Face­book has announced that, as of Jan­u­ary 2015, users will see a sig­nif­i­cant­ly less pro­mo­tion­al posts in their feeds. It puts a huge dent into the plans of brand who engage in organ­ic social media mar­ket­ing. A recent For­rester report has indi­cat­ed that the change could lead to the rise of ded­i­cat­ed brand com­mu­ni­ties, which will rede­fine the way brands approach social media mar­ket­ing.

The news that pro­mo­tion­al page posts will see sig­nif­i­cant­ly less dis­tri­b­u­tion on Face­book start­ing in 2015, has rocked the social media world.

It’s a trend that is begin­ning to be seen across var­i­ous social media net­works, not just Face­book. As TopRank Online Mar­ket­ing CEO Lee Odd­en point­ed out in Momen­tol­ogy’s recent social media trends arti­cle:

“Social media is no longer organ­ic: Grow­ing mon­e­ti­za­tion by social net­works will dimin­ish organ­ic ampli­fi­ca­tion to near insignif­i­cant lev­els. At the same time, social plat­forms will pro­vide even more effec­tive adver­tis­ing options to reach spe­cif­ic audi­ence tar­gets.”

It stems from a response by social media net­works, and par­tic­u­lar­ly Face­book, to cut down on the num­ber of pro­mo­tion­al posts in user’s news feeds, some­thing that was both detri­men­tal for the over­all usabil­i­ty of the social net­work, and inef­fec­tive for brands (with some reports indi­cat­ing that as lit­tle as 2 per­cent of Face­book posts ever end up reach­ing a fan).

The decline of organ­ic social rep­re­sents one of a num­ber of changes that are fac­ing social media mar­ket­ing in 2015. A recent study by mar­ket research com­pa­ny For­rester, “Pre­dic­tions 2015: Social Media Grows Up”, has put forth a num­ber of key insights. Per­haps one of the most sig­nif­i­cant points explored how as social media matures, brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties will become much more influ­en­tial and sig­nif­i­cant.

Why Branded Communities?

When you con­sid­er that only 2 per­cent of Face­book posts reach fans, it’s no won­der that mar­keters have indi­cat­ed that they are much more sat­is­fied with engage­ment lev­els on brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties than that achieved on Face­book or Twit­ter. Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties offer more val­ue than social post­ing for three key rea­sons:

• Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties dri­ve greater reach: While brands can encour­age word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing by post­ing con­tent on social net­works and hop­ing it gets shared, this is very hit and miss. It can end up being a drain on resources and a bit of a gam­ble for brands. Instead, brands could stim­u­late advo­ca­cy amongst com­mu­ni­ties – by encour­ag­ing sat­is­fied cus­tomers to act as advo­cates and pro­mote a cam­paign or prod­uct via word of mouth, brands have a much more effec­tive way of ensur­ing reach and ampli­fi­ca­tion.
• Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties con­vert prospects into cus­tomers: When con­sumers are research­ing and con­sid­er­ing the prod­ucts or ser­vices of a brand, they place a great deal of val­ue on con­sumer reviews, and rec­om­men­da­tions. Adding rat­ings and reviews to prod­uct pages has been shown to increase rev­enues and con­ver­sions.
• Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties cement exist­ing cus­tomer rela­tion­ships: The study revealed a key sta­tis­tic about the behav­ior of a brand’s exist­ing cus­tomers: adults in the U.S. who are already cus­tomers are three times more like­ly to vis­it a brand site than to engage on Face­book. A brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty pres­ence on a web­site helps to cre­ate loy­al­ty and long-term (or life­time) cus­tomers than Face­book or Twit­ter, which are, at least to a degree, dis­con­nect­ed from a brand.

Building A Branded Community

A 2012 report about the  “State of Online Brand­ed Com­mu­ni­ties” by Comblu out­line three pil­lars of engage­ment for build­ing a brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty:

1. Feed­back: Such as that gained from crowd­sourc­ing new ideas for prod­ucts or ser­vices, or on exist­ing prod­uct qual­i­ty, as well as mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and pro­vi­sion for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence jour­neys. This pro­vides essen­tial data and ulti­mate­ly, guid­ance for brands to adapt to cus­tomers and become more cus­tomer-cen­tric.
2. Advo­ca­cy: Such as encour­ag­ing word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing around a prod­uct or ser­vice. This both devel­ops deep­er rela­tion­ships with stake­hold­ers, and acti­vates them to sup­port spe­cif­ic brand mis­sions and ideas.
3. Sup­port: Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties can be led by brand and cus­tomer experts, that pro­vides an excel­lent means for brands to extend their cus­tomer ser­vice deliv­ery.

SAP

Per­haps one of the best exam­ples of a thriv­ing brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty is the SAP Com­mu­ni­ty Net­work (SCN). With more than 2.5 mil­lion engaged mem­bers, the soft­ware provider deliv­ers all three pil­lars of engage­ment via SCN: feed­back, advo­ca­cy, and sup­port.

One of the secrets of the SCN’s suc­cess is in its abil­i­ty to pro­vide a stream­lined, com­pelling expe­ri­ence that is aligned to user needs and inter­ests. The com­mu­ni­ty itself is orga­nized into 300 “spaces,” each focused on a top­ic, prod­uct or indus­try, mean­ing users are able to con­nect with oth­ers who have the same needs, prob­lems, and are seek­ing sim­i­lar solu­tions.

The net­work has been rec­og­nized by experts as being one of the best exam­ples of a suc­cess­ful brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty.

Richard Adler of The Aspen Insti­tute said, “The SAP Com­mu­ni­ty Net­work… may be the most exten­sive use to date of social media by a cor­po­ra­tion.”

Chris Andrews of For­rester said, “SAP has ele­vat­ed its com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment into an entire prac­tice… it allows the most ded­i­cat­ed mem­bers of its com­mu­ni­ty direct access to senior man­age­ment to pro­vide feed­back on prod­ucts, ser­vices, and strat­e­gy.”

SCN also fea­tures a cred­i­ble and effec­tive rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment sys­tem. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers earn points for shar­ing exper­tise and help­ing oth­ers, and high­ly regard­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers can lead spaces as com­mu­ni­ty man­agers, tak­ing on the respon­si­bil­i­ty to help new mem­bers nav­i­gate the com­mu­ni­ty and learn com­mu­ni­ty struc­tures.

Random House

The abil­i­ty for users to engage on super-spe­cif­ic nich­es is a bonus, and it is also a char­ac­ter­is­tic of oth­er suc­cess­ful social net­works. Fig­ment, a brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty fos­tered by pub­lish­er Ran­dom House, did­n’t seek to tar­get their entire book-lov­ing audi­ence (a huge, and diverse group), but specif­i­cal­ly their a small, high­ly engaged group with a strong com­mon inter­est: teenage girls who love to read and write fan fic­tion.

Fig­ment users share, cre­ate, and mod­er­ate con­tent, as well as rais­ing aware­ness and rec­om­mend­ing prod­ucts. High­ly engaged indi­vid­u­als become brand advo­cates giv­ing sin­cere and earnest reviews of the prod­ucts they enjoy, and this ful­fills mul­ti­ple touch­points for oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.

While on a small­er scale than the SAP com­mu­ni­ty net­work, it shows that all con­sumer-fac­ing brands can gen­er­ate brand­ed com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment by focus­ing on spe­cif­ic, high­ly engaged nich­es with­in their audi­ences.

The Changing Role Of Social Media Marketing?

Essen­tial­ly, the decline of pro­mo­tion­al posts on social media means that the chan­nel is no longer being viewed as an aware­ness gen­er­at­ing chan­nel to the extent that it has been in the past few years. Post­ing con­tent with the hope that it will be shared and trav­el well has been a bit of a game of luck, and mar­keters are per­haps begin­ning to real­ize that this isn’t the best use of the chan­nel.

Brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties may not be able to achieve the same reach as a viral post. Rather, a brand com­mu­ni­ty relies on the advo­ca­cy of engaged indi­vid­u­als to spread mes­sages and rec­om­men­da­tions to imme­di­ate cir­cles. The val­ue of these per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions will be much greater and more reli­able.

Addi­tion­al­ly, these com­mu­ni­ties serve as a cru­cial, addi­tion­al touch­point. In addi­tion to rais­ing aware­ness, and reas­sur­ing con­sumers via user-gen­er­at­ed reviews and rec­om­men­da­tions, it also builds loy­al­ty with­in the com­mu­ni­ty itself.

With the reach of brand­ed com­mu­ni­ties per­me­at­ing through mul­ti­ple stages of user jour­neys, the change to social media mar­ket­ing in 2015 could begin to see brands find­ing new footholds and gain­ing new val­ue from their work on the chan­nel.