For any business to thrive today, it needs to do more than just make sales. As a business owner, you need to build long-term relationships with your customers.
People like to interact with humans. They want to feel like you are a trusted friend and a helpful expert, not just a marketer trying to get into their wallets.
If you’re stuck in the traditional sales funnel and not seeing the growth you want, then creating community and bringing together a tribe of like-minded people is the path forward to success.
If you have a passion for what you want to do and the energy to make it happen, there is a community of customers, or clients, or readers, just waiting for you to lead them where they want to go. There is no community without leadership and there is no leadership with community.
A community needs leadership, collaboration and purpose. Meaningful conversations that lead to connection and growth start with these 5 C’s:
Step 1. Credibility: Find your authentic voice.
Step 2. Context: Identify a meaningful and relevant angle.
Step 3. Clarity: Develop a logical flow and structure.
Step 4. Craft: Use words that are precise, concise and potent.
Step 5. Community: Create community through communication.
Establishing credibility is key to earning trust with an audience. When people trust you, they’re much more likely to believe in you, bond with you, and do business with you. They feel – because you’ve proven it to them – that you have their best interests in mind.
From selling a solution or requesting funding to leading a project, communicate how your audience will benefit.
Tell them why they should care and how they will benefit.
Does your message save them time, reduce costs, improve productivity, boost profits, increase health, or save lives?
Tell them also why you are an authority on your topic including the context and framework in which you specialize. We have become highly skeptical of much of what we hear. Framing your message in a meaningful and relevant context will provide a basis for a trusting and productive relationship with whom you work.
For example, as an employee, you need your boss to have confidence in your abilities before he or she will promote you. As a manager, you need your team to rely on your leadership before they’ll follow. And as a speaker or presenter, you need your audience to believe in your message before they’ll act on your recommendation.
Creating information products based on your services gives potential clients the opportunity to test you out without having to take a big risk. Once your audience connect with you and are well-served by your product, they will upgrade to other services you offer.
To develop a logical structure and flow, organize your thoughts and get clear about what you want to say before you say it. Start by brainstorming all the points you want to make. Then, move them around to organize them into a logical sequence. This sequence becomes you outline or guide—your own fill-in-the-blank template, and you can then let your words flow.
Engage your readers’ attention so they stick around. Draw your readers in and encourage them to act.
Speak directly to your audience and address their needs, keeping the emphasis on them, not on you. Share information about yourself only when it is appropriate and helps them in some way.
Infuse your words with beauty, resonance, and eloquence. Vibrant, fresh wording and concrete images combine to create a virtual reality display in our minds. Write less and say more, capture the beauty of your message in its brevity. In the words of Mark Twain, it is “a minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.”
The message you share, the words you write, the connection you create, invites others to approach and join you. It strikes a chord, echoes back, and creates a harmony—a vibrant symphony of personalities and voices, a melodious blend, each one complementing the other.
To connect personally with both individuals and large groups alike, write clear, compelling content in the formats you enjoy:
Emails
Blog Posts
Social Media Posts
Instructional and How-to Content
You create community when you listen, communicate transparently and honestly, and genuinely care about the people you can help. You create followers because of who and what you represent.
Creating community puts the customer at the center of the entire marketing process, making them the focal point instead of just focusing on sales. When you see an real person, instead of a “customer” they will want to do business with you again and again. They will become your biggest brand advocates.