captain of your industry places you and your brand at the apex of people’s top of mind choices. Sharing is caring and as long as you are genuine about helping other people, being a thought leader for the community should be a piece of cake.
Communities are essential to a business the way fans are the heart of a sports club. The importance of helping the community and winning their trust can be widely seen today during these difficult times when a pandemic has affected most businesses globally. If you have invested in your community way long before COVID-19 struck, it’s pretty much a safe bet that you’ll be fine and still afloat when everything goes back to normal.