How to Build an Online Community for Men Who Wear Suits

As a men’s suits store, your business needs to build a community in order to promote meaningful engagement with your target audience. From these engagements, you can unearth ideas to help your brand grow, among the many other benefits that online communities provide.

What is an Online Community?

An online community can be defined as a group of individuals unified by common interests, opinions, and goals who meet in a virtual space.

If you need a great example of what a great online community for a men’s suits store is, take a look at that of Sebastian Cruz.

Depending on your business goals, yours may be a private group to share learnings and transformation stories from your fitness program. Or it may look like an open forum where thousands gather to share resources and feedback on their photography.

How To Build an Online Community

Building a community for your men’s suit shop is nothing more than creating a space where community members can share similar experiences. Here are the steps involved in building an online community.

Identify Key Stakeholders for The Online Community

Your community should be as organized as your business. Just like you have CEOs, managers, and supervisors in your business, you want to have team members dedicated to specific jobs in your community. Which team member completes which tasks in your community will be based on their role in your organization.

Define The Purpose and Goal

This is the first step in building an online community, and you cannot continue to Step 2 without it. If your community doesn’t have a purpose, people won’t understand why they should join it. Your community is giving something to your members; the question is: What experience is it giving your customers?

Select A Community Platform

Now that you have your purpose, you have to find its home. An important question to ask yourself right now is, “How many people do I want to grow this community to?” If you’re looking to create a 10-person community, you could create a WhatsApp group chat, a Telegram group, or an Instagram group DM. If you’re looking to create a community of 100,000+ people, you’ll want to look at other platforms, like Reddit or a Facebook group. Nobody wants to be in a group chat with 100,000 people.

Build A Member Profile

Your goal is to fill your community with members of your target audience. Your member profile should mirror your customer avatar’s profile and answer the question: Who is this community serving?

Develop Rules and Norms

While your community is serving your members, that doesn’t mean they get to make all of the rules. Before people are official members, show them the ground rules and norms for entry and have them agree to abide by them. If they don’t, tell them that they will be removed from the group.

For example, rules and norms can include restricting members from speaking negatively to each other; profanity is not allowed; and members can’t pitch their own products within the community.

Set Up Your Community

You have the purpose of your community, the member persona, and the rules that all members need to follow. Now, it’s time to bring this community to life and set it up on the platform of your choice.

Promote Your Community

It’s time to go live. The backend of your community is set up and now it’s time to get people to want to be members. Promoting your community is just like promoting a product. You’re going to be showing people why they want to be part of this community by pushing on the pain point that the community solves.