Audience or Community? Build your community with these easy steps

Before we get started, let us clarify the difference between the audience and the community.

The difference between audience and community

I am sure that you have heard about audience and community since the day you involved in the online marketing industry.

At the very first stage, we have never been taught the difference between audience and community and probably perceive it the same way as they are your potential customer that receive your message.

Coming to the intermediate stage, which I think you are, audience and community are in fact have a huge difference.

Here's the simple definition of both;
Audience: Passive reader which is usually a one-way communication 

This meaning that your audience most likely to receive your message, however, they tend to not reply to your message.

Besides, they do not share opinions or thoughts to the people who are listening to you.

Therefore, in this stances, you can hardly find out what your target audience's interest is.

Community: Two or more way communication

On the other hand, two-way communication of community sounds legit as people are more likely to share their thoughts with their community (people who share the same interest). 

Two-way communication, meaning, in community, people are more likely to give responses. They would share out their ideas with the community which as mention the people who share the same ideas. 

After the clarification, it seems like audience is not ideally working out for you; however, both audience and community are important for your business especially in building your community. 

The reason why is because audience is the fundamental thing that helps you to build your community, at the end of the day, community is built from the audience. 

So, how exactly are you going to build your community rapidly without spending a cent?

Build your community rapidly

First of all, have you subscribed to any Blogs or joined any community group on Facebook? If you do, why did you join the group?

Obviously, the answer is you earn something from there. 

So, what can you get for your community? 

First, you will need to create or have at least a Facebook group or page.

So, first off, what should you focus on your group or page?

Audience Funnel
We have heard about marketing funnel or digital marketing funnel. But have you heard of audience funnel?

Audience funnel is similar to any other marketing funnel; however, there is slightly different at the action part.

Here's the audience funnel. As you can see, it starts with awareness, interest then action and loyalty. 

Awareness is where you need to let the immense audience out there get to know you are here.

Interest: if you are on Facebook, according to users behavior, you will only have 3 seconds to grab users attention; so, you are going to need a killer headline.

Check here on how to grab users attention.

Action: once users get interested in your headline, call-to-action is very important because you want the users to subscribe or follow your group so you have to trigger the users become part of your community.

Loyalty: So, when you got them into your community, in order to have them stay and be loyal with you, focus more on your members instead of keep selling yourself to them.

Focus on members
Often times, people get to ask me:" why my post engagement is low even I have been posting consistently?"

The first thing I would say is that it is not the content that they want to see or the content is irrelevant to them.

So, focus on your members instead of posting the content that you think it is quality and helpful. 

Hence, you need to know your members' profile, knowing "where they are from", "what is their interest", and "what kind of content would be related to them".

Other than this, you should not keep promoting your business, instead, use the 1:3 rule.

1:3 rule means that you posting schedule should be 1 promote and then 3 contents. 

If you keep bombarding your members with promotional posts, eventually you will be losing them. 


Quality content
So, what content should you disseminate? Quality content of course. 

Content marketing is part of the strategic plan that you have to put in your plan. 

So, why content marketing? (Click here to for more)

In this era, people would not go to the library to look for information, the internet is where they look for information. 

When you have a piece of quality content, your reader would most likely to remember you and tend to come back to you for more information.

Therefore, when I say content, I mean quality content (Click this link to check out the quality content criteria). 


All the content you posted, should be related to your business regardless directly or indirectly. 


Engagement
It is proven by many marketers or so-called experts that engaging with your members is the most effective strategy to grow your community.

Firstly, being engaged, you will know what your community's thoughts; thus, you will be able to know what is their interests.

This will help you in forming the next content, which may mean quality content to them. 

Back to the audience funnel above, this will trigger your members to become your loyal member.

Secondly, not only will you trigger them to become your loyal members, every time you comment something, Facebook will help you to pop up your post; thus, the same post of yours will be constantly popped up when the discussion keep going. 

When this occurs, outsiders are more likely to see your post and tend to join the discussion.

Therefore, engagement is so important in building your community rapidly.

Conclusion
To summarize, You have to have your own audience funnels on how to turn outsiders (so-called cold leads) into your loyal members (Hot leads). 

Other than that, whatever things that you post on your group or page, remember that these things have to be related to your members regardless directly or indirectly.

Content marketing should not be neglected in your strategic plan as it is one of the ways that brings up the discussion between you and your members.

Even PPC ads nowadays are relying on the content too. 

Once the discussion occurs, engage with your members and grab all the thoughts and opinions of theirs and do the killer content next. 

Remember, make your audience become part of your community.

So, do not plan to start, start to plan your strategies and build your community now.