SocialEngine Blog

From traditional fundraising and peer-to-peer loans to the emerging models of consumer-to-business and marketplace loans, the potential of crowdfunding is seemingly limitless.

A Needs Business

Crowdfunding can be thought of, simply, as the process of pooling funds together to support a cause, creative project or even a product. While this idea is not new it certainly has been scaled to fit current needs. It is, in fact, a “needs” business. The industry was born out of necessity following the 2008 economic collapse when heightened restrictions in the financial sector made traditional loan vehicles more difficult to obtain.

Expanding the Scope to Business Sector

The relatively new and innovative models of crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending have led to explosive growth over in the US over the last several years increasing the number of platforms, from 191 to 375. Globally, the numbers are much higher. The marketplace has taken notice and many sites are now beginning their foray into business sectors.

Mitigating Risk

When crowdfunding a business, experts mitigate higher risks by leveraging certain assets, making investing in a business attractive even to novice crowdfunders. This may be accomplished by trading or purchasing invoices and other equity-based transaction models. Many crowdfunding websites use new forms of data aggregation, in proprietary ways to discover the creditworthiness of applicants, further reducing monetary risks to funders.

Exciting Potential

For some, raising capital for a startup or being an important early investor in a creative endeavor is more about the thrill than the return. However, as crowdfunding sites learn to meld the altruistic experience with potential for profit, more investors this burgeoning industry.

People are the foundation of and the reason for community, so how better to grow yours than by reaching out to new people and strengthening involvement with member you already have? Capitalizing on both well-established and new relationships lays a strong foundation for future growth.

And incorporating the following six important “R’s” into your growth strategy sets your community firmly on that foundation.

1. Reach Out

Reaching out to new people adds numbers to your community, but more than that, it brings in fresh ideas and energy. Purposeful networking, casual conversations, and specially planned outreach events are all good ways to reach out and boost numbers.

2. Reconnect 

Once attracted to your community, new recruits need grounding and intentional contacts. Setting up specific mentoring opportunities connects new members with well-established members, ensuring continued interest for both and improving retention.

3. Respect

From the quietest to the most vocal, each voice deserves an attentive audience. Community members who see their ideas consistently considered and incorporated feel respected, keeping them engaged and motivated.

4. Respond

How better to include people and improve than to elicit feedback from the community and take action based on their ideas and experience? Not every idea is a good idea, but every member is an important member and putting as many ideas into practice as possible shows that.

5. Revise

Mentoring and involvement looking good? Keep going. Thinking you have arrived is the quickest way to demise while continually looking for ways to change things up, improve, and expand maintains interest, attracts attention, and demonstrates vitality.

6. Risk

From new project ideas to new outreach tactics, taking educated risks involves new people and attracts even more. Not every new endeavor yields profitable or positive results, but avoiding risks will certainly result in stagnation, halting growth and contributing to the deterioration of the foundation you so painstakingly laid.

Conclusion

This brings us full circle to the first step: out-reach. Community growth will always include both bringing in new people and ensuring the continued engagement of those already a part. Constantly taking risks to accomplish both aspects leads to growth, both in numbers, depth, and strength.

Every business owner, CEO or executive board would love to have a customer base as loyal as the online and offline communities that surround brands like Harley Davidson and Apple. For these customers, money is no object. In many cases, neither is time or a personal life. These customers will stand in line overnight just to get dibs on early releases of new products.

These customers simply must buy the products, the accessories and even a lot of the promotional merch. In addition, you would literally have to pay some of these customers to stop talking about the brand they love whenever the topic comes up.

How does this happen for a company? Can it happen for your company?

With the SocialEngine Platform anyone can build a community. However, the question still remains, how do you then get customers to get excited about the community you’ve built and about your brand?

What is Brand Loyalty at Its Core?

Brand loyalty is when a customer turns to you for everything related to your brand, niche or industry. Take Harley Davidson for example. A brand loyal Harley Davidson customer would contact the brand, visit a local retailer or turn to a brand forum or social media platform for:

• General help and advice regarding motorcycle products,
• Service recommendations related to motorcycle products,
• Advice on buying new motorcycles, used motorcycles and motorcycle related products,
• Places to find for sale new and used motorcycles and motorcycle related products, and
• Resources like book recommendations, links to videos , upcoming conference announcements, local motorcycle repair and maintenance classes, biker events in their area and general information on the cycling lifestyle

These customers wouldn’t consider contacting Honda, visiting a local Honda retailer or turning to a Honda brand forum or social media platform for the same information in a million years.

Why?

When you break it down this way, it’s easy to see the structure of brand loyalty. It’s also easy to see how to structure your brand in the same way from the beginning.

Sprout Social conducted a study in late 2015. They discovered that on average, businesses were ignoring over 80% of their customers’ requests via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Many of these same retailers are likely still scratching their heads, hiring experts and conducting board meetings to figure out how to increase brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty doesn’t come from one thing. Though you might hear people say, “Well it comes from …”

• Positioning yourself as an expert,
• Designing a stellar product line or offering an excellent service,
• Providing good customer service, or
• Making sure to engage with customers via social media

Yes. All of those things do play a part and will likely create a few loyal customers on their own. However, true brand loyalty on the largest scale is when your customers consider your brand a resource. You are the place they go for all their needs related to your niche or industry. Once you take the appropriate steps to become that for your target customer base, they will come to you.

According to Dictionary.Com, a resource is:

“A source of supply, support, or aid, especially one that can be readily drawn upon when needed. “

• Who do you need to hire?
• What type of satellite branches do you need to open?
• What type of content do you need to publish online?
• What kind of free physical books do you need to publish and distribute?
• What types of events or classes do you need to host?
• What do you need to do …

… to be a true resource for your ideal customer?

Therefore, your approach to community building and community management should start somewhere like this:

Ask us anything regarding our niche, (within legal or ethical reason of course). We’ve built this platform for you to ask or say anything. Pour your heart out. Never stop talking to us. We care. We want to hear it. We will find the answers you need or compensate you for your trouble in some way with free stuff. Really, ask us anything.  Contact us anytime day or night.

That’s all we’ve got for now! As always, if you are feeling inspired to get out there and build your own community, we encourage you to check out SocialEngine. Let us help you make your dreams of building your own social network a reality.

Companies wishing to create a community bond between themselves and their consumers should consider branding their businesses online. A branded community is marketing focused on nurturing the attachment a customer can experience towards a product or brand. Below are steps to ensure building a successful branded community.

1. Don’t look at your branded community as a marketing strategy, but as a business strategy. 
   • Recognize it as an opportunity to engage the consumer in what your business wide goals are. Impress them with your brand message. Let them know who you are and what your business stands for.
2. Engage the customer. 
   • Get your community involved in your business. Let them be creative and express themselves too. Lego, for instance, have asked their community why they love legos and got an enthusiastic response. So far, consumers have been sharing the love by building lego monuments, making fan commercials and blog articles about legos.
3. Do not try to mold your brand around a specific consumer. 
   • It will serve you and your company better if you remain diverse. You’ll be able to expand the marketability of your business if you broaden your market. Alienating any consumer will limit opportunities to expand the approachability of your brand and others joining your community.
4. Let the visitors on your brand site interact.
   • Communities cannot grow if people cannot approach one another to talk, forge friendships, and strengthen bonds. Establish message boards and other areas where followers can joke around with each other and discuss their love for your brand. Let them chat in real time, create their own forums, and encourage offline social events to meet up. This will increase loyalty for your brand and popularity.
5. Don’t run away from conflicts in your community. 
   • Sometimes a healthy rivalry can make your brand not only more interesting but also more versatile to the consumer. The popular “Campaign for Real Beauty” by Dove campaign is a great example of this. It brought real women together to speak out about idealized beauty goals. Dove not only unified women, but they bolstered their community brand by welcoming an “out” group in marketing to their community.

As you can see, creating a branded community isn’t a difficult process. By embracing the steps listed above companies have widened their marketing opportunities, increased their reputations and boosted the demand of their products. To connect to a branded community is to ensure the longevity of any business. Embrace success today. Embrace the branded community.