Online communities are powerful tools for managing public perception and reputation. They provide a direct and instant line of communication to target audiences, enabling businesses to build trust and loyalty.
A community centered around your brand also allows you to monitor brand sentiment and manage PR crises. However, it’s not enough to provide a dedicated space for members to connect and interact with your brand and each other.
You must take several steps to cultivate authentic relationships and the all-important “sense of belonging,” which drives community success. That’s where online community management comes in.
Read on to learn what to do to manage online communities well.
Importance of an Online Community
If you’re wondering if it’s even worth the effort to build an online community for your brand, the answer is yes.
Here’s why.
Most people are involved in one form of online community. Need proof? According to GWI consumer research, 76% of internet users engage with online communities. 66% of them do so to make meaningful connections with people with similar interests.
It’s easier for businesses to reach out effectively to their target customers. Online communities bypass advertisers, allowing you to deliver personalized messages directly to existing and potential customers. You get a platform to showcase your brand personality and create the emotional connection people crave.
It’s an opportunity to make new connections. Online communities help create meaningful relationships between businesses and customers. When members can interact with your brand and each other through discussion boards, Q&A sessions, and interactive activities such as challenges, they develop a sense of community, increasing their loyalty to you.
How to Create a Strong Online Community Management Strategy
You’re here because you want to master online community management. The following steps help you create a thriving community.
1. Define your goal and identify your audience
The first step in any online community management strategy is setting clear goals. In other words, what do you want to achieve with your online community?
Typical community building goals include:
- Feedback collection
- Customer support
- Customer engagement
- Product awareness
- Networking
Defining your goals does a couple of things: it allows you to set relevant performance metrics (more on this later), determines the content strategy, and identifies target audiences.
Your online community can be a specific customer segment.
Airbnb’s online community is for hosts. They share tips, swap stories, and arrange meetups. Members also have access to customer support and a resource database to help them meet their goals.
A member persona provides valuable insights into who the community is for and how they benefit from participating. It also helps you create content and community features that meet their needs.
2. Choose a suitable platform
With defined goals and audience profiles, you’re better equipped to choose the right platform to host your community.
Factors to consider include:
- Control
You have no control over the look and feel of the community on free channels such as social media platforms. As for borrowed spaces, you must comply with the terms of service, and there’s nothing you can do if the site goes down.
Owned or branded community platforms give you more control, which allows you to deliver a consistent brand experience.
- Features
Potential platforms must offer the tools necessary for effective community management. These include automation, moderation, content sharing, and engagement features.
- Audience preference
The platform you choose should align with prospective members’ preferred communication style. A real-time communication app like Slack is ideal if members need answers quickly. Forums are best for discussion-driven content.
3. Engage and create a strong sense of belonging
Engagement is the beating heart of online community management. Regular interaction between members and the brand is crucial.
In addition to publishing valuable content and hosting events like webinars, you should respond to comments and share or highlight user content. This creates a sense of belonging as members feel their contributions matter.
If you’re unsure where to start, here are a few tips for an active and engaged community.
- Schedule content: Social media tools like CoSchedule and Post Planner allow you to automatically plan and post content in advance to ensure consistent community engagement.
- Facilitate networking: Software like Uniqode’s Digital Business Card allows members to exchange information easily and form connections quickly through unique QR codes.
- Create interactives: Polls, surveys, and quizzes increase member participation, generate conversation, and drive engagement.
- Include gamification: Brands like Apple and Zapier incentivize engagement with badges or reputational points. The more members participate, the higher they rank, making them eligible for special perks and privileges.
Your community is a place for connection, not promotion. So, keep the hard sales pitches to a minimum.
4. Encourage user-generated content
A sure sign of a thriving online community is that it’s self-sustaining. That is, it operates with minimal input from the business.
That doesn’t mean you leave engagement to the members. You are an integral part of the community, after all. It means you should encourage members to share and engage with user-generated content.
Lego Ideas is a product development community. The vibrant community hosts activities and challenges for members to participate in and showcase their builds. They can also submit ideas for the next Lego product.
5. Set clear guidelines and offer feedback channels
Your online community is part of your brand and should reflect an inclusive and safe space. That begins with laying down some ground rules.
Community guidelines outline acceptable and unacceptable behavior and consequences for violations.
This HR community’s code of conduct includes respectful language, no marketing, confidentiality, and active participation.
Highlight community feedback channels for reporting problems. You can also send surveys on customer experiences to gauge satisfaction.
6. Measure performance to gauge success level
The key performance indicators you will measure depend on your goals. If the goal for your community is customer retention, you would track churn rates, retention rates, customer lifetime value, and Net Promoter Scores.
Certain KPIs are specific to the type of online community. For instance, learning communities track course completion rates and student scores to gauge the success level of the community.
Other metrics to monitor are:
- Growth (total users, new users, churn rates)
- Engagement (number of likes, comments, and active users)
- Revenue
These numbers will tell you how effective your community is.
Conclusion
If online communities aren’t part of your PR strategy, they should be. PR is about creating positive conversations about a brand; communities are where meaningful conversations happen.
But launching a branded community page or online forum doesn’t mean you have a community. This guide to community management outlines the steps necessary to cultivate a sense of belonging vital to a thriving community.
If you take away anything from this article, let it be these two things:
One, be clear on why and for whom you’re creating the community. These will determine platform choice, content creation, and success metrics. Two, engage, engage, engage! Community is all about engagement. Meaningful interactions drive customer satisfaction, and satisfied customers are loyal customers.
