Businesses began to suffer as society retreated to their homes for quarantine, and panic began to set in. Members did not remain silent in that moment of vulnerability and uncertainty. Instead, I saw our members banding together to help one another navigate the new reality.
Business owners, marketers, SEO experts, and sales teams were all scrambling to figure out what they needed to do to stay afloat.
It made me realize how vital online communities like ours are.
Online communities allow for human interactions with people from all over the world at any time.
I know that’s what people say about anything internet-related these days, but a well-managed community is more personal. It can assist you in learning, growing, laughing, or finding exactly what you are looking for.
In this age of social solitude, having an online community has never been more possible or important.
When it comes to making genuine connections with your target audience, uncovering new opportunities, and making a smart, cost-effective investment for your business, online communities are one of the simplest and most effective options.
Virtual communities are one of the most straightforward and efficient ways to reach out to your audience, uncover new opportunities, and make a smart, budget-friendly investment for your business.
Clients and industry professionals are still dealing with the consequences of COVID-19, quarantine, social isolation, and everything else. They require a destination now more than ever, and every brand and industry requires an online community.
Is that why they’ve exploded in popularity? To be honest, communities were already popular and valuable before all of this happened.
It brings together niche groups.
As online communities have grown in popularity, they’ve become increasingly niche in their audience, allowing users to find any group they could want.
Why is that so important? Consider the way marketing has shifted in the past few years as an example.
In the past, the goal was to reach as many people as possible and cross your fingers for a very small percentage to engage. Personalization and highly targeted campaigns are now the focus of marketing. The same is true for online communities.
As a result, you’ll have an online community of passionate, engaged, and (in sales terms) qualified users with whom you’ll want to interact.
You don’t need to create the largest online community possible. A community built on loyal members with common interests will keep them returning and make the group feel special or unique to them, even if they are socially distant.
Online forums are mainly focused on something that all participants are familiar with. If you establish a comment thread for participants, your commodity will serve as the common factor. If you create an open forum centered on a specific sector or interest, people will congregate based on their shared interest in those areas. Whether people join because they all use the items you sell, they all work in the same types of jobs, or they all enjoy spending their spare time pursuing a common interest, they’re all coming together to share a common interest.
Many online communities fail because they are too broad and do not cater to a specific group of people or an interest. With social distancing and quarantine now in play, specificity and finding a targeted audience who will want to engage with you as well as each other is critical for online communities, especially when face-to-face interaction is limited or eliminated. This will result in an online community of passionate, engaged, and (in sales terms) qualified users with whom you want to interact.
Your goal does not have to be to build the largest online community available.
A community built on loyal members who share common interests will keep them coming back and make the group feel special or unique to them, even if they are socially distant.
Source Material
There are two primary methods for businesses to source content for social media:
Source ideas: Ask your followers what they want, or engage in social listening to generate content ideas for yourself. Simply put, give people what they want. It’s a surefire way to produce content that people will want to read and share.
Posting material sources: Set up a contest or use a hashtag to find user-generated content (UGC) to share. Engaging your followers can increase brand awareness while also providing you with a library of social posts to share over time.
Create specific guidelines for your forum.
You may wish to believe that everyone in your audience is thoughtful, kind, and considerate. However, people who abuse other members and engage in harmful behavior can quickly bring down online communities. If you aren’t prepared to handle disagreements effectively, they can even be threatened by members clashing. You can wish for the best, but planning for the worst is essential. That means establishing clear guidelines from the start. Consider what issues, conversations, or language you do not want to see in the community. You might want to look at the guidelines of communities you’re already a part of or communities similar to the one you’re starting for inspiration.
Provides a safe haven for people.
Safety and protection should be standard in any well-run online community. However, now more than ever, this is what members have come to expect. Feeling safe in a community means more than just enforcing rules upon its members, though. It means feeling comfortable sharing personal things or having vulnerable discussions.
When people come together in a group to brainstorm creative solutions or solve problems, surprising alternatives frequently emerge. It is one of the primary reasons why internal communities are growing in popularity. Social communities, on the other hand, can be used for collaboration if they are carefully structured for it and allow you to recognize and involve members in a mutually relevant way.
This could be used for co-creation or crowdsourcing efforts in which members work together to accomplish a common objective and thereby feel connected. An online community provides an environment where clients, suppliers, employees, and associates can exchange ideas and work together around the clock. Online communities are not only more time-efficient but also more accommodating.
people, resulting in leaps in innovation that face-to-face meetings could never hope to match. Personal communities can also be great places to invite people to collaborate, especially if they are strong, engaged, and focused. It’s yet another reason why looking after your local community is essential. Content marketing is also important in this case.
Geographical constraints
This is one of the more obvious obstacles, but it is still worth mentioning. Travel restrictions, both domestic and international, as well as social distancing restrictions in local areas, make attending in-person events or meetups nearly impossible. There is no need to be concerned with an online community. Instead, while sitting on your couch, you can connect with users from all over the world.
Furthermore, if your online community has an international audience, this can bring diverse perspectives to conversations, opening the eyes of different members to new ways of thinking.
Time constraints
Time barriers, like geographical barriers, can make it difficult to connect with others. While you are getting ready for work, another team member is brushing their teeth and crawling into bed for the night.
Members of an online community, on the other hand, are not limited to the confines of their 9–5 days to communicate with one another. Instead, they can participate whenever they are available.
Synchronous communication impediments
Keeping in mind the previous two barriers, this final barrier encompasses the entire product.
In an online community, communication can begin and end whenever members are available. It is also simple for new members to join the conversation at any time. This is because online community conversations do not disappear as quickly as Snapchat or Stories. Instead, they are always open to new members who want to join and contribute as they see fit. While these barriers are not unique to this social distancing reality, they are more prevalent now than in the past.
Members are connected with potential job or partnership opportunities.
We are all aware of the economic consequences of the pandemic. Many businesses have struggled to stay afloat, and top talent has found it difficult to keep or find new jobs.
And social isolation makes matters worse. Companies and job seekers may find it difficult to connect due to limited synchronous and in-person networking experiences. While job boards and traditional applications are still useful, up to 70% of organizations prefer to hire through personal connections and networking.
This is because referrals and personal connections you, your friends, or your employees have to increase the quality and trust. An online community can help even more. Instead of having to reach out to your network to find job seekers, you can find them all in one place if you build Let me provide an example.
Although Facebook isn’t your typical job search tool, I share the Elite Jobs Thread every month, where prospective job candidates and companies looking to hire can share open positions or expertise and connect.
Because it is more difficult to connect with businesses directly, online communities are a great place to meet potential prospects, sponsors, and partners looking to connect or collaborate with you or your business. Members can suggest opportunities for promotion or even directly request your services in the community.
It is free to construct.
Money is scarce for individuals and organizations of all sizes right now. Companies, especially in these trying times, must justify every expense they incur as an investment in long-term success.
What role do online communities play in this? Fortunately, many of the popular platforms where you can host them, such as Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, and Slack teams, are free!
While you or your team will need to invest time in researching and building out the platform, your upfront costs will most likely be zero.
Being a trusted advisor and offering solutions
When customers have questions or concerns about services, they frequently turn to the Internet for answers. In the search results, keywords from online customer communities or topic- and content-related communities will appear. As a result, online communities can be excellent places for customers to find answers to their research queries.
Prospective customers can find us when we join relevant communities and actively participate. Members who value the information and answers we provide will discover our solutions and begin to regard us as trusted advisors. Participating in our own branded and online communities will improve our reputation and retention. Trusted advisors and reputation are also referred to as “thought leadership” and, increasingly, “influencers” in a social media context. But there is a distinction.
Cost-cutting measures
Customers interact with one another in good customer communities, and questions are answered by other community members. Customer communities can result in lower support costs as well as upselling, generating new contacts, and so on.
According to Gartner, organizations that integrate communities into their customer support can save up to 50% on costs. In 2012, an average of 75% of all customer interactions threatened to undermine the customer’s attraction to specific brands, making it critical for customer service organizations to collaborate and create new customer service processes. The cost savings will be realized by reducing the number of calls to the community; the cost will be less than 5% of the cost of a technical support agent. By 2014, organizations that integrate communities into customer services will see cost savings ranging from 10 to 50 percent.
Customer devotion
The most powerful sales increases come from communities where the goal is customer retention and loyalty, and the focus is on helping existing customers succeed better. As previously stated, failing to use community efforts for essential but critical business functions such as customer support can lead to decreased loyalty.
Customer fallout, according to Gartner, will reduce customer satisfaction in 70% of organizations that fail to integrate communities into support. Having said that, there will be failed community deployments. Unsuccessful deployments occur when a company believes that by creating community self-help sites, customers will flock to them. It is also believed that these deployments can run entirely on peer-to-peer networks with no administration.
Creating a community around your brand takes time and effort, but the benefits can last for years. Create an insightful strategy for getting your forum up and running if it sounds like the right choice for you. Also, ensure that you are equipped to mediate and operate it over time.
