To succeed online, it can’t be emphasized enough that strong customer relationships are a necessity. Easy and efficient ways to connect with your target audience exist, thankfully. Cultivating an online community begins with recognizing the social channels available, learning how to interact with customers, and employing strategies to generate discussion. Here are nine ways to build an online community to spur your website towards being the success you know it can be.
Personality.
Humanize your brand by bringing personality to the conversation. Be fun and vibrant. While you don’t want to overshare, be inappropriate, or get too far away from what your brand’s about, personality is important to help let people know there’s someone real behind the computer and not just a corporate robot.
Monitor.
You may occasionally need to intervene in your community to address a complaint or remedy concerns. This is why it’s integral to monitor what’s being said about your brand in an ongoing fashion. Regularly look at mentions, be active in your conversation, and keep the discussions moving towards the positive.
Live video.
Live streaming, video conferences, and webinars are interactive, an opportunity to connect with interested parties, and give your target audience a reason to be interested in you. Consider a monthly video stream for community members as a way to check-in.
Set metrics.
Before you get going at building an online community, know how to measure success. Set audience building metrics like how much traffic you’re generating, engagement, and lead conversion.
Inter-member interaction.
It’s important to encourage members to interact with one another. Encourage your community members to network with one another. This helps to build emotional connections which go beyond your brand.
Keep your audience happy.
If you already have a community, keep them happy and warm by offering exclusivities, like coupons, discounts, freebies, product demos, and more. This is all to drive leads. You may also discover opportunities to encourage sharing these offers with a friend as a way to bring in more leads into your community.
Set expectations.
If you have an online forum or you’re looking to maintain a social media community page, introduce rules. Keep the conversation on track by setting guidelines like minimizing negativity, keeping things respectful, and anything else you deem important.
Initiate discussions.
If you’re not getting enough conversation in your customer base, create conversation by launching a contest, asking questions, making posts soliciting feedback, having a poll, or providing your group with an activity to do.
Showcasing your community’s stories.
If you have engaged community members with unique stories behind them, share them. Ask customers to share their own connection to your brand. Create conversation around your brand, using your audience as the centerpiece and with your products or services secondary.
Community-building online is a powerful way to get people excited and passionate about your business. Going beyond the paint-by-numbers digital marketing strategies that have been used over and over again can yield big, long-term results. If you’re looking to build an online community, do it with the experts at Unlimited Exposure. We can assist with video, social media, email, SEO, content marketing, and more across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Connect with your audience and begin building a base.
Unlimited Exposure Online 