Owned Medium Community: The Power of Building on Your Own Platform
Top brands in all industries are set apart not only by their services or products but by their ability to build a community of loyal customers. And their community is not just on public social media but on their very own properties.
The easiest way for most brands is to create an account on popular external social media and gain followers. However, that can actually cost a company dearly. This is about brands who miss tremendous opportunities of real and direct collaboration with their audience to build a strong community in the age of hyper-personalization.
Over-Investing in External Social Media Is a Strategic Misstep
Experts warned brands in the early years of Facebook to be very cautious on platforms they don't own, building followers they don't own either. And now, the cold reality has arrived for brands who relied on social media to build communities.
After dropping the organic reach rate of brands by half over years and increasing ad prices, we've entered the zero-organic-reach era (or pure pay-to-play era) on these platforms.
The reality: Public content from businesses, brands, and media crowds out personal moments. As platforms prioritize friends, family, and groups, brands see less organic reach.
The reasons are many: improving user experience, responding to privacy concerns, and addressing generational shifts. Younger users prefer more private social interactions. Surveys reveal users don't use Facebook as before—many use it less or stopped entirely.
For brands, Facebook and soon other major platforms are now mere ad platforms, nothing more. All hard-earned money and time spent doesn't justify the returns.
Relying on Influencers Is Another Misstep
Some brands insist on their old mistake by taking another wrong step—relying on social media influencers. However, any attempt to resurrect the old dream of organic reach is doomed to failure.
Platforms won't let influencers take their share of advertisers' budgets. Since 2017, Facebook has added features that automate transactions between influencers, brands, and advertisers, with more regulations coming as the market matures.
More regulations may favor big brands criticizing dishonest influencers who buy fake followers and use bots. Influencers will soon have to pay to promote themselves, and brands will need to boost paid content to reach influencers' followers.
Influencer marketing won't remain as cost-effective and affordable. It may evolve to a new business model or lose credibility like old celebrity endorsement.
No more free ride on social media for anyone. It's time to build a community you own.
Social Network Should Serve Communities, Not Rule Them
Social media is at best a catalyst for building and nurturing a community, but lots of brands use it as the solution and fail.
Why? Because they degrade community into a marketing tool instead of considering it as business strategy, core value, or even the brand itself. Community is created to stay close to customers like being in a tribe and serve them, not to sell them.
A tribe needs a personalized fort where members can trust residents and feel safe to collaborate with others.
The purpose: Keep members tied with a shared purpose connected with the essence of your brand's history and values.
But social networks facilitate connection and communication—not community-driven collaboration. Connection really matters, but as author Henry Mintzberg wrote, "Networks just connect; communities care."
Brands dream about increasing engagement, but what matters is getting things done in a collaborative manner. In actual communities, people go beyond social engagement. They know each other and genuinely collaborate to create more value out of connections.
In other words: Networks promote engagement; communities promote collaboration.
It takes time, but the effects are real, as demonstrated by brands like Harley Davidson and Nike.
Even a large connected fan base won't make a community for you without a well-designed platform, well-defined strategy, right mindset, knowledge on building and managing a community, and enough resources.
You Own Data, You Control Everything
It's never been more critical for brands to own and listen to customer data.
Building a community on a platform you own gives you access to a wide range of data points—from demographics to minute activities in the community. And it can be integrated with all other data repositories such as CRM, marketing hub, analytics, and reporting tools.
You can augment internal data with community data and external social media data to get a 360-degree view of customers.
In the 21st century, without a data-driven strategy, running a business is impossible, let alone beating competitors in crowded markets. In this age of personalized-everything, a community makes your brand strong and has capability to lead you through digital transformation.
Benefits of Owned Community Platforms
Better Engagement
A community platform creates two-way conversation between you and your customers, partners, or members. Engagement rates are actually much higher in online communities than social media sites—social media creates many distractions.
Dedicated Space
Through dedicated communities, there's dedicated space for customer growth, investment, problem-solving, and partnerships. Interaction is more focused between organization and customer—not possible on social media.
Data Privacy and Ownership
In online communities, data presented by organization and customer can be kept private and remain exportable at all times.
SEO Benefits
Online communities are hubs for user-generated content. Search engines prefer fresh and unique content, boosting your SEO score and bringing new leads.
Structure and Control
Online communities allow owners to structure and organize different social elements exactly as needed and provide powerful moderation tools to keep the community a safe place.
Advanced Analytics
Community software consists of advanced analytical tools that can be customized to match different business needs. The data produced can depict organizational goals from retention and loyalty to revenue.
Brand Leadership
Community helps organizations achieve higher brand leadership as they're congregating people and providing a platform to facilitate discussions around the industry they serve.
Making the Transition
If you're currently relying on social media for community, consider these steps:
Audit your current presence. Understand where your audience is and what value they get from social media groups.
Define your community strategy. What do you want your owned community to accomplish that social media can't?
Choose the right platform. Look for customization, data ownership, integrations, and scalability.
Migrate gradually. Don't abandon social media overnight. Use it to drive traffic to your owned community.
Provide unique value. Give members reasons to join your owned platform that they can't get on social media.
Community platforms designed for B2B SaaS—like Bettermode—provide the infrastructure for building communities you own: custom branding, data ownership, analytics, integrations with your existing tools, and features that social platforms can't offer.
Ready to build a community you own? Book a demo with Bettermode.
FAQs
What's the difference between owned and rented community platforms?
Owned platforms are communities you control—you own the data, design, and member relationships. Rented platforms are social media where the platform controls algorithms, reach, and data. With owned platforms, you're not subject to algorithm changes or platform decisions that could impact your community overnight.
Should we abandon social media entirely?
No. Social media still has value for awareness, reach, and driving traffic to your owned community. The key is not relying solely on social media for community building. Use social as a channel to attract members to your owned platform where deeper relationships can develop.
How do we convince members to join an owned platform?
Offer unique value they can't get on social media: exclusive content, better discussions without distractions, direct access to your team, member directory, events, and a more focused experience. Many members will appreciate a dedicated space away from social media noise.
What about the effort to build and maintain an owned platform?
Modern community platforms make this significantly easier than building from scratch. With templates, no-code customization, and built-in features, you can launch quickly. The ongoing effort is similar to managing a social media group—but with better tools and data.
