Community Strategy Insights

The latest insights on community strategy, technology, and value by FeverBee’s founder, Richard Millington

Integrating Social Media and Community

Richard Millington
Richard Millington

Founder of FeverBee

How do you drive people to the community when they’re so used to participating on social media?

This is the headache for many community leaders today.

One solution is to completely rethink what your community is. I love some of the examples from retail brands.

Take a look at Fenty Beauty’s community page below:


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There is no traditional community with questions and answers. Instead, they use social media (notably Instagram) as their hub. Any member of their community can @mention the brand and moderators decide if the look should appear on the homepage (technology by Olapic).

This gives every visitor thousands of looks they can browse in a single location. If you’re interested in beauty, it’s Instagram on steroids – thousands of curated looks all in one place.

The best part is if you click on any of the looks, you can also see which products were used to create them and immediately buy it.

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Members create content on their social channels, the brand curates and aggregates this content. Visitors can browse and purchase items directly through this content.

If you’re struggling to compete with social, you probably need a rethink of your community strategy. Don’t waste your time trying to change fixed member habits but see how you benefit from those habits while giving members more of what they want; respect, information, and connections to one another.

This isn’t the only example. National Geographic (bottom of the page), OleHenrikson, Dr. Martens, American Eagle, and many others are already doing this.

Retail might be leading the way, but there’s no reason you can’t curate a list of verified experts in almost any topic on your community site today. You can link to their Twitter accounts so visitors can ask them for help (on social), or pull in their content and share it within the community (curated).

It’s always easier to swim with the tide than against it.

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