Brand community managers have a tough job.

Defining the purpose of the community, tracking growth, and communicating across company departments, in addition to being a superhero of resources, can be exhausting.

The smart team at Feverbee highlighted this recent research paper from the Information Management and Business Review, called The Dynamics of Value Creation in Online Brand Communities: Strategy Map Approach. (Phew, that’s a mouthful.)

The paper contains some great insights, so I thought I’d break it down in plain English.

Bottom line: you need to be co-creating something of value if you want your branded online community to succeed. 

The researchers hypothesized four primary drivers of participation: 

• Learning benefits - product support, guidance, knowledge related features, problem-solving and mentoring
• Social benefits - friendship, encouragement, social bonds
• Self-esteem benefits - fame, status, rank, leadership
• Hedonic benefits - entertainment, gaming, leisure activities

So how do brands work together with consumers to create value in a brand community?

The key to success is to ensure that it’s a two-way street. The brand offers products, benefits, and a platform, and consumers offer innovation, insights, and product co-creation.

The researchers describe four different categories of practice that build value:

Social Networking - members share their behavior and characteristics, and the brand welcomes them, guides them in learning and connecting with other community members.

Brand Community Engagement - the community documents and highlights the personal experiences that members have with the brand’s products. 

Impression Management - the community influences the members’ perception of brand activities/events, offers favorable information that can be shared beyond the brand community and evangelized. The community gives a platform for boosting word of mouth, sharing stories, promotional news, and inspiration.

Brand Use - the brand shares information about usage of the brand and responds to community needs/requests to customize the product/brand.

“To achieve value creation for a brand, the initial phase is to figure out the drivers and connection of customer value within the organization and marketplace.”

Learn what creates value for your specific customers.

Then you can bake that into your community strategy, and it will benefit your members as well as your brand.