How can I create a community for my brand/business?

This article first appeared July 29, 2009.

Start by building it within your team – how do you want your community to perceive you? What do you want them to see? Practise on your team first. Your team will help you to shape it and make it something that they want to be a part of.

A friend of mine Kate Tribe of Tribe Research has built this so effectively that she has Friday drinks for past and present employees – they love the Tribe Research community.

After you have mastered it with your team you can then go out into the big wide world…

• Set up your own Facebook page that you invite your customers/consumers to become friends with, you can then use this to get messages out to them and encourage them to communicate with you.
• Have a regular eNewsletter (and send it regularly), Kirsty Dunphey has a great weekly newsletter that she encourages her readers to get involved with, and as a result you get a real insight into her community and her readership grows week on week.
• Go on Twitter and let people know what your business/brand is up to – involving other people makes them feel part of something.
• Use your loyal consumers or customers to help build the community, I’ve just started to recruit Mocks Ambassadors (unpaid Mocks fans) who are featured on our website and basically go and spread the wondrous Mocks word! Every business has those fans, how can you use them to help build your community?

Being part of a community is all about feeling valued, loved and part of something bigger. Find those people who already love what you do and work with them to build your own community that everyone wants to be a part of!

Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com and author of Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.