Have you ever wondered what it really takes to build a powerful brand community from the ground up? That’s exactly what Zoetica Media founder Kami Watson Huyse talked about on Speakerbox Media’s new podcast Owned & Earned. On the inaugural episode Go Small to Go Big: PR Strategies to Build Your Brand’s Community, she shares best practices that can help every business grow and thrive.
The Early Days
Kami’s own path to success didn’t start with a huge budget or a big team – it started with one simple, powerful idea: build genuine relationships first. Today Kami runs a successful social media marketing agency, but around twenty years ago when she relocated from Washington D.C. to Texas, she needed to find a way to promote herself and her talents in the quickest and most impactful way possible.
“I started my own business in a town where I knew no one and I had no contacts,” she explains, “so one of the first things I did is I started writing a blog.” Blogging ended up being a wonderful way to build community and helped her discover, through her own experience, that “community was such an important part of building an online brand.”
Community Building is Foundational to Successful Marketing
Kami takes a refreshing approach to marketing, regarding it as a way to elevate your own brand and services without looking at others as the enemy.
“I feel like competition is kind of a central way that marketing teams are thinking about ‘who is my competition?’ and … because of it, I feel that they are a little bit too stingy with the information they have,” she says. “They're afraid that other marketing people will pick it up and they'll use it, and they're going to copy them and take over.”
In contrast to this adversarial approach, she suggests looking at community building as a way to differentiate yourself in a positive way. “If you build a community around your brand, other people can imitate you, but they can't be you, and guess what? You may attract people that I can't attract and I attract people that you can't attract – we all have a place in the marketplace.” She adds that, “Yes we might compete sometimes for business, but I've always had the ‘all boats rise mentality,’ and I found that it has 100% made everything I do very successful.”
How to Attract and Cultivate Your Dream Audience
Understanding the power of community is just the beginning. Kami also digs into how to intentionally attract the right people, recognizing that trying to appeal to everyone is a trap that many businesses fall into.
We can’t be everything to everybody, although this often is a hard lesson to learn. “So many people, especially when you first start a business…feel like, ‘Oh, I need to go broad, I can help anybody do anything,” she says. But this approach is a mistake.
Instead, you need to identify who you’re trying to attract with your product or service and what specific problem you’re solving for them. “We really do have to think about who we're trying to attract so that we can… serve them deeply and then get to really really know their problem, what they're facing,” she explains.
There is No Single ‘Perfect’ Community Size
When first starting to build a community, one of the earliest questions to consider is size. “I would say, go small to go big,” she recommends. “If you go small and you really get a group of people that really believe in you, and believe in what you do, guess what they're going to do? They're going to tell other people about it!”
Building a strong community requires putting in the time to make personal connections with people. Making people feel seen and appreciated as individuals can go far. “It's not about running another ad,” she says. “Ads help, but ads are not like a relationship. Ads are just you know getting people to see you're there.” Instead, she suggests things like connecting with people by commenting on their social media posts and reaching out to them individually through direct messages.
Show Up With Authenticity
But even with the right audience and a growing community, standing out in a crowded market requires one more crucial element, namely showing up as your real, authentic self.
Kami recommends embracing a human and authentic touch. “I really think it's that people want to know who you are. They want to know, behind the scenes, who you actually are. Not the scripted you, but the you that is bringing something, your expertise.”
She suggests spending about 20 minutes a day interacting on your social media platforms of choice. “You can kind of just drip some content on some, but you're going to go deep on one.”
For the clients she serves and the type of work she does, Kami’s go-to platform is LinkedIn.
It’s important to be active where your community is most active. “I go where my community goes,” she says. It’s also important to make sure you engage consistently, asking yourself where “we can do it sustainably.” Best of all, by growing a community and network that you serve, you also end up creating a group of people “that you can reach out to when you need them,” she explains.
Finally, she emphasizes always keeping others’ humanity in mind. “It's just human nature, right? We only refer people we know, like, and trust,” she ways. “My whole business is built on know, like, and trust,” adding, “I’m going to attract the people I need and I'm going to repel the ones that don't fit.”
To hear the entire interview with Kami, watch the full podcast.