How Can KOLs and Influencers Build Their Most Loyal Fan Community on LINE?

photo by @adambentleydesign Adam Bentley

Influencer marketing has been on the rise since the blogger era. It moved from text to text-and-images, and now video is the main format, with YouTube gradually becoming mainstream media. At the same time, creators have many platforms to manage: Facebook Pages, Instagram, YouTube memberships, Twitter, livestreaming platforms, and more. Being popular on one platform isn’t enough. What matters more is guiding people across platforms and making the most of each one’s strengths.

Content structure is still what matters most in KOL marketing. It strengthens your fan base while letting you promote brand partners’ products to your audience. That takes influencers who truly understand their audience and can turn personal brand value into commercial value, driving traffic and lifting conversions.

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“Community” is an influencer’s core value

“Community” here doesn’t mean a single platform. It means bringing together people who share the same tastes and interests. Opinion leaders have more connections to the outside world and can reach more like-minded people, and building those connections depends on running multiple platforms.

“Multi-platform management” is now central for KOLs and influencers. Many YouTubers and streamers run several popular platforms at once, posting in rotation or simultaneously based on each platform’s strengths. The most dedicated KOLs even tailor their messages for each platform. “Community” itself is the core of influencer marketing.

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LINE is the best place to build true fans

LINE is highly exclusive. Its one-to-one conversations are both a weakness and a strength.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and similar platforms are like public spaces. When we speak up in public, anyone passing by can see it, so we may reach audiences we never expected. On the flip side, the sheer volume of information means your message can get lost in the crowd, and the people you meant to reach may miss it.

Highly exclusive chat communities such as LINE and Telegram have the one-to-one advantage: you can make sure every person actually receives your message.

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How KOLs can build a true-fan community on LINE

KOLs have a powerful base of true fans. LINE lets them talk to users as directly as possible, send regular fan-exclusive messages, and use modules such as badges and member areas to communicate with different segments.

Build the community

Step one is to establish your core values through your content. The most exciting thing about a chat community is that KOLs can interact with fans online in real time and in the most personal way. Building something from nothing isn’t easy, and it’s the first step most people never take.

Games are one way to create interactions that make fans feel truly close to you.

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Use posts and campaigns to build the core of your community so users get used to talking with you through this channel. Influencers should find this part fairly familiar. When fans move to a new platform, the question is how to use that platform’s strengths to interact with them. In a chat community, for example, random chats with a real person deliver a sense of surprise and the pride of a genuine interaction.

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Run the community

Keeping a community going may be the biggest challenge many influencers face. YouTubers have to keep releasing videos, try different styles, and listen to viewers at the right moments. Ray Du English, for example, started out teaching English and later launched a daily-life channel, constantly finding new angles to connect with viewers.

Recommended reading: Why make “Ray Du Daily”? Ray Du on how YouTubers pivot and expand: I haven’t lost my original purpose

A chat community lets you ask fans for their opinions through more personal interactions, and conversation makes it more direct. For example, letting viewers vote on the topic before a livestream boosts participation and gives them a stronger sense of belonging.

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Monetize the community

In the end, every creator wants to earn a living from their work. Creators need passion, but even more, they need to turn their existing resources into business value. Many YouTubers now sell co-branded merchandise and apparel, which is one way to do it: more brand partnerships lead to monetization.

This requires knowing your fans. A chat community is a channel for ongoing conversations with them, and one-to-one channels let you hear their suggestions more directly and keep adjusting. The YouTube channel “Hey, What Are You Doing This Week?” is a case in point: its e-commerce brand nininono was born because fans kept asking for it.

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Conclusion

After LINE raised prices with 2.0, many people balked at messaging fees. But chat is still a great way for KOLs to understand who their fans are. Through different topics, you build up interest tags for users and then analyze those tags to learn what your fans like.

The first step is usually the hardest. But if you break your community management into a few stages, move through them one at a time, and set a target for each stage, your chat community becomes more than a notification channel. It becomes a place for deep conversations with your fans.

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※ Features such as tag-based segmented posting require an API integration

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