Sense & Forum is built around working with brands and small businesses to create, build and maintain relationships with their community. We developed the 6 Senses to help clients understand what their community needs are, who would be part of it, how it will work as a metric in your business, and how to maintain and grow it.

If your brand or business is bringing people together based on your social purpose, then you have established your why. Answering the first question, ‘Why are you bringing these people together?’ That’s your cause, the common purpose or interest bringing people together. The next is how to build the community, to nurture and maintain the relationships in the form of a community.

In this blog and 20 min video guide, we will go through the 6 Senses to guide you in starting a healthy and happy community. Make sure you hit download for our free resource that will act as a guide to helping you answer all those questions you need to get started.

Sense & Forum Creating a community for your business.

Let’s get started…

01. Cause

“a principle, aim, or movement to which one is committed and which one is prepared to defend or advocate” - — lexico.com, 2021

We all identify with one or more ‘causes’ in life, from political thoughts to social advocacy. In essence, the Cause in community marketing is the same. In this first step, you’ll be identifying who your customers are and why they would be part of this community. Underlying it all is the purpose, the vision and its goals. When people align with your cause, the seeds of your community are sown.

02. Creation

Creation is effectively all about communication and connection. When you know who your community members are, you need to set it up in such a way that they can not only access it but be a part of it.

The questions you need to answer are:

What platforms for your customers currently use to communicate with you? Email, social media groups and pages, your app or website are all communication channels that come into play.
What guidelines will be in place? For your group to function smoothly, where everyone is included, there need to be guidelines. What is it that your community can and cannot do?
What structure will the community take? This addresses the ‘when’ of community collaboration and how you see this working.

03. Content & Conversation

With your community beginning to come together in the space and time that they find most suitable, you need to create a channel that works for customers and for you.

Marketing is not just about sales, numbers and forcing people into a sales funnel. It is about listening. The more a brand listens and interacts with customers, the more successful its marketing will be. This is because, as a business, you’ll understand customers needs and their pain points, and how you can potentially solve some or all of these.

Content and conversation are about asking questions, facilitating discussions on topics that affect customers and your brand, products, service or sector and listening to what is being said.

04. Collaboration

You want people to talk about your business but what do you want them to say? Ambassadors and partnerships are all about collaborating. Finding key contributors to your community and working with them, and other businesses too, will place your brand in a strong position.

05. Care

The best marketing strategy ever: CARE

Gary Vaynerchuk, to whom this quote is attributed, is chair of a modern-day media and communication company, as well as CEO of a full-service advertising agency. At one time, advertising and marketing were ‘ruthless’ in their intention to get people to buy and to buy one business’s products over another.

Today, we live in different times. Consumers not only have values, but they also act on them. And that’s why ‘doing the right thing for once’ and caring for customers is key. Every business has a bottom line - you are, after all, building a commercial interest, but that doesn’t mean it has to be cut-throat and trampling the little guy.

Care is about doing the right thing by your customers and community, and by you too. Because without YOU, there is no brand or business.

Bonus C’s

Cost - will your community be paid members only? How much will you charge, when and how?
Change - nothing stays the same which is true of your community, who joins, what you offer and so on. How will you change and adapt?
Customer relationship management - how will this work? What will you celebrate and how will you manage your ongoing relationships?

What now?

With your community starting to grow, the temptation is to sell, sell, sell. But as we show here at Sense & Forum, this isn’t always the right step to take. Get in touch with the team to find out more.

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