Networks: influencers or communities?

Communities are another option for connecting with your audience as a brand since they can generate a collective voice effect and stronger bonds by feeling part of a movement.

Social networks are the primary activity of users on the Internet, making them a very important channel for brands to connect with their consumers. However, unlike traditional media such as newspapers, radio, and television, in digital channels we see some individuals who have managed to amass a huge number of followers, even surpassing very famous artists, known as influencers.

According to a report by Leverage Marketing, 49% of people trust recommendations made by influencers, which is why 84% of companies are working with or intend to work with influencers as part of their marketing and business positioning plans. However, 67% of marketers consider that the biggest challenge lies in finding relevant influencers, especially when many of these influencers have resorted to buying fake followers to boost their numbers.

On the other hand, there is another strategy that some brands are following, which is to create or partner with communities aligned with their audience, where communication, instead of coming from a charismatic figure with many followers, is a form of communication where everyone can interact as equals due to sharing a common interest.

Speaking with Jorge Herrera, CEO of Empower Media, and Miguel A. López, director of new business, who have built very important digital communities in different industries, with a network of over 20 million and are currently working with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, to bring WikiTribune to the Spanish-speaking community (a newspaper that functions like Wikipedia where the community generates, reviews, and updates content), they say: "Thanks to the popularity of social networks, we see many people trying to become famous, growing their follower base at all costs, as this has become very attractive to several brands. Additionally, many of these digital influencers have managed to connect very easily with the audience by presenting themselves as ordinary people, establishing a greater intimacy with the audience than many artists. However, influencers are not always a guarantee of advertising success; the community they build belongs to them and not to the brands, so it is important to analyze how strategies are developed with these influencers so that you are not only swayed by the volume of followers but also by the affinity of interests that their audience has with your brand and thus manage to make them part of your community."

"Communities are another very interesting option for connecting with your audience as a brand since they can generate a collective voice effect and stronger bonds by feeling part of a movement," says Miguel López. "But as Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia with whom we are collaborating, says, a community is not just the people who show up but the people who participate and share your values, which is why it is so important to share a cause greater than one that unites everyone. When you generate your own audience or join an existing community in your industry, it is much easier to understand how your consumers behave and communicate in an ecosystem that interests them, something that can be much more effective than a focus group. In reality, today we can all be influencers, with our family, friends, and colleagues since many purchasing decisions are made based on recommendations from close people, and the winning combination we have seen is the union of experts, product, and fans (those who follow a cause or product the most). To generate and grow a community, it is very important to combine physical (offline) efforts with digital (online) efforts and align objectives to achieve more effective and measurable strategies," comments Jorge Herrera.

Humans have a natural need to feel part of a cause or movement, and as Latinos, being highly sociable, our greatest competitive advantage in this new digital economy could be to create and engage in communities around topics that we are passionate about.