When you planning to start your online business one of the most important question is how to grow your online community. Just few years back, companies were completely in control and doing pretty well. In fact, they were able to carefully construct their plans that attract viewers and especially potential customers. Not only this, the room for confusion and interpretation was also less. But then came internet which changed everything in and around market as well as the way of marketing. This even amplified voices of customers and they become more active and informative. While on other hand, social media platforms provided them with great opportunities and bundle of unexpected benefits.
For success of business, it is vital that they built vibrant communities which can help them in better engagement. For having better engagements, businesses must unearth some best ideas that will help them in growth of their brand. Well, here are some points which will definitely get you an answer on how to grow your online community.
Personalize support
Every problem requires unique situation, that’s why personalization become important and it even provide sense of community feeling. Be authentic and do not send canned replies and messages. Community managers has to be real people with different personalities and characteristics who can easily engage with community and send messages to each individual.
Layer of uniqueness and exclusivity
Small start is a solution how to grow your online community. This is one of the main reasons why some communities keep number of members low just to maintain high quality. This help in maintaining quality and enhance growth of business. You can take example of hunting rights, which make members feel special. You can also add referrals and send invites to members to make them join your business community.
More and more mix
For engaging more people, do not post stuff which is related to your business only. This can become boring and even your community members will also experience fatigue. That’s why you must always throw content which is remotely related or even unrelated with your business and brand. Thus, in this situation you can consider Pareto Principle which says 20% posts should be related to business and remaining 80% posts should be about different topics.
Tracking behavior of audience
This is indeed another great way through which you can enhance growth of your online community. You can have internal analysis or even use some free analytic tools like Crazy Egg, Google Analytics, Yahoo or Web Analytics. But be sure that you are tracking behavior of your user. Thus, by using analysis tools you can simply keep an eye on both existing and potential customers. In fact, you should also be able to analyze about active users which are more into participation. Along with this, you will even find about those as well who create negative atmosphere.
Use videos for building trust
One more way how to grow your online community is creating video. Videos are helpful in creating trust amongst your community by simply showing that you are just willing to do anything on camera. While on other hand, members are also going to get benefit as they can put voice and face to your name. It even acts as remainder for members that they are chitchatting with human beings and not computers. Live video is also a good option as it is not only effective, but time saving as well. This is because members can have real time interaction face to face.
Building partnerships
The significance of third-party groups and sites for promotion of company’s community can never be overstated. So, one must network with active forums and group owners on special platform such as LinkedIn to promote each other’s online community. In fact, you can also visit influential bloggers and media as they can help you in naming online communities in top 50 and best of style lists. These efforts also boost partnership. You can even invite users for talking about online communities, discussing same interests and linking platforms.
So, how to grow your online community? It is needed to be authentic, create different content, to all members give individual attention and let users to feel important.
