In today’s digital world, build and maintain an online community is an important and most effective way for the audience to engage and share their thoughts as if they were part of the community, which helps to build the trust and loyalty of the audience with the brands. It not only enhances the customer relationship but also shares invaluable insight and increases brand legacy.
In this post, we will share how to build & maintain an online community for brand loyalty and engagement.
Why Online Communities Matter for Brands?
An Online community provides a platform or space where the customer can connect with each other and the brands itself. The community helps to increase the brand’s value itself and the customers also feel belong to the community and helps to feel the emotional attachment with the brands.
Here are some points , why build and maintain an online community is essential for brands:
- Enhanced customer Engagements: Online communities help to increase the interaction with your content, participate in discussion, help to engage with your brands and also helps in social media marketing.
- Increased customer Loyalty: Customers feel that they are part of the community and share their thoughts, feelings, which helps to increase their loyalty.
- Valuable feedback and Insights: In online communities, customers can share their feelings and feedback , which helps the brands to know in which areas they have to improve more.
Build and Maintain an Online Community from Scratch
To build and maintain an online community from scratch may take several steps and time. Here are some of the tips to make online community from scratch:
- Define your community purpose and goal: This is the initial steps for build and maintain an online community. You have to define your purpose and after developing the community what are your expectations, what values will the community provide to its members. Example: Sephora’s beauty Insider Community is built for makeup enthusiasts who want to learn and share their tips.
- Choose the Right Platform:Choosing the right platform is highly dependent upon which platform your audience is mostly active. Here are some of the options:
- Social Media groups:
Social media groups like facebook groups & linkedin groups are best for your community building if your audience already uses these platforms.
- Messaging platforms:
There are different messaging platforms like Discord & Slack for more private communities.
Example: Nike’s “Nike run Club” uses it’s app & social media channels to bring together both fitness and supportive community.
- Set community guidelines & Foster a positive culture: Having clear community guidelines helps to create a clean and safe community. This helps the customers to interact respectfully to each other. You can also assign the Moderators to control the community and help to maintain the positive atmosphere.
- Start Small & Cultivate Engaged Members: Build and maintain an online community takes time and patience. Being with a small group of users at first. Reach out the loyal customers from various social media platforms and engage them with conversation and exclusive content.
Managing and Growing Community Over Time
As your online community grows big, you have to keep updating your management and efforts to meet the customers needs. Here are some of the ways you can grow your community over time:
- Use Moderation Tools to maintain Quality:
As your community grows, you need additional moderation tools and support. There are different tools like keyword filters and automated bots which helps to check and filter inappropriate contents.
Additionally, you can hire moderators to control your community to manage the contents and ensure a brand persistence.
- Offers Exclusive perks and Rewards:
You can provide rewards and intensives to your loyal customers. Perks includes:
- Exclusive Access: Early access to new products or features.
- Special Discount and Rewards: It includes Discount codes, Loyalty Points and many more.
- Recognition and Status: It can include Badges and levels to the loyal customers.
Example: Reddit uses a system where active members can earn points and rewards and also active users increase their levels.
- Analyse and Adjust Based on Insights:
Build and maintain an online community regular analysis of your community engages matrices such as active participation rates, reactions, posts and feedbacks from the customers. You can use these strategies to increase your community reach and this approach allows you to identify your weakness and strength and adjust your approach over time.
Examples of Successful Online Communities
Here are the some of the successful online communities that creates their own brand and understand their audiences interests. These will surely helps you to build and maintain an online community.
- Lego Ideas: In this Lego ideas, audiences can submit their own designs, from which Lego turns it into its official seats. This helps to increase the brand loyalty and trust towards their customers.
- Starbuck Rewards: In Starbucks, it engages its community by providing exclusive promotions, events and updates, which makes the loyal customers feel like they are also part of the community. This helps to make the emotional relationship of the customers with the community.
- HubSpot Community: HubSpot’s connects marketing and sales professionals. It offers resources, support and places to share their ideas. It also hosts the events and provides the valuable resources to its customers, so that they should be always engaged.
Conclusion
Build and maintain an online community helps to make your simple business into a part of customers’ everyday lives. By understanding your customers’ needs and problems, analysing feedback, you can build a space where customers feel connected and valued. Building a strategy, your community increases its brand loyalty and also drives long term success.
