How to Build Community

The adage 'all roads lead to Rome' comes to mind when describing the best way to create an engaged and flourishing online community. A multichannel approach will allow customers to communicate when and where they are most comfortable. Different platforms will offer different kinds of information – and when intelligently integrated – will feed to and through each other to provide an optimal user experience.

It is important to remember that online communities are made up of real people, discussing real things. They want to trust their sources and engage in a dialog during which trust is built that ultimately leads to loyalty.

When a brand is fortunate enough to attract an engaged community, listening is super important as information originating from the community us real. From likes, loves, pain points, improvement suggestions, new product ideas and all else – this direct information is valuable. When acknowledged, customers will feel the love and will evangelize on your company’s behalf without direct prompting.

To maintain this level of engagement and loyalty, daily interface is critical. Multimedia content is a great way to provide fresh content and encourage dialog with your audience.

BEST CONTENT MARKETING PRACTICES

· Long-Form Content: Long-form content of 2,000+ words will remain important as search engines reward lengthier posts in results rankings, and readers are increasingly looking for more trustworthy sources. Read Forbes article. Notwithstanding, millennials also like shorter content.

· Videos, Webinars, Podcasts: Research shows the undeniable value of video marketing. Animoto found that 64% of consumers follow through on a purchase after watching a branded video on Facebook. And video will only continue to rise in importance, with video predicted to account for 82% of global internet traffic by 2021.

· Authenticity, Well-produced, Multi-platform Content is Key to Success: Content marketing isn’t just about writing a good post. To achieve success, you need skilled writers, quality tech people, brilliant designers, videographers and an intuitive social media team who understand each step of the process and are willing to work together to make sure excellent content is properly deployed.

· According to MarTech, Live Video will continue to dominate, written content should use long-tail keywords, content works well when it is immersive and interactive, and the content experience is the face of Content Marketing. Read article.

· Brands will Create More Niche-focused Content: To stand out content must be exclusive, extremely in-depth or creative and generated for a smaller (hyper-targeted) nice of readers. According to experts and this article, marketers are looking to develop super niche-focused content to attract more readers. This trend is more likely to continue to 2020.

· As effective as long-form content is for SEO, Millennials also want shorter content. Remarketing, native ads, influencer marketing and content optimized for local searches are also considered best practices for 2020 and beyond. Read article.

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