19with analyzing the existing information with Google Analytics demographic, audience reports on Facebook Insights and group activity through LinkedIn Analytics. Once you develop your audience persona, you can further segment your audience using alerts based on keywords or phrases that resonate with your brand. Social listening tools like Mention, Hootsuite, TweetDeck etc. send you an alert when someone specifically mentions your brand and associated keywords. You can also actively follow topics you and your community are interested in.Communities exist to serve customers, not businessesSome companies seem to forget that their consumers are actually people, with unique interests, needs, and personalities. A community engagement program builds loyalty not by driving sales or generating leads, but by helping customers meet their needs. Marketers must understand that robust communities are built not on brand reputation but on an understanding of customers' lives. Often, people are more interested in the social relationships that come from brand affiliations than they are in the brand themselves. Your customers will join your brand community to build new relationships ­ not necessarily with you. Although you may have built the community and manage it, you must also recognize that it really belongs to your customers. By tapping into the authentic dialogue that transpires in communities, you can gather fresh insights into market and consumer needs and inspire long-term loyalty by developing a deeper, multi-faceted relationship with your customers.When Amazon made the controversial decision to allow customers to post reviews of the products they bought through their site, they ushered in the era of customer-based marketing into the online world. Amazon knew that ordinary user reviews were what buyers wanted. By identifying your community's focus and needs, you'll find multiple touchpoints through which you can connect and build a long-term relationship with your even outside of social media. Riffle by CrowdRiff is a Chrome extension that provides detailed Twitter analytics and is easy to integrate with a host of services. Communities must serve as a professional resource for customersBrands like UPS have seen considerable success using their product or service as a springboard to foster community conversations within their industry sector. The UPS Store's Small Biz Buzz online community has established itself as a go-to resource for over 350 small business owners across the country, creating a new source of web traffic that translated into in-store visits. Proactive attempts to inform your customers and help them make decisions can transform a mundane, transactional experience into a thriving
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