Did you know that the average ROI (return-on-investment) generated by an online community is over 6,000%? These days, more brands are using online communities to build relationships with their current customers and educate potential customers on their goods/services. In this article, we’ll provide you with 7 tips to keep in mind if you’re struggling to build an online community.
What is an Online Community?
Before we can help you build an online community, you need to know what an online community is. This is a group of people who interact with each other via an online platform. This can be a 10-person group or a 1+ billion-person group. Understanding how to build an online community will make all the difference in the world for your brand.
7 Tips for Building an Online Community
An online community is one of the most valuable marketing strategies you can use. A brand with constant feedback from an online community will have an advantage over the brand that has to put together customer research or focus groups. This is because the online community is constantly providing feedback to the brand.
This is not a complicated process. Most of the effort behind community building is figuring out its purpose and how to promote it. Below we’ll look at 7 steps to build an online community.
Identify team members for your online community
Your online community needs to be organized like your business- there should be team members dedicated to completing specific tasks.
A community manager is critical for the success of your community and will make sure that everything runs smoothly. They are basically the COO of the community. However, they also have a bit of a CEO in their role, as they work with your community members/customers to identify improvements that need to be made to the products/services, branding, and community.
You will have other individuals on your team, such as a marketing manager, to create content that will encourage members to buy for the first time, try a new product/service, or upgrade to a higher-tier product/service.
Define purpose/goal
To build an online community, you need to define your purpose/goal. If you don’t have a defined purpose/goal, people won’t understand why they need to join it. Your community should give something to your members- you need to determine what that is.
Choose your platform
You have your team in place, and you’ve defined your purpose/goal. Now, you need to find a home to establish your community.
If you’re considering creating a small (10 or less) group, you can create an Instagram group DM, a WhatsApp group chat, or a Telegram group.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to create a much larger group, you’ll want to consider other platforms such as Facebook or Reddit. After all, you don’t want to be in a group chat with hundreds of people.
Once you have decided how many people will be permitted within the community, there are 2 platforms to choose from:
- Free: where community members can create a free account, and the community is hosted as a micro-community of the platform. This includes social networks such as Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.
- Owned: website with login/password credentials. You would have a website where community members would log in when they wanted to enter the community.
Create Member Profile
Your primary goal is to fill the community with individuals from your target audience. Therefore, the member profile should define who you are serving. Once you have defined your ideal member, you’ll want to ask the following questions:
- What does your community give the member that they didn’t have before?
- How did they feel before joining the community?
- How did they feel after joining the community?
This becomes the persona for your member and will be the information you use to convince potential members to join your community.
Construct rules/norms
Before people become official community members, they need to be shown the rules/norms for entry and must agree with them. If not, they will be removed from the group. For example, some common rules/norms are that members cannot speak negatively to each other, profanity is not allowed, and members cannot do self-promotion.
Set up the community
Now that you’ve created your team, defined your purpose/goal, chosen your platform, created your member persona, and constructed your rules/norms, it’s time to set up your community. There are a few steps to this part of the process:
- Create categories within the community based on sub-categories of the overall community theme
- Review sign-in process for members for ease/convenience
- Define roles of staff/members for who will handle situations that arise
- Configure controls for spam such as reCAPTCHA to keep spam accounts out
- Align your online community with your branding to ensure that it’s clear what you are representing
- Test by choosing your success metrics
In the beginning, your focus will probably be on the sign-up rate. However, once you are established, you can start looking at other success metrics.
Promote your community
At this point, your community is set up, and it’s time to recruit members. Promoting your community is just like promoting your product. You’ll be showing people why they want to be a part of your community. Here are 4 tips for promoting your community:
- Partner with influencers: this will boost your community with theirs. Ideally, you’ll work with an influencer who has a community of members that reflect your ideal member (and have their attention). This is one of the easiest ways to reach out to new members that you may not have had access to before.
- Invite contacts: think about who you know that would benefit from joining your community. Additionally, your communications have contacts. So, you tell your contacts, and they pass on the information and so on. This is a great way to expand your reach quickly.
- Referral program: a referral program rewards members for referring new members to the community. You can offer a free product, a discount code, an entry into a drawing for a prize, and so much more.
- Add your community to your marketing strategy: it is part of your brand just as much as your products/services. Determine where your buyers enter your community and then use that as part of your marketing strategy.
Conclusion
These days, more and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon of online communities. This is a great way to interact with your customers and have your customers interact with each other. However, it can be challenging if you’re not sure what you’re doing. So, keep these tips in mind and click here to learn more about building an online community with Viafoura.
