6 tips for an effective online community

Online communities come in all shapes and sizes, from forums where users can provide each other with support, to full-fledged sites where members can friend each other, take part in social gaming, rate your products, and interact with your in-house experts. What type of community you should have depends on the goals for the community—whether it’s lead generation, customer loyalty, or awareness.

But no matter what you community looks like, there are some simple ways to create a community that keeps your customers engaged with each other and your brand:

1. Have a Strong Identity— Put the reasons for your community existing out there. Don’t just make it about your brand. Have an identity for the community embraces your brand’s values and your customer’s values, whether it’s being on the cutting edge, family-oriented, fun, socially responsible, or all of the above.

2. If You Want People to Use a Feature, Keep in on the Homepage — or at least a prominent link to it; you don’t need to make the homepage a mass of widgets. The fact it, just like on a Main Street in any town, all the social interactions in your online community will congregate on the “Main Street” of your community: your homepage. Side streets, those additional pages or subgroups inside your community, will get some traffic, but Main Street will always be where people want to see and be seen. Concentrate your most vital offers and news on the homepage to ensure members see them and take action.

3. Make Sure Your Content Gives People a Reason to Log On – This involves two equally important things to bear in mind: your content needs to be informational, and it needs to be frequently updates. Even though your goal for your online community is to get customers to work with or buy from you, self-promotional materials will turn them off, if that’s primarily what they’re getting. It’s expected that you’ll want to share some company news within the community, but keep it to less than 25% of the content. Make sure most of the content is information that helps your customers. Informational videos, white papers, and blog posts provide value for your customers. Updating frequently shows that material is new and exciting; otherwise, people will not log in, expecting the content will be stale.

4. Police Actively — Once your community gets popular, it will get spammed. After all, spammers go where the people are. Make sure you log in daily to check for spammy messages and delete them immediately. The same goes for content from regular members that’s plain inappropriate, from self-promotion to off-topic posts or hostile posts. But go easy on members who innocently veer off-topic or try to promote their own business.

5. Interact with Your Members — Make sure members know that several real people are in the community, acting as a voice for them. Post images of community managers, have someone from your company contribute content regularly, and answer all questions from the community promptly. It can be time-consuming, but it’s essential for a healthy community that represents your brand.

6. Connect with the Real World — Ultimately, the most successful virtual communities have a real-community component. Encourage face-to-face meetups among members, invite them to your offices for tours, tell the community when you will be at a conference and encourage them to interact. The more people feel that their community is real, the more they will enjoy being a part of it.

Building an online community can deliver genuine value to you as a brand and to your customers as community members. It is a commitment, but it’s also a stronger, more positive contribution to being an integral part of your customers’ lives, not just another vendor.

With a commitment to quality, your online community will be more than an extension of your website—it will be a world unto itself. And that will move it from being simply another marketing channel to being part of your business that reaches every department, from product to IT to the C suite.


Christina Inge
/Social Media Today/