Ty Haney, founder of Outdoor Voices, reveals a key community-building step: relinquish brand control. By empowering super fans to host local events, the brand turns them into 'co-owners' of the experience. This generates more authentic engagement and word-of-mouth than centrally-managed marketing ever could.

A successful launch doesn't require webinars or video sales letters. Entrepreneur Devin built a major launch using only an engaged Facebook community, a waitlist offering special perks, and an email marketing campaign. Deep community engagement can outperform complex, high-production funnels.

Patreon's CEO outlines three concrete tactics from the book "Super Fandom" to deepen engagement. Encourage "pilgrimages" (live events), facilitate fan co-creation (user-generated content), and enable fans to create collections and catalogs related to your brand.

For 10 years, Red Wing has maintained "The Crew," a consistent group of 20 loyalist customers. They connect monthly via calls with product and marketing teams, providing ruthless and authentic feedback that directly shapes strategy, far beyond what traditional focus groups can offer.

Dad Gang actively seeks quality content from regular customers and invites them to be collaborators on posts. This provides a steady stream of authentic user-generated content for their feed, highlights real community members, and shares the post's reach, amplifying organic visibility far beyond what a simple repost could achieve.

A new feature allows admins to switch a private group to public while protecting past members' privacy. This is a powerful tactic for brands with established, content-rich private groups. They can now make this valuable content discoverable in the main feed for non-members, transforming a community asset into a public-facing content engine.

Instead of just gathering feedback, Set Active actively involves its community in creating two major collections per year, letting customers vote on colors, styles, and designs. This transforms them from passive consumers into active stakeholders, ensuring the product resonates and generates guaranteed excitement and sales upon launch.

Stop thinking of content as a one-way broadcast. A sophisticated approach involves creating posts designed to provoke responses. Then, systematically mine the comments for raw, unfiltered consumer insights, effectively turning your social channels into a free, real-time market research platform.

For new product drops, Dad Gang staggers announcements across channels throughout the day: first to private groups, then email, app notifications, and finally SMS, while posting organic content continuously. This maximizes reach and creates an omnipresent feeling without fatiguing any single channel's audience with repetitive messages.