Different types of online communities are present. However, the mechanism of them is mostly similar. Though the objective of each of the online community is not related, the personality types are known to be universal. It is easy to identify such personality types, in case you have moved to the other community. The online communities are hosted on a wide array of platforms with each unique purpose. The purpose and platform are recognized to be the crucial parameters to start the online community.
There are different types of online communities and they are trying to accomplish the different goals of the business. At present, different types of businesses are trying to build online communities in order to stand ahead in the market. Customers prefer to go to the support communities with an eye to finding solutions to specific issues.
Online communities are known to have various forms. Few brands have a unique presence on various social networks. On the other hand, few of them select one of two platforms which will be representing the best, they are trying to achieve. For instance, they have a corporate blog for the news, updates, and niche related tips. Here is a list of different types of online communities.
Social communities
Social communities are one of the most common type in all types of online communities. They are inclusive of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In addition, Brands make use of social communities for the marketing objectives, creation of brand awareness, broadcasting details, and reaching a wider section of the audience for the objective of messaging and campaigns. The social communities are beneficial in order to track the competitors, what they are up to, the identification of brand customer trends.
Advocate communities
Such kind of brands let the brands to mobilize loyal and passionate customers. Also regarded as the advocate marketing software, this type of community offer rewards to the members to write a testimonial, post on the social media about the firm and performing similar activities. In accordance with Laura Ramos, the branded customer communities of such kind offer assistance in boosting the positive words of mouth.
Support communities
That types of online communities let the members provide product tips to the other customers. They are also useful to the companies in bringing a reduction in the customer support charges. As compared to the social communities, such category offers a more structured way to collect innovative ideas as support communities let the brand to track different types of service and product related conversations. Studies reveal the fact that almost 80% of firms have some type of support group.
Insight communities
They are comprised of the selected group of customers carefully who maintain a long-lasting relationship with the brands. Such types of online communities let the firm to collect high quality of feedback continuously from the engaged stakeholders such as employees, partners or customers. It is a popular mainstream market research tool which helps in finding the way in customer experience, marketing, and innovation.
Local communities
Such type of online communities primarily concentrates on a small area. They offer an option to the neighbors for exchange information and news. Such type of communities has local leaders. They also possess a bunch of grassroots support without any shortage of communication.
They have a look out for marketing which may ruin the experience. Also they control and monitor the marketing by the restriction of ads to a single day every week or by the sloughing of the commercial messages into the unique part of the community.
Action communities
This type of online communities is known to campaign for bringing a social change. They get their unity from the shared value. The ultimate challenge, faced by the community leader is maintaining the interest when the change needs to come slowly.
Communities on the basis of circumstance
Such type of communities gathers people together with an eye to sharing a specific situation like addiction to drugs, or motherhood. Members of such communities keep looking for different types of information. The members of such communities feel motivated for contributing as well as publishing a bunch of the content of your own.
Professional communities
Professional community allows individuals to share similar work share experience and advice. You should ensure that the content as well as the details, that are available in the community appears welcoming to the newbies. For the creation of such a community, you also need to ensure that the content and information of the community is advanced enough to evoke interest in the experienced professionals.
Interest communities
Such kind of online communities is focused on a specific hobby, passion or brand. They can confer immense fun and thus you should ensure that the content is engaging and entertains the members. Videos can be highly effective when it comes to creating these communities. You may publish your own video and motivate others to upload video as well.
Different type of online communities provides a unique set of benefits for your business. In order to find out which type suits the business requirements, you need to determine the goals of the business, give consideration to the depth of customer feedback, you require, select the right and complementary combination of different online communities.
Certain types of online communities are better for encountering specific challenges in business. You need to understand the basic requirements of your business in order to determine the type of community, you are going to create. The online community space has now gained high popularity and they are growing on an extensive scale as companies under they are important for engaging employees, customers and stakeholders in two-way and ongoing conversations. After all, map the requirements of your business to the different types of communications and you will be able to get the right return on investment.
