Online Community Growth and Engagement

Online communities should be resources for customers, with content that answers the questions customers are asking. This content should be constantly evolving as the community evolves as a resource for customers. Constantly adding new content also helps with SEO, and traffic to the community, to develop, grow, and improve the community. A community should also be a place where employees engage with customers and become a part of the overall feedback loop. Communities provide a tool for a brand to connect directly with customers and put connection at the forefront.

A community team should always work to improve transparency at a high level and to ensure that customers feel involved with and HEARD by the brand. Community strategies are all about engaging with customers and helping them but also setting up a feedback loop between customers and the brand. It’s important for a brand to show customers that they are listening to, and talking with but not talking to customers. A community team should internally literally be the voice of the customer and advocate for customers. Community teams should coordinate with social teams and track and monitor topics of conversation and report volume for executive visibility as part of the feedback loop.

Community teams should share content, cover events, provide customer support, and advocate for customers. From a content perspective, there should be a strong focus on customer story micro-content, including short videos, quotes, photos, and selling tips. Brands should gather content from customers and even employee interviews focusing on authentic, dynamic content that resonates with the larger customer base. A community team can maintain a database of content that will be evergreen and reusable internally by marketing and social teams, the community team, and other teams. 

A community team can work with customer event teams to gather customer content and cover events, including live event streaming. A community can provide event support and event coverage, including live broadcast and the answering of customer questions submitted via social during coverage. This expands the sense of community to the offline world as well, so a sense of the brand's “community” encompasses both the online and offline communities of customers.

A community team should always consider the content funnel where a long-form video is produced, that provides multiple content options. From a video, shorter clips and screenshots can be pulled, transcripts can be reused in blog posts for SEO, and audio can be used in podcast content. All of this content works together in community and on social media.

From a support perspective, a community team should strive for transparency, combat negativity head-on, and work to turn detractors into advocates. Community teams also need to identify and engage with superusers, and take advantage of this relationship, and utilize these highly motivated community members to help manage the community. In terms of superusers and social influencers, it’s a reciprocal relationship. Information can be shared back and forth to the benefit of customers, thus increasing transparency and trust with the brand. It is also important for a community team to involve employees and especially subject matter experts and executives, to get them in front of customers, and get customers access.