A Case Study — How to Actively Engage with Identified Online Communities

Professional blog writing — many marketing organisations offer this service. In general, being considered a thought leader and providing opportunities for external professionals to repost your well written, well-considered content can be part of a valuable marketing strategy. How to make these articles different, more appealing than the literally thousands on offer is the real challenge.

A few years ago, Smith & Elise Marketing started working with a new client in the medical devices industry, their customers crossing into both aged care and the disability community. As usual, we began providing blogs written by a professional writer, an individual who was herself a member of the disability community. The blogs were great! They were well written, appropriately professional, and covered a series of issues that had been identified by the client, the writer and us. However, they seemed to be a missing crucial yet intangible element, something that was preventing true engagement within the very communities we were hoping to reach. Were these articles really providing true value for our client?

We first started to build the client’s community — we asked questions, we engaged in micro-conversations, we got to know a number of the community by first name basis. This was a slow process and that required an engagement professional who intimately knew the demographic from a lived perspective. This person was invested in this community already and could talk from the heart.

A few months along we decided to take the next step on our community engagement path — we employed non-professional writers, some of the identified key stakeholders we were, in fact, hoping to reach. The idea of providing non-professional writers might sound counterintuitive, but this experiment has been a huge success.

Our first step was to advertise for paid bloggers within the specific online groups that we wished to build relationships with. We specified that those applying need not be professional writers nor did they need to be current customers to the client. We did however ask that they supply links to any blogging they had undertaken so we could choose from the best applicants within each region. We also decided to spread the work over 8 individuals with two blogs going out each month.

The beneficial outcomes of this ongoing experiment have been numerous and include:

• Multiple new relationships within identified community groups
• New connections with both current and potential future customers
• An opportunity for the client to give back to their communities by paying the bloggers a professional rate, resulting in goodwill
• These blogs are written from multiple lived experiences, making them more interesting and relevant to the readers
• The benefits of multiple bloggers has been that each individual promoted their own blogs as well as supporting each other’s work — with reposts, reactions, and comments — there was plenty of organic engagement!
• The writers have begun to talk about their new status as professional bloggers, promoting their association with the brand, alongside their new skills inside the identified online community groups. There has been organic and spontaneous conversation mentioning the brand in a positive way.
• The brand has provided a platform for commentary on issues concerning people within the identified groups and for members of these communities

Some of the bloggers are non-verbal, blind, or use a specially designed headpiece that allows them to type out each letter individually in order to write a 300-page blog. Whilst a meticulous editing and proofing process has been applied to all blogs, the work published is of an unexpectedly high standard and often contains impressive insights. These blogs are written with passion and from the heart. And the resulting engagement has been both sincere and powerful. You simply can’t fake that kind of community support.

About me:

I am a social media and community engagement professional, accomplished at growing active online communities, with over 25 years experience in marketing.

Visit my LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/karielise

Visit our website: https://smithandelisemarketing.com.au