How This Video Messaging Company Is Leveraging Digital Communities to Stay Connected to Customers

by Stephen Ostrowski
June 4, 2020
BombBomb
bombbomb

There are numerous ways to cultivate a digital community, but doing so authentically while meeting its needs requires an unwavering commitment to one core component: the audience’s voice. 

“No matter which strategy you pursue to build a digital community, your stakeholders need to feel seen, heard and understood,” Ethan Beute, chief evangelist at BombBomb said. 

For the Colorado Springs-based video outreach tool, maintaining that sense of community recently has required pivoting certain strategies, such as increasing their amount of webinars in light of eliminating in-person events.

However, Beute said that the most impactful measure has been offering educators the brand’s product for free due to school closures as a result of COVID-19.

“We received a lot of unsolicited, positive feedback from these educators, as well as from our customers and community,” Beute said. 

As Beute outlined, leveraging a digital community is driven partly by effective communications via social media, email, surveys and other channels, but also requires modifying outreach and engagement strategies to address the current needs of customers or users.

 

Ethan Beute
Chief Evangelist • BombBomb

What was the most important strategy you used to build a digital community around your brand? 

The most important strategy in building any community is conversation. Be open to receiving feedback in several channels. Create a discipline internally to organize, review and discuss feedback. 

No matter which strategy you pursue to build a digital community, your stakeholders need to feel seen, heard and understood. Their participation is obviously voluntary; they need to know that they matter, and they should expect a true exchange of voices and value. People are far more likely to sign up, show up and sincerely engage if their experience with you and your team has provided that feeling and set that expectation. 

Some of the channels we use include phone, email, live chat, social channels, a semi-closed Facebook group, live webinars with extended Q&A, one-on-one Zoom calls, automated and manual survey mechanisms and a support site. Ideally, you’re connecting not just team to customer, or customer to team, but also customer to customer.

Your stakeholders need to feel seen, heard and understood.”

Whats one way youve leveraged that digital community recently to improve your connection to customers at a time when physical connection isnt possible? 

As we canceled our in-person events, we created more opportunities to connect with customers, partners and community members. We doubled the number of live webinars we host. Several team members guested on podcasts and virtual events, often at the invitation of a community member. Our Facebook group became much more active, only partly due to our team’s activity there.

The best example of leveraging our digital community recently, though, was the launch of BombBomb free for educators. As schools were closing, and students and parents were being physically disconnected from teachers, administrators, counselors, coaches and other people crucial to the in-person, on-campus experience, we offered our video messaging platform absolutely free to educators. Within a couple of weeks, and with the help of our community, we brought on more than 5,000 educators from all 50 states and several other countries. We created unique onboarding emails and webinars for these educators. We crafted specific blog posts with examples for elementary, middle and high, and college and university educators. It felt like the right thing to do and we were uniquely prepared to do it. We received a lot of unsolicited, positive feedback from these educators, as well as from our customers and community.

Given the current states of affairs and the impact thats having on your customers, what has been the most important consideration for your team when it comes to the messaging and tone of your digital content?

We have the benefit of offering a service that’s long-served a need that’s even more acutely felt in today’s environment: staying face-to-face with the people who matter most to your life and business with personal video messages. 

We scrapped most of our content marketing plans, which were set through July, and rebuilt them for the circumstances our customers are in right now. We doubled blog and webinar training with specific ideas and examples, seeking to empower and equip people with ways to stay connected to all of the stakeholders in their success. We strengthened the feedback loops from the sales and customer success teams, who have the most direct prospect and customer exposure, to make sure we were meeting people where they needed and wanted us to be.

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