How Big Business Grow Their Online Communities

Businesses big and small, even fortune 500 companies are beginning to take advantage of a trend we are going to discuss in this article. Each business is working to implement this trend in their everyday practices because it is resulting in larger profits and loyal customers who are excited about the business' products and services.

Now, building a thriving community around your product, service or brand, is a trend and this goes well beyond just a normal membership site. This is about building a loyal fan base and doing things inside that community that create raving fans. One company has done that with me, and I have spent a lot of money with them over the last four or five years.

The future of business is going to be based on the type of community you can build, and I'll go into deeper detail on how this will help you maintain a loyal customer base as well as boost your profits.

So, what company have I spent just over $80,000 with over the last five years? It's the Mini Cooper. Growing up I was never a car guy, but I always wanted a Mini. I've bought two Mini Coopers over the last five years. The Mini is different than any other car on the road, it has a unique image of its' own. It's comparable to the Harley-Davidson, they've both built a community around their particular product.

Mini owners were offered to participate in an unique experience put on by Mini. That's a key learning lesson. Any time that you're looking to build a community, one of the things that you want to do is you want to bring people who have a shared interest together and you want to be able to provide a unique experience together.

So, how did mini do this? Well, they were celebrating their 50th birthday and organized for all the local Mini dealerships to come together in one location to celebrate the anniversary by watching 'The Italian Job' at a drive in. Only Minis were allowed inside, so you can picture what the scene looked like. It was such a great experience! A great experience and a great example of how a company brought together people, their customers, who have a shared interest in their product or service and gave them an experience, which created a real bonding experience.

This is the type of thing that companies are starting to do more and more of, and as a result of that, they are really building loyal audiences. This is something you as a small business owner, or a medium-size business, or even a Fortune 500 company can start doing more of.

Now here's the real trend that I really want to share with you. This is happening much more than just offline, this is happening online too, and with the emergence of Facebook you're starting to see some real clear-cut examples of this, but it goes beyond that. And there are actually companies that are being built solely on the communities that they've built online.

Another community I'm apart of that is a great example of that is a t-shirt company, Threadless! In June 2008, Threadless was featured on the cover of Inc. magazine. Inside, they talk about how the company has grown so quickly over the time it has been in existence. In the year 2007 their estimated gross revenue was up with of $30 million! For T-shirts! The more staggering point is that their growth rate was at 200% every single year, so you can only imagine what the revenue is right now.

How has that been happening? Because of one important thing: a thriving community. Their community not only contributes new design ideas, they vote on the design that they want to buy, plus they have memberships left right and center and all kinds of other things going on inside that community to really make it work. It's a great example of how a business can be built on the foundation of a thriving community.

The bottom line here is this, business is changing with not only the web, with social media, but with the way people interact with brands and products and services. An important aspect of this is bringing people together who support you and your product and building a community around that.

There are a couple key factors in this area. Number one, your product has to be good. People are not going to rally around a bad product. Just because you have a good product doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have a thriving community.

The key here is this, building a community is extremely important for the success of your product or service.