What is Online Community?
An online community is a technology platform and a group of people working together for a common purpose. The concept of online community is great to enhance a business customer base as it can include novices and experts, new prospects or long term customers.
Online Community is also the perfect place for people to share knowledge and perspectives with each other as well as the business or brand.
How are Businesses and Brands using Online Community?
• Brands are creating buzz for product launches via online community.
• Businesses and brands are integrating online community with CRM systems so that questions are put through to direct support channels.
• Companies are using online community blogs and social media for product experts and executives to help share the latest knowledge with customers.
• Businesses that actually care are taking customer insights and opinions from the online community and use these insights to help direct support, product development, marketing, and communication.
• Brands are embedding community content throughout their website, blogs and social media to make their sites more interactive and customer focused.
• Companies are using focus groups online to test new products or services and get feedback on their ideas.
• Businesses are harnessing the Web 2 generations and capitalizing on brand brand loyalty initiatives by providing a place where like minded people can gather and talk about common topics of interest.
How does Online Community help Business?
• Online Community lowers costs as in many cases it becomes possible to resolve customer questions in the community space.
• Online Community enhances customer loyalty and engagement. Customers involved in online community are more likely to remain as customers as well as recommend the business or brand to their friends.
• Online Community provides the business or brand with an ideal medium for customers or brand loyalists to share their sentiment and customer satisfaction. This becomes an opportunity to harness the positive sentiment and convert these loyalists to brand ambassadors.
• Online community tends to encourage sales positively as community members tend to buy more as well as more frequently than non-community members.
• Online Community is an ideal medium to distribute an awareness strategy as well as for the issuing of brand marketing announcements.
• Companies today are choosing the concept of online community as it provides continued insight into the mind of the average customer and what they are experiencing, therefore showing what they are doing wrong and right to attract business.
10 Keys to Social Media Online Community
ShoalHarbor recently had the opportunity of assessing an online community and identifying the keys likely to influence the success of an online community or social media channel.
We isolated these to 10 Keys to creating a successful online community.
• An online community “Owner” who oversees the vision of the social media strategy and whose passionate desire is to foster a sense of genuine online community. The owner gives active direction and inspiration within the online community as well as accountability from the top.
• An online community Manger who plans day to day engagement and content in line with the overall strategy. This manager is responsible for the direction of online community line staff such as bloggers and social media flight attendants.
• An online community Moderator who sets the tone, enforces rules and helps members. The moderator should define the roles for both staff and users, and then configure the software accordingly. This key player sets the guidelines of the online community in line with the overall strategy and informs the members. The online community members should know exactly what the community goal is as well as what behavior is encouraged or prohibited. The moderator needs to be firm, confident and engaging. The online community manager could double as the moderator.
• An online community Marketer is required to ensure that the social media channel or online community is visible to potential members. The online community needs to be easy for potential users to find. This role requires the use of marketing skills combined with advanced social media networking in order to boost the online community visibility by means of engagement.
• An applied online community SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Strategy. Natural search by means of search engines is likely to be your best and cheapest way of attracting quality like minded traffic to your online community. It is essential that you have a well researched SEO strategy for your social online community, and that the strategy is applied to all engagement as well as the provision of optimized content. This key point should be given priority as part of the planning phase of your strategy prior to launching. Feel free to contact us here if you need some help on SEO or strategy.
• A well Structured online community is important as it helps create a warm and inviting atmosphere, and first impressions are key.
• A Recognition and Reward strategy is important to add some sugar to the coffee! Regular visitors or super users need to be Managed and Recognized differently within the online community. Recognition and Reward are powerful drivers! Key visitors need to be recognized and rewarded every step of the way, so that they keep coming back and contributing to the building of your online community or social media channel.
• Analytics are a key part of any online community and social media channel. Remember that The Trend Is Your Friend! A good policy is for the owner to reward staff for positive trends!
I recommend that all key players in the online community team are supplied with a diary and that they are required to record their actions daily. This information is vital when you note a sudden fluctuation on your analytics platform. Google Analytics is the industry standard to measure websites and blogs.
You are then able to trace back to the diary date in question and isolate what caused the positive improvement or what caused the negative drop in performance.
• An Engagement Strategy is a vital component of any online community or social media channel considering the fact that engagement and a sense of online community is what your are needing to foster. This is especially important when you have a team of people involved in running an online community on behalf of a brand. The reason for this is that each member of the team has their own idea of what's needed and before you know it they will all be following their own direction down rabbit trails and hobbit holes.
An online community engagement strategy will help by setting the parameters and ensuring all the bases are covered. Team members are free to express their own initiative and creativity within the parameters of the online community strategy.
• An online community needs Passion to thrive! All your hires should be strictly vetted and their genuine passion for online community measured. This is a simple process! Just pop me an email should you need insight on this. My contact details are our Contact Page
