Social Media Community-Led Growth

Video: The Value of Building a Social Community

Communities have been around for a long time in many formats, but lately we’re hearing
more and more about how consumers are moving away from broad social channels and
finding more comfort and engagement in community. And for that reason, brands are
also starting to think about how they can invest in community-led growth. This is
happening because the social media industry has changed a lot in recent years, making it
more complex than ever to cut through the noise. There are a number of factors that are
creating this challenge for marketers and it’s helpful to understand what those forces are
so you can determine if creating your own community makes sense for your brand.

First, social media technologies and platforms are rapidly changing, and as they change,
so does the way people consume content on the Internet. One example is the rise of
TikTok and the surge of short-form video across all the social networks. It’s forced
marketers to think di erently about content, and it’s made it even harder to hold the
attention of prospects and customers. The average human has an attention span of just
8.25 seconds according to recent studies — 4.25 seconds less than in the year 2000.

We’ve also seen the challenges that can arise if a company, like Twitter, is bought and the
platform shifts its strategy and direction. When this happens, brands and users are forced
to change how they interact with content, if they choose to do so at all.

Second, there are stricter rules on privacy and data protection. Companies need to be
compliant with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU as well as a number
of laws in the U.S. Because of this, Apple and Google have made, or are planning on,
making sweeping changes to how cookies are managed on the web. As a result,
marketers are no longer able to track individuals across the web with ease. For more
information about this change, you can check out the Cookieless Advertising lesson in this
certification.

Next is the rise of socially and politically conscious audiences which has had a significant
impact on brands, politics, and society as a whole. Companies may no longer have the
luxury of remaining neutral on topics, like mental health, inclusivity, climate change, and
social justice. These are complex topics that need a distinctly human touch that’s backed

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by a strong crisis prevention plan. To learn more about developing a crisis plan, check out
the lesson Putting a Crisis Communication Plan in Place from the Social Media
Certification I.

Then there is the emergence of technologies related to Web3 and decentralized social
networks like Mastodon. Web3 is a vision of a more decentralized web that places the
power in the hands of users instead of large tech companies, like Google, Amazon, and
Facebook. It’s built on blockchains using existing infrastructure with the goal to make the
internet more accessible, private, and secure for users. While Web3 doesn’t quite exist yet,
there are a number of companies who have developed decentralized social media
networks. These di er from centralized platforms, like Facebook or TikTok, who have
control over your data and can choose to sell it to a third-party.

Web3 is all about redistributing power to the average consumer. The idea is that
consumers will decide and promote the ideas they’re most interested in, instead of being
in the passenger seat. With this shift, marketers will have to lean more on building a
strong community.

Here’s Christina Garnett, principal marketing manager o ine community and advocacy
at HubSpot to share more.

Christina Garnett: Community has definitely been a buzzword since 2020. It's been around
for a while, but with the pandemic and the separation that that caused us, and that
disconnect between how we live, our daily lives, how we work, how we communicate,
community became a buzzword because it was so heavily needed. Just as in the past,
they talk about how like it takes a village to raise a child. It's taken community to help us
really survive the past few years, because we've had to completely adapt how we
communicate, how we talk to each other, and how we live our daily lives.

And so, community has really come to the forefront because it's been needed. Another
reason for that is, we are seeing the digital age become so mature that every single
generation has some kind of understanding of how it works. You have the Boomers and
Gen X, and millennials and Gen. Z. But they all react di erently to things, whether they're
going to be on Facebook or Tiktok. But there's this consensus that we don't like ads. We
don't trust brands the way that we used to, because we've had the time to understand
that that trust is usually not earned. And so what you're seeing with community is, I'm
going to trust strangers over brands. I'm going to trust customer reviews over a
commercial. And so, community provides a way for you to foster those relationships with
people and for brands to create those relationships with people. So you're really able to
take word-of-mouth to the next level.

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Ultimately, the goal of marketers using social media is to generate revenue. But because
of all the factors we just reviewed, bringing in that revenue is no longer a guarantee with
advertising or regular social media content. Instead, you need to focus on engagement.

That’s where communities come in. Communities are critical because they promote
engagement. They're incubators for brand awareness, loyalty, and trust. But they're also a
dime a dozen, so marketers need to refine their approach to building and leveraging them
correctly.

Are brands investing in community? The answer is yes. In 2022, the Hubspot Blog
surveyed 1,067 global marketing professionals working in B2B and B2C companies to
determine which trends they leverage and the channels they use. Here's what we found:

● 64% of marketers plan to invest in social media communities.

● More than half of respondents (51%) plan to build more social media communities.
● The biggest challenge marketers face with social media communities is actively
managing members.

More and more organizations are realizing the power of community and are rallying
around something called community-led growth. But what does that mean? Evan
Hamilton, HubSpot’s director of community, and the former director of community at
Reddit, explains:

Evan Hamilton: So community-led growth is using the power of peer connection to

amplify the go-to-market e orts of a company. The flywheel is a powerful way to look at
driving acquisition and retaining customers. And all of the flywheel can be improved and
enhanced by finding ways to connect peers with each other, to infuse that whole
experience with the idea of community and talking to other people and gaining value out
of that connection. And so it's incredibly important because many companies are starting
to see the ceiling on traditional marketing and traditional growth tactics, but there's
immense room to grow if you’re thinking about the benefit that can come from
connecting your customers.

Having a community will help you in a variety of ways. For example, they’re vehicles for
personal recommendations. Every member of a social media community is a
micro-influencer, sharing real experiences and opinions that can influence other members.
This is worth mentioning since nearly nine out of ten consumers read reviews before
buying a product.

Communities can also help you cut costs. Active, self-sustaining communities can become
hubs for customers to ask and answer questions, which alleviates pressure on customer

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support teams. They can also reduce support costs — one study found that it was 72%
cheaper to answer a question via a community than to submit a ticket to a support team.
You can also spend less on advertising because you already have a captive audience.

On top of that, communities o er insight into your consumers. Monitoring conversations

and tracking common complaints, ideas for improvement, and unique ways they’re using
your products to solve problems can be invaluable for your business when it comes to
configuring your product roadmap and improving the customer experience.

Evan Hamilton explains how companies can determine the value of a community for their
business:

Evan Hamilton: When thinking about the value that community can provide to a business,
I really encourage companies to get really specific, because the fact of the matter is
communities are amazing and they can do a lot of things for your business, and it can be
very easy to just see them as these generic happy, wonderful value places. But again, any
initiative that you’re taking on at your company should have a core outcome for the
company. And so I use the SPACES model, which I helped develop when I was at CMX.
And these are basically the core ways that community can help a business. The first is
support — so scaling your support e orts, making those more cost-e cient. The second
is product — aiding your knowledge of what your customers actually want and giving
them a place to talk about that. The third is acquisition — bringing new customers in and
finding new ways to acquire people outside of your traditional measures. The fourth is
contribution — getting people to contribute code, content, actions, etcetera. The E is for
engagement — improving loyalty, increasing retention (one of the most powerful things,
by the way, that community can do). And then the last is success. Community can be an
amazing tool for helping your customers be more successful and stick around longer. And
so I highly recommend choosing one of those as your initial focus for your community
and really making sure you’re actually driving that benefit. Now, it may take many months
for your community to get to that point where it is actually delivering that value at a high
level. But if you stay laser-focused, then you can prove that value. And then, after that
point, feel free to layer on additional parts of the SPACES model.

Social media communities can help you turn transactional relationships into meaningful
ones, and o er a place for customers to share, collaborate, learn and provide feedback, in
turn building both brand loyalty and boosting the bottom line.

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Video: Is Developing a Social Community Right for Your Brand?

Building a social media community or refreshing an existing one is a process that requires
some planning to ensure success. The best way to start is by determining the reason
you’re building the community in the first place. Reasons may be that you’re trying to
support your existing business or marketing e orts or that you’re wanting to counteract
negative reviews and identify passionate fans.

Whatever the reason may be, there are a few questions to ask yourself to determine
whether creating your own social community is right for you. First, why should I engage
with my customers online? Look at your business goals. Will building a community help
you reach them? For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, a social
community can help by providing a platform for customers to share positive experiences
and recommendations with their own networks. If your goal is to increase sales, a social
community can help by providing a direct channel for customers to purchase your
products or services.

Then, what resources do I have available to ensure the success of my community? You’ll
need people to help create content and to engage with your community. Will these people
be in-house or will you need to work with an agency? Remember, creating content can
cost you money. Thinking a bit about your content strategy ahead of time will help you
budget for your community.

Here’s Evan Hamilton, director of community at HubSpot to share more.

Even Hamilton: I'm often asked, “Great, we want to invest in this, but headcount is scarce.
Do we really need to hire someone to run this community?” And I have slightly conflicting
answers here, in that, at the beginning, absolutely, you, as a leader within your
organization, should be deeply involved in your community. You will not understand it and
the community will not feel the care unless you’re actually part of launching your
community. But a community is something that requires a lot of care. It’s a living thing.
It’s your bonsai tree. And if you neglect it, it will su er. And so, having someone who really
lives and breathes community, spends their day thinking about the community and caring
about the community will make it far more successful. And it may feel like, oh, that
incremental headcount, like, that's just too much. But the fact of the matter is data has
shown a dedicated community manager is going to make your community more
successful, and it's going to allow you to do things like quickly respond to people, deal
with problems as they come up, moderate your space to ensure that you are creating the
warm fuzzies that you want in your community.

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You also need to think about the type of content you’ll share in your community. This can
include product or service information, industry news and updates, tips and tutorials,
user-generated content, and promotions or discounts. Additionally, it's important for the
brand to be authentic and engage with the community by responding to comments and
questions, and creating opportunities for community members to interact with each other.

Apart from the content, do you have the means to manage this community long-term?
Too often, brands put together communities and later abandon them. There could be a
variety of reasons for this, like mistakenly thinking the communities can manage
themselves or there being shifts in people and resources. But leaving your community
hanging may turn loyal members into disgruntled ex-customers who could do damage to
your brand. To prevent this, you need to determine up front what your long-term
commitment will be, and if plans change, how you will manage any transitions for your
community.

This lends to how you'll moderate the community. This question is not just about how
many people you may need, it’s about whether you’re prepared to create guidelines for
your community and a system for enforcing those guidelines. Online community
guidelines should include rules and expectations for behavior within the community, such
as those around respectful communication and prohibited behavior, like harassment or
hate speech. They should also include information on how to report violations and the
consequences for breaking the guidelines.

Think about whether you’re more interested in creating content conversation. If it’s the
former, then a community isn’t the right path for you. The conversations in your
community may help you come up with a million new content ideas, but it’s a lot of work
to regularly engage your community, and if you aren’t able to put the time and energy
into talking to your audience, then you won’t be able to reap those benefits.

Now it’s time to figure out how you’ll measure success. This question ties back to those
business goals once more. Are you looking to monetize your audience in some way by
providing exclusive access to product o ers? Are you hoping to drive word-of-mouth by
incentivizing user-generated content? Are you looking for product feedback? Consider
ahead of time how you’ll measure the success of all the conversation and collaboration
that takes place in your community.

Let’s hear more from Christina Garnett, principal marketing manager, o ine community
and advocacy at HubSpot.

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Christina Garnett: Community goals are absolutely priceless. I find that a lot of
communities su er because businesses are unable to align what their goals are with the
community's goals. So when you're building a community, you need two di erent types of
goals: goals that align with the business goals as well as the member goals.

It's really easy to forget that the members have their own motivations and goals when
being a part of a community, and you need to make sure that you find that balance
between how is this community helping the business? It could be through retention, net
new, or content creation. And then how is it actually serving and meeting the motivations
of its members?

Last but not least, you need to think about what the best platform is for your community.
There are free social media platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit, and
other platforms, like Discord and Twitch, that began as gaming communities but have
begun to spark the interest of business marketers. You’ll need to do a little research to
determine where your audience is and which platform best fits your overarching goals.
Check the resources section for guides on how to create communities on these platforms.

Another option is to build an owned community. This is a place that's owned by the brand
and o ers all the benefits of a social media platform, but with much more control and
flexibility on how they communicate with their members. For example, if you launch a blog
or website with a forum or comment section for your visitors, this is an owned community
that you can manage yourself. You can also use third-party community software
providers to leverage your community.

Evan Hamilton: A brand should consider building its own community if it believes it'll
benefit from sort of the three aspects that I think communities do really well. One is scale.
Communities can bring together a lot of people to do a small amount that leads to a big
outcome. The second is passion. Communities can help really build and grow passion in a
group of people. And then the third is perspective. People love to hear from others like
them, and community is a great way to bring in perspectives that you, as a brand, maybe
can't represent. And so, if one of those things is extremely valuable to you, it may make
sense for you to build a community. It can help you scale your costs through that scale
aspect. It can help you activate your advocates through your passion. And it can also help
you show people more aspects to your product that you might not be able to represent
yourself.

Christina Garnett: So if you're a brand and you're wondering whether or not you should
create a community, the answer isn't always yes. It really depends on your goals and what
you want the outcome to be. It also depends on whether or not that community already
exists, and maybe it's already been created without you. A really great example of this is
the Peloton community. Even though they have their own central community and ways to

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be able to interact within the tool itself, there are tons of Facebook groups and hashtags
that you can see as di erent ways for people to self-identify how they're being a part of
that.

And so, what I would recommend, is do some social listening across di erent channels. Do
general Google searches and find out who are the people that are using specific
keywords, what are these communities like, and how can you align with them? How can
you play a part and essentially see it as more of like a partnership? This is great for
brands who don't want to do the heavy lifting, who don't have the budget to create a
community team, and also aren't sure if this is a long-term play for them. A lot of
communities su er because brands want a low lift, quick win, and community is really the
opposite of that. So if you're wondering about whether a community is right for you,
consider partnerships and if there's a community that already aligns with you.

If you represent a brand with a strong social media following, you may want to consider
how you can foster a sense of community across your channels — perhaps by providing
an owned community on your site that draws your social followers in through an incentive
from the various social channels they’re on. This incentive could even encourage them to
develop user-generated content that you can then proliferate across platforms.

This is where a brand hashtag can really shine. A great example of this is #SephoraSquad,
an exclusive community developed by Sephora for creators and influencers that helps the
company build brand buzz across the Internet. Check the resources section for more
examples of successful social media communities.

Evan Hamilton is also a fan of Sephora for their Beauty Insiders Community because
they’re a great example of a strong community-led growth strategy.

Evan Hamilton: One of my favorite examples of a business successfully running a

community is the Sephora Beauty Insiders community, because this takes the aspects of
perspective, scale, and passion, and combines them all into one space. Makeup, style, and
fashion are incredibly subjective topics, and they're one where people want to hear other
perspectives. They want to know, “How does this work with my skin tone or my style? How
does this work with these other products I use?” There's no way Sephora will ever be able
to create content that covers all those topics in a way that feels genuine and legitimate.

And so they created a space, Sephora Beauty Insiders, where their customers can come
together and talk about the products they're currently using, the styles they're currently
creating, the ways that they're dealing with skin care. And they are deep, robust
conversations that are so specific to individual people, their budgets, their style, who they
are as a person. It’s immensely valuable to the members of that community, and it's

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immensely valuable to Sephora because they've seen huge increases in spend from the
members of these communities because they're constantly being exposed to new
products and human beings, who they believe most of all, talking about why those
products are so great and how to use them. It's a perfect example of giving and getting.
Sephora focuses that space on this is for you, for you to learn, for you to support each
other. It's an incredibly safe and supportive space. And then Sephora is reaping the
benefits because people appreciate the brand more, talk about the brand more, and are
buying more product.

Creating a social media community is a sizable project, but with the right planning and
resources, you have an opportunity to drive customer engagement that can transform
your business.

Video: Building a Long-Term Social Media Community Strategy

With all the shifts in the online world, more and more companies are realizing the power of
developing their own social media communities rather than relying on traditional social
media strategies to build brand awareness and increase revenue. But to have successful
communities, you need a solid plan for both the short and long term. Let’s go over the
steps you’ll need to take to develop your community strategy.

First, you need to determine if you’ll use the community tools that certain social platforms
provide or if you’ll develop your own community. If you’re still deciding, you can review the
previous video, Is Developing a Social Community Right For Your Brand?

There are two types of communities to keep in mind. The first is a ‘shared interest’
community people who share a common interest that they can explore together;
collaboration between members is key here.

The other is an information community in which members search for and share content
related to your product, service, or designated topic in one location

Once you've identified the use case and the type of engagement you're after (for
example, customer support operations or brand loyalty), you'll want to start looking at
detailed features that would support your community goals. These can range from deeper
analytics, ease of use and good user interface, customer support, platform flexibility,
integrations, and mobile.

For example, if you want to have real-time engagement, you may want to have access to
24/7 customer support in case there are problems in the community. Or, if you’ve planned

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growth stages for your community, you may want the platform to have theme flexibility to
support the group in its early and later stages.

Next is the development of the launch framework for your community. To do this, you’ll
need to determine the business problem you want to resolve with your community. For
example, are you looking to build customer loyalty? Decrease customer support costs?
Identify and mobilize influencers?

Then, you need to identify key internal stakeholders for the community. Who are your
community managers? Will product management be involved to answer product
questions? Who in upper management needs to be involved or informed?

From there, you need to know what KPIs you plan to measure. Some common key
performance indicators include the number of members, engagement metrics, referral
tra c, leads generated, and more. Check out the resources section for a detailed
breakdown of typical community KPIs.

Finally, you’ll set up your community, whether that’s on a social media platform of your
choice or in an online community hosted on your website. No matter the choice, make
sure to thoroughly test the software. Usually, there are some decisions about community
features you’ll need to make, including, but not limited to:

● What is the privacy level of your community? Is it invite only or can anyone join?
● What is the sign-up process for your community? The easier the signup process is,
the more likely people will want to join.
● What are the roles for sta and members? Decide what roles will be included
within your community, such as moderators or super members. Consider who on
your sta will be the community's admin, moderators, or community manager.
● Will you have gamification? This will likely require some setup and decisions about
the types of perks and recognition you’ll award members for participation.
● What's needed for the visual design of the community? You’ll want to tie in the
theme, colors, and graphics to your brand.
● How will you handle spam or trolls? What guidelines will you have to help the
community know what's expected of them?
● What notifications will sta and members of your community need? This includes
notifications for new messages along with welcome and registration emails.
● What types of content will you share in the community? How will you engage
members and keep the conversation flowing? Will you o er exclusive content to
members? Consider running campaigns, such as contests and challenges, that
proliferate user-generated content beyond the community.

Here’s Evan Hamilton, director of community at HubSpot to share more.

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Evan Hamilton: As a brand, when you're thinking about the content in your community,
there's two things that I really want to emphasize. One is you should be giving far more
than you're taking. So, 90% of your content should be contributions you're making, rather
than something you're promoting or something you're asking of your community. The
other part to think about is if the actual content you're creating is not as useful as the
conversations you're creating. And I see a lot of brands fall into this trap of, “Oh, the
community is the place where we post our content. We just put our blogs there. We put our
podcasts there.”

And that's fine to use it as a distribution mechanism, but the value really comes when
you’re getting people to have conversations that they think are incredibly valuable. And so
I recommend putting far more time into thinking about what are prompts that will really
get people talking and really get people finding value. So these are things where there's a
lot of debate about the subject, where people have really strong preferences, where
people are feeling lost or challenged and need support. If you can create those spaces
where people have those emotional connections with their peers, then the content that
you're sharing in that community is far less important because you've created this
emotional resonance with your member.

It’s also important to think about how you will prepare for future changes to the
community. What's your back-up plan for moderation or technology challenges? And
while it’s not something you may relish thinking about before your community even
begins, it’s worthwhile having an exit plan if the community isn’t successful or if your
business changes priorities.

Here’s Christina Garnett, principal marketing manager for o ine community and
advocacy at HubSpot with some important tips.

Christina Garnett: When you're thinking about starting a community, it's important to
think about the entire life cycle of that community. So, getting it started, what does it look
like when you're onboarding and you join and you're welcomed? What does it look like
when you return? How are you answering questions? How are you connecting with others?
And should you not have the resources or the time to take care of that community, what
happens to it? Do you have an exit strategy?

You really need to be thinking about what that looks like because it could be something,
like you move from one platform to another, from one social media platform to a tech tool
— whatever that looks like. You need to realize that you're going to lose about half of your
population when you migrate over. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it's the people who
are engaged that continue to migrate with you. But you do need to be aware of that and
keep that in mind as you're building out the ecosystem for your community.

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You may want to think about having a soft launch with a smaller subset of members. This
can help you do a few things, like build buzz, test features, and receive feedback in a
private environment.

Evan Hamilton: The top two tips that I would give a brand when thinking about building a
community; one is strategic and one is tactical. On the strategic front, you’re trying to
create a space that elicits emotion in people. And so, this is not the same approach as
content marketing. You're not trying to just create something that's useful, that people are
going to find in search results and click through to. You're trying to create a space where
people want to come back. They want to talk about it. They associate your brand with this
warm, fuzzy feeling. And so, the more time you can spend in customer discovery really
trying to understand what are people's concerns, what are their fears, what are their
doubts, what are the areas where they feel alone. And then the opposite of many brands,
perhaps not taking advantage of that, but actually providing value, starting to solve those
problems for them through a social space, the more you will succeed.

On a tactical front, and perhaps related to that, people want to be heard. And the most
e ective tactical thing you can do is respond to people quickly when they first post.
There's research on this from Richard Millington. I did similar research at Reddit that
found that when somebody is posting for the first time, the faster they get a reply, the
more likely they are to stick around. And it makes sense. They're putting themselves out
there. They're saying, ‘I'm going to stop lurking, I'm going to get on my keyboard, and I'm
going to express myself.’ And if that's met with crickets, they're not going to come back.
They feel rejected. So making sure you have a really robust system to ensure that really
within 12, 15 hours, somebody has replied to that person, whether it's a member of your
team or whether it's a member of the community, that they are getting some sort of
validation will make your community significantly more successful.

Once you have your launch date set, it's time to get the word out to your target audience.
The best way to do this is to take advantage of your existing presence online. Promote
your launch all over your social channels, your website, email communications, and have
your sales team and customer service reps tell your existing and potential customers
about the launch.

Here are some tips that will help you drive the first 100 members to your community:

● Directly invite your customers, partners, and business contacts.

● Discuss with everyone and anyone. Get in the habit of talking to people everywhere
you go, especially if your community is centered around a broad product or service
that has value for many people.
● Enlist the help of new members through gamification. Ask your growing, early
group to help you broaden the network by inviting their friends, colleagues, and

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 digital connections. You can encourage this through contests or reward systems
integrated into your platform.
● Partner with influencers. Collaborating with a related and complementary company
can be an e ective way to promote your new community and welcome new
members who like both products and services.

Christina Garnett: If you want to drive memberships and you want people to be excited
about it, you have to over communicate, and you need to be very thoughtful and clear
about the motivations of the people that you want in the room. You need to make sure
that you're providing for all those potential needs and that you're providing an experience
that's worth being a part of. It's one thing to drive people there. It's another for them to
have a bad experience and never return.

I like to compare it to going to a sporting event. When you go there, there's gonna be a
place for you to sit. There's gonna be someone making sure that you belong there and
they check your ticket. But you also need concessions. You also need bathrooms. You also
need programs so you can learn more. How does the overall environment look like when
someone comes in? And what are the needs that you're missing? A lot of people prepare
for the entrance but they don't prepare for the overall experience. So the empathetic think
about these members. What would make you excited to be a part of that, what would
make sure that you have a good experience, and why would you want to return over and
over again?

The best communities give members an opportunity to network with like-minded people,
share new stories and ideas, ask questions, and give feedback. Above all, it’s a great way
to connect with people that love your brand and build loyalty so they’ll be excited to talk
about your products and services with friends, family and colleagues.

Lastly, if you’re looking for a community of marketers and salespeople that are looking to
grow better with HubSpot, make sure you check out the HubSpot Community. You’ll find
the link in the resources section.

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