Community Management

As the term ‘community’ suggests, it is truly fantastic for any business or brand to have a group of people form online connections with your brand/business as the only obvious common interest. But how does a business/brand encourage, and ultimately foster, such dedication especially from people who maybe will never physically ‘meet’? Well first you have to decide the type of community you would like to build.?

There are what are commonly referred to as Public Social Networks. Public social networks are online communities that only require someone to have an account to be part of the community. Examples of these communities are platforms like: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. It would behoove any business, who wishes to attempt to build a community online, to choose which public social network aligns best with the brand they wish to build. As chances are - with over 4.7 billion active users all told between them – your business should be more than able to build and maintain a strong community with the help from your choice of online platform/s.??

Another community critical for businesses online are what are called brand communities. Brand communities are groups of customers, and employees; who were brought together in one place to support each other, provide input, and ultimately develop deeper emotional connections to a brand. They could be hosted on various public social networks or be hosted on the business website or both. Brand communities are beneficial to companies because brand-community members typically buy more, are more likely to remain loyal, and definitely reduce marketing costs through word of mouth – evangelism on a grassroots level. Some of the many benefits brands are seeing from their communities include:

• Direct communication customers – communities add another way to communicate with customers for sales and customer service inquiries.
• Product feedback – brand communities could create forums to test ideas and get feedback from your core supporters before making product decisions.
• Customer acquisition – communities can attract new customers, or help build trust to assist with conversion.
• Customers supporting customers – customers can answer questions by other customers, reducing the burden placed on your support staff – another result of grassroots evangelism.
• Loyalty – having a strong product or service will only get you so far, brand loyalty often comes from a strong community.
• Customer retention – better support and better customer experience will lead to better retention.??

So how exactly do you build an online community, what are the steps that should be taken. Well initially the person you actually choose to monitor said community makes all the difference in the world. That is where you come in. The community managers that are hired to foster online communities should be people-oriented, passionate, and proactive because their key role is to engage the people who either are customers or who would want to be customers.?

Community managers need to foster their brand’s culture by watching the behavior, language, and communication of members carefully. Reinforcing your community culture where community members themselves play the role of moderator, then the community managers can focus on other areas. Highlight the relevant and interesting posts and remove inappropriate posts to maintain integrity and ownership.?

Make sure that you generate the right content to encourage more engagement and interest among community members. Content can be created on specific topics, or on a viral trend or something that would intrigue the community members to read, comment, and share more. Good content is KEY!!

From that content, you can hope, leads to meaningful discourse. If community members connect through posts, like and comment, the community strengthens and improves. Hopefully it happens organically but if it doesn’t, subtly request members to give feedback or create groups of people based on their opinion to promote discussions.?

Bringing your most passionate community members into the product development process, not only can you improve upon product features with your target market through immediate feedback, you’ll be able to test its marketability.

For absolutely free.

The Return O Investment (ROI) from these interactions go beyond just market testing. You will also create brand loyalty as members are more emotionally vested in the success of the product, whatever you decide it to be.?

Building community is an investment in your business’s sales. In doing so, it allows you to listen, track, and analyze community activity to help you keep your finger on the pulse.

Community managers must be vigilant of their organization's brand presence and assess the potential consequences of their corporate communications. Brand presence includes consistency of voice across platforms to keep the company on track in terms of target audience awareness and engagement. Consumers should be able to recognize brand voices across pillars -- whether they're seeing a post on Instagram or a question on Quora.

Beyond direct interaction between the brand and its audience, community managers also record and report the engagement they see on at least a monthly basis. Other teams that create content operate mostly on the backend, so it's the community manager who sees the response from consumers. They can help track whether followers are confused, or what kinds of changes they are seeing within digital communities.

Community managers and moderators should leverage the right technology and tools to manage content and connections effectively. These tools are important for measuring moderation, generating reports, and analyzing the data collected. But don’t over do it because as we all know having a human connection is always above any automated message. Try to communicate with community members as much as you can to give a touch of authenticity to the process of community fostering.

Always remember the growth of an online community has no boundaries nor limits. So, watch out the trends in your online community, the highs, and lows, and work to create a better experience for your members. The creation of an online community takes time, consistent efforts, and commitment. Subsequently, all that work will result in active participation from within your online community, and then it will flourish on its own.