For brands, customers play a vital role in their business. Whether it is about sales or their presence in general. However, focusing on customers is one thing, but creating a community is another!
In recent years, brands are starting to shift their focus to creating a community of their own, more specifically a social media-based brand community. A strong brand community could lead to having loyal customers and sales. And in most cases, a brand need to produce unique and relevant content in order to establish a strong connection with customers and fans on social media. That’s why content marketing has been on the rise for the past few years.
According to Brieger (2013), unlike promoting products or services, content marketing is a branding method that creates and distributes content to entice and involve the target audience. Yet, Pulizzi (2012) added that the objective of this strategy is to drive profitable customer action. However, the problem is building a social media-based community for a brand is not easy. It takes trust and credibility from social media users to make them a brand’s community, and eventually, customers.
One of the brands that is so well known in building community on social media is Netflix Indonesia. Its social media accounts are full of relatable replies, funny GIFs, and witty commentaries from both Netflix Indonesia and its fans. In this article, we will be taking a look at how Netflix successfully builds a brand community on social media.
- Spark a conversation
Social media activities revolve around content that usually sparks conversation and discussion among its users. In order for brands to stay relevant, brands should tap into millions of social media conversations.
Netflix Indonesia is well known for this! Tapping into replies from followers is something that makes Netflix Indonesia social channels relatable to followers. From this we could learn that what’s important for brands is that they need to make their messages feel like a proper human conversation. Nobody wants to interact with bots and its automated replies, and Netflix Indonesia is doing the exact opposite of that. In the end, Netflix Indonesia is not present in social media to solely promote its products, but to actually connect with its target audience.
- Provide value
In the second point, providing a brand’s story is adding value. However, as a brand, value starts and ends with problem solving. On top of humanizing the way it communicate with its users on social media, Netflix Indonesia is also catering to the needs and wants of its users.
Yes, creating useful content that helps educate a brand's community and customers overcome the problems they are facing might be helpful. Netflix Indonesia did it in clever and witty ways making their content very relatable to their audience. In both pictures above, the posts sparked quite a conversation since both topics are very relatable to Netflix’s users who are mostly a millennial and Gen Z audience. Moreover, the Netflix series that they used are the ones who are in high demand and trending.
- Relevancy in all channels
Some brands are active on more than one social media platform. Some started with Instagram, then expanded to Twitter to reach more audiences. However, maintaining multiple social channels with the same level of commitment and dedication is definitely not a cake walk. Ultimately, the key to managing multiple social channels is to have coherent and unified front when it comes to content touch points.
Netflix Indonesia is also known for its relevance and consistency when it comes to content on their social media. They know that their audience on Twitter is much more “laidback” and Twitter is the perfect platform to create a conversation among their followers. While on Instagram, their content is still the same but they sometimes tweak their copywriting a little bit to create an engaging CTA. This way, their social media community is not only growing but also both audiences could enjoy content from both platforms.
Building brand communities on social media are important for brands to increase their social media presence. These communities could help brands in the long term by building trust and credibility towards the brands. Hence, it’s important for brands to have good knowledge about their target audiences and create content which they can relate to.
So, what do you think about Netflix Indonesia’s strategy in building brand communities on social media? Share your thoughts down below and let’s discuss!
Source:
Du Plessis, C., 2017, ‘The role of content marketing in social media content communities’, South African Journal of Information Management 19(1), a866. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/sajim.v19i1.866
Written by: Santika Vania.
