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Brand is where the secret power lies.

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To achieve lasting success, company owners and leaders must learn how to establish long-term relationships with customers. As a business owner, you want every interaction customers or clients have with your business to be a positive one. While most successful businesses develop policies and procedures to try to ensure stellar service, building outstanding customer relations doesn’t stop there. Leaders can’t simply assume that the services and support they’ve developed are exceeding customer expectations. To know for sure, you have to go straight to the horse’s mouth—you have to not only listen to what your customers say to and about you but also track to see if they continue to choose your business in the future. While you may not be able to ask each of your customers personally for their opinion of your company, there are metrics you can monitor to ensure you’re on the right track when it comes to offering outstanding customer service. Below, 12 leaders from Fast Company Executive Board share the metrics their organizations track to help them develop long-lasting relationships and a strong community of fans around their brand.

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Your brand is the entire ecosystem around your company that leads to a feeling or perception in the eyes or hearts of your customers.

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It's never been more important for leaders to show their team members their appreciation than in the past several months—and there are many ways to do it. The past year has been a challenging one for everyone, both professionally and personally. From instituting remote work arrangements to temporary layoffs, businesses had to make adjustments—often without warning—to stay afloat. Those businesses that have weathered recent storms could not have done so without the loyalty and hard work of their team members. That’s why it’s more important than ever for leaders to show those team members their thanks and appreciation. Indeed, a little extra love can make a huge difference in employee morale and well-being at any time, but particularly when teams are working remotely and lack the usual in-person interactions. Below, 15 members of Fast Company Executive Board share how they’ve shown their staff their appreciation over the past year and why this approach has been effective in lifting their team's spirits.

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If you want to build a brand that lasts, start by creating a community of like-minded consumers and advocates of your product or service. With multiple social media outlets and a vast online marketplace, consumers have unprecedented access to information about companies, allowing them to make informed decisions about who to do business with. Consumers tend to put particular trust in—and therefore seek out—other consumers’ opinions. This transparency can also work in the favor of a business, which can use the same media to share information and build a community around their brand. While it starts with a good product or service, there’s more to building a community than that. If a company works to reach out to its target audience through content, shared values, and stories, happy clients and customers may turn into faithful fans who spread the word and help the brand grow. However, businesses may not always be sure of how to begin building this sense of loyalty and shared community with their current and potential audience. To help, 16 members of Fast Company Executive Board share strategies any company can use to start building a community around its brand. Follow their recommendations to plant the seeds of avid brand advocacy among your customer base.

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Hiring a truly diverse workforce begins with looking in all the right places for talent. There’s more to a smart recruitment strategy than ticking a list of skills boxes. In many businesses, needed skills can be learned on the job. However, lived experience is a unique factor each candidate brings to the table. When recruiting new talent, it’s not just important to know how to find candidates with the desired education and qualifications—you’ll also want to ensure those candidates are coming from diverse backgrounds and bringing unique perspectives to the table. True diversity in a company or organization can’t happen if job postings don’t reach a large, diverse audience. Developing strategies to reach a broader pool of candidates is essential. To help, 10 experts from Fast Company Executive Board share strategies you can employ to ensure your job postings reach a diverse group of candidates.

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Success in the modern business world depends on developing an authentic, genuine brand that makes customers feel understood and appreciated. Today there are so many established and new businesses—together offering a staggering array of products and services and easy to access online—that a company can no longer simply lean on their service offerings as their main point of attraction. Consumers want to support brands that they see as authentic and that share and practice their values. That’s why business leaders need to focus on creating a brand that encourages genuine connections and loyalty. Developing a brand is both a creative venture and a journey of discovery. Below, 15 members of Fast Company Executive Board share their top secrets to help you build an authentic brand that truly connects with your customers and audience.