If you have been looking to increase viewership and conversion rates on your website, one of the most helpful steps that you can take is to build an online brand community. Kraft has one of the best brand communities on the Internet. Here we will take a close look at it in order to see how you may benefit from using some of its techniques.
Goodies before Sign Up!
Every online brand community should have a “disconnected mode” in order to entice opt ins and sign ups. This mode will tease casual visitors to your site with a sampling of the value that your brand community can offer once fully engaged.
The disconnected Kraft site gives a user access to top recipes and how to video links immediately, no sign up required. Some of the features that are teased if a user signs up include more personal tips for recipes, access to the forums with other users and even immediate tips on how to use on hand ingredients to make quick dishes for whatever occasion is coming up.
The menu is immediately useful to all users with tabs for coupons, recipes and products from Kraft that may help a cook improve productivity in the kitchen. There is also a “subscribe” tab that will take you to a page for a subscription of “Food and Family.”
Connecting with the People!
A great deal of the recipes on the Kraft home page are bolstered by incredible pictures. This seems to naturally lead into a connection with an image oriented website, and as a matter of fact, Kraft has an extremely strong presence on Pinterest.
Kraft also promotes its LinkedIn page quite heavily via links on its main web page. There are many sub-groups inside of the initial Heinz-Kraft group. One group is focused on careers within the company. Another group is a place for former employees to share stories. Still another group is a place where people can post articles and even critiques of the content that is on the website.
Kraft also keeps a corporate Facebook page. MarketWatch, a highly respected online marketing survey group, recently found that 90 percent of customers expect the companies that they frequent to answer their questions on Facebook. The same study also found that only one out of every four companies actually engages its community in this activity. Is it any wonder then that only one of every five companies actually makes it to its fifth year of business? Kraft has apparently decided that it does not want to be on the negative side of these statistics, as its Facebook page is full of comments and direct responses from Kraft employees and community leaders.
Keep the Content Flowing!
There is a great deal of collaboration within the content creation on the Kraft platform. Kraft has plenty of writers that they use to bring a consistent relay of enticing and interesting articles. However, one of the perks that members of the site have is the ability to add to the articles that are written. Articles and recipes that are voted as popular by the audience may even make it to the front page, bringing that person a great deal of status in the community.
Users of the system are also encouraged to comment on articles and how they used the recipes and other tips that are given across the site. Wherever you find an article on this site, you can also find an open discussion and plenty of add ons and improvements in the comment section for that article.
Connections between members are excellent as well. The brand community is truly a community in that members are encouraged to help each other with recipes and other tips.
The Kraft FAQ page is especially convenient, allowing community members and even outsiders to report issues with the company to the company via a well placed link down the left hand side of the page. There are also links to all of the social media sites as well as the opportunity to collaborate with the company.
Promoting Events
The Kraft site is also used to promote many events around the world that have to do with the company and with cooking in general. The Kraft FAQ page lists these events by brand (Kraft owns Planters and Maxwell House brands, among many others), and the front page will take promotion of an event if it concerns the brand as a whole. The events that members conduct on behalf of the company also have the chance to be promoted if they are substantial enough.
Having Your Say!
All products are up for critique on the site. This is especially true when the company comes out with a new product. The product is placed front and center with plenty of opportunity for people to comment how it is being used in recipes.
Keeping it Real with Customers!
The platform that Kraft has created is a platform for customer relations of all types. Customer to company relations have never been better. However, and more importantly, customer to customer relations are also at an all time high. The freedom that customers of the brand feel to correspond with each other helps to create a feeling of camaraderie that many competitors in the food and beverage industry are actually quite jealous of. The Kraft template has many aspects that can be beneficial to many brands.
Overall, the Kraft brand engages customers and brings new people in with regularity because of its feature set. It communicates with its customers and takes feedback seriously. Aside from the smaller details of form, these are the greatest things to take away from the Kraft community and incorporate into your own.
