5 Tips on Successfully Building Your Online Community from the Scratch

5 Tips on Successfully Building Your Online Community from the Scratch

Whether you’re a prominent figure in your industry, an online lecturer, a famous influencer, or a notable organization, the advantages of creating an online community are indisputable. 

There are many kinds of online communities with different reasons that tie them together. Some communities are brought together by similar interests, ideologies, advocacies, and careers. Other communities exist for discussing course themes and assignments. There are also communities dedicated to developing deeper emotional roots to a particular brand. 

If you know how to build an engaged community, your followers can easily spread the word about your brand, target traffic to your website, contribute to customer retention and boost profit. However, improving engagement remains the primary frustration for online communities, as per data from this year’s Community Industry Trends Report

In this post, we’ll show you how to grow an online community.

1. Pick the proper platform

You have plenty of available options for establishing your online community. You can use social media sites or build your own website to host and foster audience engagements. 

For instance, Facebook already possesses capabilities that can support your ideas for building an online community. You can distribute content, obtain feedback, direct traffic to your site, and interact with customers through your profile or group pages without extra cost. 

There are other alternatives to Facebook groups. For instance, if you prefer exclusivity, privacy and total control over how to build an engaged community, you can construct a membership site which highlights your brand throughout your channel and offers options for automating processes such as gathering invoices, user signups and subscription modifications. 

Constructing a membership site is easy on WordPress. For instance, if you prefer exclusivity, privacy and total control over building an engaged community, you can construct a membership site that highlights your brand throughout your channel and offers options for automating processes such as gathering invoices and user signups and subscription modifications. 

You can also consider other channels when building an online community platform, so be sure to select one that suits your aims. 

2. Get an online community software 

Online community platforms are primarily designed to construct virtual spaces for individuals to engage in fruitful discussions. Within this sphere, community members can exchange thoughts and ideas and voice concerns. 

Now more than ever, AdvertisingWeek360 claims online communities hold more influence and popularity. During the last 2 years, interactions in online communities have risen from 72% to 77%. 

For your online community to thrive, you need a software with features for creating and hosting a community platform for members to engage with each other and contribute information and insights. 

Online community software examples also have functions for boosting brand awareness and mastery via vivid discourse and exclusive content and forging a singular communication channel between enterprise leaders and loyal customers. 

In addition, online community platforms also gather invaluable data through community engagements, nurturing discussions on particular themes, setting up polls and other questionnaires for community members.

In fact, according to data from Statista, 59% of globally surveyed organizations utilized virtual communities for market research from 2014 to 2018. 

If you’re looking for a software that can bring your ideas for building an online community to life, give PeerBoard a try. We’re the top choice of community builders worldwide. 

We offer a single categorized newsfeed that sets us apart from other discussion platforms, a customizable space for a fully branded experience, various options for embedding our platform into your website, robust APIs that supply you with perfect access to community information and vertical solutions through our partner platforms. 

With our software, you can enhance the user experience by supplying acknowledgment for users with bios, badges, and publication history. They can even indulge in a personalized content feed, so they don’t miss out on things that matter to them. Our features also allow you to oversee insightful, in-depth discussions using real-time dialogues across various levels. 

3. Determine the stakeholders

Doing business solo means you’re the lone stakeholder of this venture. However, if you’re running a small team, it’s highly possible you’ve got your hands full after building an online community platform. 

On the other hand, medium to large organizations have various stakeholders across their venture, making their online community branch into various platforms. 

Common stakeholders include your product or services department, your support team, and your marketing and sales staff. 

As soon as your online community expands and you allot more time running the community than your enterprise, you should consider hiring a community manager or asking active community members to help you oversee the group.

4. Integrate your online community to your website 

We’ve already mentioned how powerful and flexible a website can be when you want to build an online community, which makes integrating your virtual community platform to your site essential if you’re going to reap the rewards with it. 

Luckily, the best online community software can help you with how to build an engaged community by offering capabilities for deep integrations. For instance, here at PeerBoard, we have open-source components and SDKs that can conveniently merge our platform into any landscape. 

You won’t encounter any trouble building an online community platform embedding our system from the most popular channels such as WordPress to more unfamiliar options. 

5. Establish a budget

Although there are online community platforms you can use for free, you might still need to invest in solutions or schemes for your virtual sphere’s success. 

Since we’ve been highlighting the benefits of an online community software, subscribing to one isn’t usually free, especially if you’re establishing a community for professional and entrepreneurial reasons. You need to be ready to shell out some funds to be able to purchase tools that can help with your ideas for building an online community.

The key to successful online community platforms 

Anybody can create loyal customers, followers, and frequent contributors by building an online community platform. It matters not if you’re a lone entity, a business, or a brand. 

By acquiring the right tools and learning how to grow an online community, you can easily connect your community members with each other and even link them to your establishment or enterprise. 

Before concluding this article, let us know about your ideas for building an online community below. 

What do you think is the most suitable way of learning how to build an engaged community? 

Who knows, the next time we publish an article on the ideas for building an online community, we might put out yours! 

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