An online community is what, exactly? The world is full of communities. Whether they are communities made up of friends, family, or people who share interests, we are a part of many of them. Online communities emulate the same values found in real-world communities.

This post can be helpful if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of an online community or would like a refresher.

What Is An Online Community?

Consider the online communities you might be a part of, perhaps without even realizing it. Maybe you keep up-to-date with old friends in a university alumni group on LinkedIn, regularly contribute homemade recipes to a Facebook group like Mom’s Best Recipes, or belong to a super niche subreddit about a hobby you picked up abroad (don’t worry, we don’t judge). 

In a digital setting known as an online community, individuals can connect due to shared experiences, goals, or objectives. Depending on the goals of the community, every online community has a distinct set of standards, laws, and regulations.

The goals of a community can be as diverse as holding one another accountable to overcoming obstacles in the real world. The wallstreetbets (WSB) subreddit aims to unite novice investors around intriguing stock selections. The Salesforce Trailblazer Community’s goals are to bring Salesforce users together for local meet-ups and to support one another in making the most of their individual Salesforce implementations.

Audience Vs. Online Community

Although audiences and communities share many similarities, they also differ significantly.

The direction of communication is the most important. The majority of interaction when you grow an audience happens between you and your neighborhood.

Consider what occurs when you upload a YouTube video or a blog post to your website. Your audience learns about your viewpoint and essentially has no way to express their own.

There are comment sections that let brands interact with the audience. When you share posts on social media sites, you can also communicate.

However, in these two instances, the audience and the content creator are the main routes for the flow of knowledge.

Communities Are Much Less Centralized

In online communities, there is a much less centralized flow of knowledge.

Everyone has an approximately equal chance to contribute. Members find it simple to communicate with one another and the community’s administrators.

The influence of community builders is still slightly greater. They can direct the group in particular directions with their decisions regarding moderation, community guidelines, and discussion topics.

Audiences And Communities Can Work Together

These distinctions do not preclude you from developing an audience. In fact, many people achieve great success by developing a thriving community from an already existing audience or user base.

Your audience already shares a common interest, so it works.

They may be interested in discussing related topics in an online community if they are actively looking for your content or product.

Brands that already have a following have two key advantages when forming communities.

1. Getting your community noticed is simple. In comparison to starting from scratch, you’ll achieve the critical mass much faster.
2. You are aware of what your audience finds fascinating. It’s simple to create community features that cater to the interests, difficulties, and objectives you already know your audience faces. The likelihood that people will sign up rises as a result.

If you find yourself in this situation, all you have to do is build the kind of community that will draw people in and aid them in achieving their objectives.

Types Of Online Community

At Tribe, we assist numerous brands in building various kinds of online communities. The four types that we encounter most frequently are listed below.

Community Of Practice

People with a common interest—typically a profession—can congregate in a community of practice (CoP).

These are great places to discover and exchange information and industry best practices. These communities are also a fantastic way to create connections.

An excellent illustration of this kind of community is the MO Pros network for marketing operations specialists. It is an exclusive community that promotes debate, Q&As, and teamwork regarding issues pertaining to marketing operations.

Internal Communities

Internal communities are those that are used within a company to foster collaboration and communication.

These neighborhoods are perhaps the easiest to establish and maintain.

You already have a membership base in the form of your local residents. The secret to making sure people use it is figuring out organizational problems and creating a community around these objectives.

IBM accomplished this through its CSR Influencers Network, a team of staff members dedicated to having a positive social impact. Although the organization already had social impact initiatives, it was aware that these leaders would gain from having a place to plan and coordinate their efforts.

Participation in these programs is now greatly encouraged and motivated by the active community.

Support Community

Communities for customers or support are developed around specific products or software. Users provide advice and strategies for maximizing the use of these products.

The company’s name brand frequently extends assistance to users in the neighborhood.

Running a support community has a number of advantages over other types of customer support.

• You build a collection of support tickets that people can use as a self-service reference to get through obstacles. A single solution can assist numerous clients.
• Questions may receive responses from other users. Your support staff will experience less stress as a result. Without expanding your team, you can accommodate more customers.
• Businesses can directly solicit customer comments and suggestions from the neighborhood. And use the community as a channel to communicate updates and progress.
• Search engine indexing will take place for community posts, including Google. Your community will become more well-known as a result. The community might come up in relevant search results, and people might decide to join.

A wonderful support network exists for ConvertKit. It aims to assist platform users who are creators in making the most of the software. By distributing resources and offering assistance to members, ConvertKit promotes this and enhances user experience.

The platform has grown to 44,000 creators and has 7,000 answers—a vast library of content for new members to learn from.Social community

Virtual communities don’t always develop in response to business requirements. Many are constructed around pastimes, interests, or social organizations.

Connecting with people who share their interests is advantageous for the members of these communities. While brands create devoted brand advocates and significantly increase their brand awareness among an enthusiastic community.

A prime example is the Love Wellness neighborhood. It’s a forum for women to talk about their love of wellness. It gives them the chance to learn from others, share their experiences, and receive professional guidance on issues like nutrition, pregnancy, and self-care.

Types Of People In Communities

There are three main groups that participate in or interact with every online community, whether it be a regional Hot Wheels collectors club or a national environmental association.

Community Administrators

There are two typical community roles that help to ensure the health and vitality of communities: community managers and community moderators. 

Assuring that the community and its members are engaged and active is the responsibility of a community manager. In order to ensure that community members are engaged and motivated to participate, they create programs that are chock-full of fun and worthwhile activities.  

Facilitating participation and monitoring compliance with community rules are the responsibilities of community moderators. They are frequently considered to be the hosts of the party.

Community Members

Every online community has its own distinctive members and ways in which they interact with it and one another. Each participant has their own preferences, and some give more of themselves and participate more actively than others. 

According to a recent study, there are two different participation styles that are both crucial to the success of an online community. 

1. Frequent Interactors
2. Infrequent Interactors

Members who have more in common than they do tend to interact more frequently. In general, those who interact frequently tend to contribute ideas, while those who interact infrequently offer criticism and discussion of the ideas. 

In most communities, only about 20% of the members are frequent interactors, but they are responsible for almost 80% of the interactions. This is a close application of the well-known Pareto Principle. 

Community Visitors

People who “drop by” a community but aren’t actively involved in it are known as community visitors. Despite not participating, they gain value from the community through observation, education, and inspiration. 

Communities help brands optimize their websites for search engines (SEO) by offering a source of useful content that is constantly updated. Visitors who make use of community content contribute to the expansion of the link footprint, which boosts search results.

8 Benefits Of Branded Online Communities

Create Real Connections

Communities help connect customers with actual employees at the company. Users who have queries can ask them publicly or tag other users in a discussion to get an answer. Most importantly, however, is the ability to feel a part of something greater than themselves.

Members of your community will become invested in the area if they feel like they belong to a place where their opinions are valued. Increased engagement and loyalty towards your organization result from this sense of belonging.

Stand Out From The Competition With A Better Customer Experience

Online communities serve a variety of internal purposes for your business, such as content creation and marketing intelligence, but for the users, they frequently have a significant impact on their satisfaction and overall experience. On paper, you and your rivals might appear to be comparable, but an online community can really set you apart.

Research from the Temkin Group found that companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to gain, on average, an additional $775 million over 3 years of investing in customer experience (with SaaS companies standing to earn the most, at $1 billion).

You can differentiate yourself from the competition by using an online member community or customer community to respond to inquiries and provide those moments of surprise and delight, either in real-time or by creating products and services that satisfy the needs of your target market.

Feedback, Ideation, And Crowdsourcing

You must demonstrate to users that you value their input and are listening to them if you want them to interact with you and one another. In order to increase brand loyalty and upsell opportunities, businesses use online communities to forge deep connections with their clients or members.

Branded online communities are intended to spark discussions about your business and its services. Utilize that to its fullest by keeping tabs on the most frequent grievances, confusion-causing factors, and suggestions for new features. To make your product more effective and appealing to your market, you can make improvements in each of these areas.

Inform the community when changes are made in response to suggestions from members. People adore it when their ideas (or complaints) are heeded and prompt action. Even more devoted users might become yours as a result.

Generate Leads And Acquire New Members

A community can be a great place to start if you want to increase lead generation or member growth. Why? Because a community increases your visibility and enables you to start adding value right away. An online community platform can boost a company’s return on marketing investment (ROMI) by 33%, according to Aberdeen findings.

Through discussion forums, articles, and updates that are indexed by Google, communities with public sections generate a ton of user-generated content. Your neighborhood will appear in search results when potential customers look for solutions to their problems, boosting brand recognition. The community develops in search authority, content, and relevance as your user-generated discussions expand, generating more leads and increasing brand awareness.

Decrease Support Costs

The ability to empower your people to self-serve, which decreases the time you spend on transactional calls and support costs, is one of the biggest advantages of an online community, in addition to fostering positive member-driven and customer-focused communications.

To enable users to assist themselves, you can start branded online communities. Their user-generated content provides the community with fresh perspectives, authoritative articles, and solutions to frequently asked questions. Users who are having difficulty can search those resources at any time, posting questions in discussion forums and looking for answers in blogs and videos.

By sharing original problem-solving techniques and cutting-edge ways to use your product, users can free up your customer support staff and increase the value of the discussion for each reader.

Earn Referrals And Create Loyalty Through Customer Advocates

Users who adore your business and what you accomplish want to talk about it. A community provides them with a forum for doing what they want to do—share their experiences and impart their knowledge.

Creating a program for online community ambassadors helps you to support your supporters and recognizes the value they bring to your business. For example, to recognize each advocate’s contributions and make them feel special, use gamification, ribbons, and badges.

To keep them “in the know” and encourage them to keep supporting your organization, you can also grant them special access to early notice of company updates and new product releases.

Encourage your advocates to establish connections with their peers, other users, and potential customers in the larger community as well. They are subject matter experts for your products, so they excel at generating debate, responding to inquiries, and assisting clients in locating the most effective remedy for their issue. This fosters client loyalty and motivates clients to continue doing business with you.

Drive Revenue Growth

Through a combination of awareness, engagement, and data-driven sales enablement, a branded online community can assist you in generating more income.

• Community members can naturally discover a course or product through discussions with other community members
• Sales teams can identify potential new members or customers through community activity
• Advertise your partners or sponsors in your community, or drive more interest in your own opportunities through advertising

By building a community, you enable your customers to participate in discussions about your goods and services, offer suggestions, and share original ways they’re using your goods to address issues. They’ll be more inclined to accept your offer to cross-sell or up-sell as time goes on.

Grow Your Organization

Communities ultimately aid in the expansion of your business. Branded communities provide outstanding ROI, according to 2020 research from The Community Roundtable.

Communities that are flourishing produce more benefits than they take in for each member.

• An advanced community member typically gives $67 worth of value each year and receives $614 worth of value annually.
• In a developed community, an organization typically invests $153 annually and earns $682.

4 Characteristics Of Great Online Communities

Built For Engagement & Empowered Communal Support

Communities don’t all have the same appearance and atmosphere; instead, they take on a variety of forms to suit the requirements of their particular members and organizations.

You need to consider everyone involved in the process, including how the community will benefit them and how inclusive the environment is, in order to draw people to your online destination.

Backing up, I’ll respond to that What is the purpose of your online community? Your tactics and strategies to achieve high engagement will be influenced by the response.

Consider your community as being for a particular group with a particular goal. The aim would be to learn, educate, and network with like-minded individuals if it’s a community for people who use a particular tool or product. Or, if you create an online community for a local cycling club, it might be for the purpose of connecting members, organizing cycling-related events, and promoting bicycle safety.

Grow From Shared Purpose

Now that we’ve seen all these illustrations, we can go back to the original query we had. what makes a community a community? Shared purpose, or people coming together to achieve a goal or solve a problem. Golfers want to know which clubs to buy. The most recent beauty advice is what Sephora customers want. The need for fresh campaign ideas is expressed by marketers.

We must always return to the fundamentals, even if your organization has bigger objectives for the community, such as ticket deflection, member retention, or increased revenue. For people who want to connect and learn something together, we build communities.

This year, how can you rediscover or establish a shared purpose?

Vibrant & Multi-dimensional

A fantastic community is multifaceted, diverse, and alive. In addition, it thrives as a result of the members. A place where people can interact and engage can seem overwhelming because people are unpredictable, creative, and diverse. However, it need not be the case, as your organization will typically advance as a result of this unique grouping of individuals.

Your community will provide value far beyond expectations by dismantling the conventional one-way exchange of information and opening up your communication. You can encourage engagement and connections that are pertinent and meaningful when you can draw out people’s distinctive perspectives and ask them to share their knowledge and experience with others.

At the end of the day, you’ll probably find that those who feel like a vital part of the community because of their unique contributions are also the ones who stick around and are the most enduring. One way a community can improve an organization’s capacity to communicate, develop, and stay relevant is through the cycle of distinctiveness, which involves leveraging individuals’ special abilities and enabling them to influence others.

Thoughtfully Moderated

The long-term viability of your community depends on all of your participants feeling safe and having fun on your online platforms.

The importance of community moderation increases in this situation. A dedicated community management team is crucial for a number of reasons, including this one. Knowing how to strike a balance between policing conversations to maintain order, contributing to keep conversations fresh, and granting members, employees, or customers enough freedom to feel like they can express themselves is a big part of becoming a good online community moderator. While you don’t want chaos, you also don’t want to put off conversations altogether.

While having rules helps to protect you and the community, members should genuinely feel that the online community is a place where they can express their knowledge and opinions without feeling restrained.

Are Online Communities The Right Fit For You?

It’s important to remember both what an online community is and what it’s not. First off, it’s a tool that needs weekly (and frequently daily) maintenance. The team resources that will be required to run the community, such as adding and approving new users, posting discussion topics and meeting invitations, adding resources, and more, must be carefully considered. While many associations work as a tag-team, some people choose to hire or recruit a dedicated Community Manager. 

It is not a self-sustaining solution that will be entirely maintained by your user base. In fact, G2 reports that executive support is crucial to an online community’s success.

Your technology stack should also include an online community, which should have a strategy that has been approved, is in operation, and can be measured. It shouldn’t be used as a stand-alone tool, and you should use the information from your online community to inform other communication strategies and the strategic course of your company.

With a measurable strategy, you’ve taken the time to agree on your objectives, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for how you’ll evaluate the performance of your online community. They should also be brought up in any initial discussions with a software provider and used as the foundation for developing and implementing a community that meets your specific requirements.

Remember that no two communities are constructed in the same way. Every organization has different motivations for starting an online community, such as how they hope to engage their audience and their long-term strategy.

Conclusion

Online communities with a specific brand are a typical type of community. Organizations build and own brand communities, which are online meeting places where people can connect over a shared love of a brand, its goods or services, or its mission. Organizations may also use brand communities to interact with key stakeholders like partners, employees, and customers.