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March 6, 2022

How Community Building Can Generate Future Business

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This post was written by freelance writer Nicole Pyles.

When doing business in a competitive market, you must stand out to prospective clients. One way of doing so is by building a community within your business model. In an age where loneliness is now at epidemic levels, made even worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a meaningful way of making a lasting impact in your industry. 

Javi Díaz, Global Brand Champion at Acclaro discussed community building at the Bay Area Content Marketing Meetup. Javi found that giving people a sense of belonging can be a sustainable way of generating future business. 

With a focus on human values and generating new opportunities, Acclaro’s online community LocLife™ successfully brings together leaders across industries and engages its members. 

Building the Foundation of Your Community

Javi Díaz - photo via LinkedIn

Javi Díaz – photo via LinkedIn

Javi shared the five principles that are the basic foundations of building community as a source of revenue:

Community builders believe that every individual in the community has a gift. Javi emphasizes this, saying, “Everyone must feel like you believe in every person there.” 

Building community involves activating an individual’s motivation to act. “Being a participant is the key to the success of this methodology,” Javi explains.

Relationships between individuals are the foundation of a strong community. This goes back to the first principle: believing that everyone in the community counts and has a gift. You must motivate members of this community to act. 

You can inspire this by taking care of people within the community, talking to them, helping them and connecting them to one another. By building these strong relationships, you create the foundation of a powerful community.

A community gets inspired by real and exciting information, not corporate propaganda. If you want to build a community and develop those relationships, don’t share messages that are copy-pasted across platforms. Javi sees this in the traditional way of doing sales and marketing. 

Instead, you want to share new and unique information with the community. This points back to the previous principle: fostering genuine relationships among community members. Otherwise, you are simply acting as if the community is an avenue to grow your business.

Leaders involve others as active members of the community. While the leader of the community must nurture the community, Javi points out that the traditional community manager role no longer exists. Instead, a new role emerges called the global brand champion. 

Javi says, “It’s a community manager without being a community manager. It’s a company ambassador, but not a company ambassador. It’s also a community ambassador, which is key to creating a successful, insightful and inspired community.” 

A global brand champion focuses on bringing in new opportunities and engaging with people in the community. With human experiences as a top priority through connections and events like leadership talks, his community has emerged as a success, standing on its own from Acclaro itself. 

Javi focuses on using industry experts to lead online events and connecting with members based on the quality rather than quantity of followers. With five core principles at the heart of his community leadership, Javi has achieved success in his global brand champion role.

Being a Successful Global Brand Champion

Here is a formula Javi recommends to achieve success as a global brand champion:

Connect

To inspire your community members, connecting with them is essential. Javi recommends asking them questions:

  • What can I do for you?
  • What can I do to grow your business? 
  • How can I help you better? 

You can answer these questions by bringing them solutions your company offers or helping them connect to others in the community. This will inspire them to act and become active members of the community. 

Care

Javi says you need to care for people and have empathy. That’s how you make connections with community members and inspire connections among them. By caring about people, you are focusing on relationships, rather than solely being a source of revenue. 

Inspiring

When a community feels inspired, your business will grow. By emphasizing your company’s values, connectivity, and caring for others, people will buy from you. This points to another principle of community building: real and exciting information being shared.

Storytelling Builds Community

Marketing is no longer about how good you are, but about telling stories, says Javi. He adds, “You want to tell stories about others and your community members.” That’s been a proven element of success with LocLife. 

Acclaro created online events for industry leaders and experts to share inspiring talks and human stories with the LocLife community. The focus of these events has been to create content that inspires people. Thanks to the promotion within the community itself, and throughout social media, these community events have been a success.

With the development of these events, the community is growing uniquely on its own and bringing in unique opportunities for the business. 

Using Social Media the Right Way

Community building needs to focus on quality versus quantity. Javi says that the number of followers means nothing if it doesn’t move people to become a member of the community. Javi says, “You want to have the right people that you are connecting to and engaging with on the social media platform you are growing.

It takes time and consistency to build connections on social media. Javi takes unconventional approaches. He uses words such as “love,” “being there,” “help,” and “assisting.” Despite how strange it may sound in a corporate environment, this creates genuine relationships with people. 

By focusing on creating content that’s fun and inspiring, you can connect with people. Javi says, “It’s not just focusing on how many followers you have. Focus on nurturing, caring, and inspiring principles.”

A few final quick tips shared by Javi:

  • Be organic. As a reminder, he adds, “It takes time to build these relationships”
  • Be less transactional
  • Spread positivity and optimism. Javi says, “Don’t complain but rather be constructive”
  • Reply fast, which helps in building your community
  • Be funny
  • Be yourself
  • Do not complain, accept
  • Always be thankful

 


By going beyond the traditional sales and marketing approach to building a business, Acclaro’s LocLife community shows how to use genuine connections to scale your business. As a community builder, it’s important to see outside of the business purpose of the community and focus on the people, your values, and providing meaningful experiences. 

That personalized touch can have a lasting impact on community members. As a result, you’ll see the growth and industry connections your business needs. 

On-Demand Recording

Watch a recording of Javi’s talk:

Disclosure: Acclaro is a client of Attention Retention.

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