How should I run my online community? Many organizations are quickly adopting communities as a key marketing strategy. The question of how to effectively manage an online community may arise for those who are unfamiliar with the marketing channel. We’ve created this guide to online

What Is An Online Community?

Although it may seem like a novel idea, in-person communities have existed for… well, forever. With the advent of the internet, online communities naturally started to develop. Online forums and social networks, which allowed a group of people with a common interest to communicate with one another, were where we first saw the emergence of online communities as we know them today. As the communities grew, people recognized the need to ensure that they were functioning, safe, and on topic – and the role of community manager was born (although it didn’t start out by this name!)

The most progressive brands recognized the potential benefits of online communities and began creating their own branded communities where consumers and brand evangelists could talk about their goods and best practices, get assistance, and learn more. Communities began to take notice of what these trailblazers were creating as businesses in other sectors started to take notice.

These days, you can easily engage people across the entire customer lifecycle with the help of strong solutions created to support your online community. They are a tool that successful businesses use to forge closer connections with their clients. Online communities give businesses the opportunity to engage their clients in many-to-many conversations rather than just one-on-one or one-to-many interactions.

How Has A Successful Online Community Management Strategy Changed Over Time?

In essence, it hasn’t. The key elements of effective online community management haven’t changed much over the past ten years. It requires active listening, empathy, and the capacity to really involve people in constructive dialogue.

However, the tools that are now available to make managing an online community easier, along with the documentation of how to do it, teach it, and value it, have changed. As businesses recognize the value, they invest more resources in managing online communities, get better outcomes, and give community leaders more freedom to use communities in innovative ways that demonstrate their potential.

What is thus actually conceivable? Establishing the responsibilities of your community manager is the first step.

What Does An Online Community Manager Do?

An online community manager is the person or team of people responsible for owning your online community – setting the strategy, defining the online community platform, training your organization to get involved, building out the experience, and making your community a great destination where people want to engage.

Online community managers’ day-to-day tasks include creating rules for your online community, moderating conversations to make sure everyone abides by the rules, promoting the right discussions, and encouraging participation in the community.

The size of the company and the sophistication of the community program will determine the precise role’s appearance. For instance, your community manager may handle everything at smaller businesses, whereas community managers are more likely to handle strategy, planning, and programming at larger businesses. They can oversee moderation teams and develop the overall idea of how community members interact with one another. They might not get into the specifics of guiding actual discussions.

What Does A Community Manager Do In An Online Setting?

A person who is adept at communicating the company’s mission and objectives to its target audience is known as an online community manager (CM). Community management’s main goal is to forge strong bonds among its members and give them a sense of pride in being a part of something great.

An online community manager can be anyone who is outgoing, enjoys speaking with others, can find others who share their interests, and can get along with them. This work entails both online and offline activities, such as planning conferences, concerts, and other events.

A CM’s primary responsibilities include:

• bringing in new members and keeping the ones you already have for the online community.
• Responding to comments and maintaining constant contact with users.
• resolving disputes.
• developing content, developing a promotion strategy.
• working with opinion leaders, influencers, and bloggers.
• arranging offline events.
• Maintaining a positive image of the company in the media space
• feedback gathering and evaluation.

Stress tolerance and communication skills are among the primary requirements for this specialist. All interactions between customers and brands will be handled by the community manager.

Receiving messages, comments, and reviews from users is crucial for CMs. Users should be kept interested by being encouraged to participate and stay active in the community. A community is a special kind of family that shares similar values, interests, or a way of life.

Every day, a CM will need to:

• Respond to comments that need an answer, unread posts, and reviews that are critical.
• track brand mentions.
• Create a plan for promoting the neighborhood and generate fresh concepts.
• Create and approve a content strategy.
• Publish new posts.
• Subscription feedback should be gathered.
• Make a list of influential people and discuss cooperation.
• Keep an eye on how the other team members are carrying out their tasks.
• The goal of personal communication is to identify active users (brand advocates) and increase their adherence.
• Respond to user inquiries.
• Keep an eye on and control the audience’s mood.
• Create a space where members can interact and grow their sense of support for one another.
• Describe to the audience the most recent company news.

Consequently, a CM has a challenging task. They must communicate with the target audience in addition to speaking on the brand’s behalf. Furthermore, they must establish a rapport with the audience for this communication to be effective.

How To Become An Online Community Manager?

The following competencies are necessary for a successful online community manager:

Hard Skills

• Social psychology. The rules of group dynamics apply to every community. Understanding what’s going on generally requires having a working knowledge of social psychology and group dynamics.
• Basic knowledge of personality psychology. Knowing the fundamentals will help you manage communication effectively: accentuations according to Leonhard, Jung’s archetypes, Bern’s roles, etc.
• Project management and project teams. Several “projects” are frequently being implemented simultaneously in the community, with volunteer participants filling the key positions.
• Copywriting and editing. A CM frequently writes a lot: announcements, messages, mailings, posts, and other content. Despite the fact that they can delegate some of those tasks to copywriters, they should still be capable of producing situational and urgent texts.

Soft Skills

• Emotional intelligence. Being around people all the time wears out strong empaths like the majority of community managers. In order to be careful with both yourself and other people, it is crucial to be able to identify your own emotions as well as those of others.
• Broad outlook. It facilitates understanding among a variety of people and greatly simplifies communication. It is also very helpful for coming up with ideas and content for events.
• Intercultural communication skills. People of various ages, nationalities, and confessions make up the majority of commercial and professional communities. Therefore, it is essential for a CM to understand the conventions of speaking with people from different cultural backgrounds.
• Leadership. On the one hand, community manager and community leader are two distinct positions. However, charisma and the capacity to work with motivation will make it much easier to work with specific groups and the community as a whole.
• Sense of humor. An effective specialist uses humor as a tool with tact and understanding of when and what kind of jokes are appropriate.
• Stress tolerance. A CM serves as the organization’s liaison with the community and as the first line of defense against serious negativity in the community.

How To Efficiently Manage An Online Community?

Many organizations will employ a specific person, a community manager, to manage a community. This might be a specialized community management team in large organizations and communities. Eight best practices are worthwhile to adhere to no matter your strategy.

Know Your Audience

Your community’s members’ interests, needs, and difficulties will have a big impact on it. Consider who you want to serve before beginning to build a community. Find out what your target audience wants from your new community, including the topics, content types, and times when they’re most likely to interact with it. With the help of smaller groups, test an early concept and get feedback. The success of your community may greatly depend on the early preparation. 

In the long run, it’s valuable to regularly check in with community members to make sure it’s still living up to their expectations. You can find out if your community is on track and get suggestions for future improvements by conducting an annual or twice-yearly feedback survey. Your community manager will be able to identify the topics that are popular with members by regularly monitoring social media.

Offer The Right Content

In the age of fake news, more people are looking for authoritative content that gives them a competitive edge and fosters trust. When done well, content can generate three times as many leads as traditional marketing strategies while costing, on average, 62% less. But what exactly constitutes quality content?

Be Consistent

Once more, a lot will depend on your audience. But there are some unbending standards that apply to all quality content. To begin with, you must maintain a steady rhythm and voice tone. People need to be aware of when to check your community for fresh content. There is a condition, though. When you’re first creating your community and there may not be many user-generated posts, it’s worthwhile to produce more content to increase engagement. More people will start producing their own content as your community gets older, assisting it in becoming self-sufficient. 

You want to strike a tone that is just the right amount of complex for everyone in the community. Content created for IT leaders will look very differently from content made for marketers. 

Find The Best Formats

Depending on the objectives of your community, the types of content you use and their proportions will vary. While articles are excellent for thought leadership, questions and discussion threads can encourage greater networking and engagement. For community members who are on the go, podcasts and videos can be used. Don’t be afraid to try different formats and then analyze the results to find the ideal combination of content. 

Organize Content

The placement of content in the appropriate location is a crucial aspect of successful content creation. There is an abundance of content available. 500 hours of YouTube content, 1,440 posts to WordPress (also known as blogs), and 3.3 million posts to Facebook are all produced every minute. People want to be able to locate the appropriate content easily. Furthermore, as your community expands, the volume of content it produces might become too much to handle. 

Members may find what they’re looking for more easily if content is divided by topic. Similar to this, you can group content that was created by a particular authority or that was created especially to support an event. Members can be assured that they only hear about the content that directly interests and affects them by using virtual “rooms.” Members are also encouraged to network with people who share their interests and qualifications. 

Finally, your content must offer members something they can only find there. 

Provide Opportunities For Networking

Compared to social media marketing, networking adds a significant amount of value to an online community. People have a place to interact with others who share their interests and gain knowledge in a community. This peer-to-peer connection can really encourage innovation and ideas, assist with problem-solving, and improve someone’s career prospects. Those who might not regularly be able to attend in-person networking find it to be extremely helpful. 

You differentiate yourself from conventional social networks by making your community into an authoritative and user-driven hub. 

Brand-owned communities that are powered by actual people will establish trust more quickly than a social media group. This trust is priceless at a time when only one-third of people believe in brands.

Offer Exclusivity

You must provide something unique to your members in order to keep them and draw in new ones. Among the ways to stand out are access to experts and event speakers, early product access, discounts, and exclusive events. Members may also receive compensation from exclusivity for their efforts. Highly active members, for instance, might be invited to a VIP event for consistent contributors. Alternately, member spotlights could draw attention to the most devoted community members and raise their profiles. 

Be Available

Having an online community has many advantages, not the least of which is better customer service. The desire for real-time communication is growing, though (LINK).  Interacting with members all day long will be a significant portion of your community manager’s job description. They’ll raise relevant issues and encourage dialogue. They must, above all, be easily accessible to members in order to address any queries or worries. 

Unless you have a sizable community management team, it is impossible to be online constantly. Knowing when a community manager is online is the best alternative. Inform members when to expect a response if they are not available. 

It’s important to include timings in a community management strategy if you want to manage this schedule. This will ensure that everyone on your team (and in the community) is aware of the expected contact time, the escalation procedure (if applicable), and who is in charge of monitoring and responding to posts. 

Promote Self-sufficiency

Your community will develop self-sufficiency as it expands and its members become more active. Encouragement of this will develop a distinctive community that is driven by its members, resulting in ad hoc conversations that aren’t driven by your brand. Your community managers will be able to concentrate on other growth initiatives while it adds value. Even support expenses may be reduced.

Other community members can respond to questions, peers can share best practices or offer solutions, experts can offer their special insights, and contributors can contribute content. Members of your community who are interested in your product can share advice on how to use it to its full potential. They might even suggest other products in your line, and peer recommendations affect more than 90% of B2B purchasing decisions. 

Think Externally

External endeavors like events and giveaways can perfectly complement your community. 

You can create a lot of buzz quickly by hosting webinars and events that are in line with the interests of your community. It motivates individuals to connect with others and become a part of a community. For the purpose of generating interest for their event session, a speaker might hold a private Q&A prior to the event. Following the event, the community can continue the conversations so that people have more chances to connect, research, and innovate. 

For its annual simplyIC event, SimplyCommunicate uses this strategy. People can maintain connections through the online community after an event by having an online space available alongside it. During the initial pandemic lockdown, it also assisted event planners in switching to a virtual event. 

Set Targets And Report Back

Setting goals will help you make sure that your community benefits your business. These could measure growth (membership numbers), community engagement (likes, comments, and user-generated content), or networking (the average number of connections each member has). It might be specific to a gathering (how many members showed up) or a subject (how much a room has expanded over the past year). Don’t forget that your community can serve as a valuable source of feedback, so don’t be shy about asking your members directly about your online community.

Regularly reviewing data based on your targets will let you know when you’re on track and enable you to act quickly if you’re not. A community will be able to adapt over time if it keeps an eye on outside factors that might have an impact on it (such as emerging trends or rival products). 

Establish a regular reporting schedule for important parties, such as your senior leadership. By doing so, you can increase support for upcoming plans while also giving others a chance to contribute fresh ideas. Make sure to adjust your report for each stakeholder (your CEO and CFO will care about different metrics than your CMO). Large swaths of data and information can be divided up with the aid of visuals. 

Conclusion

A carefully managed community will develop into a key component of your marketing strategies over time. Your customers, prospects, partners, industry heavyweights, and other thought leaders cannot be successfully brought together through any other channel. You can improve your business tomorrow by making an investment in an online community today. shaping your decisions, strategy, and products for many years to come. 

Read More: Customer Journey Management