One of the most common questions many creators need answers to these days is how to grow an online community and grow it fast.
There are several benefits to gain from building your own online community, from building real connections with like-minded individuals to promoting your brand. But despite the undeniable advantages, growing an online community can be draining if you don’t know how to do it.
Thankfully, this guide teaches effective hacks on how to grow an online community fast. Additionally, we’ve included a guideline to help you build your own community with a very solid foundation. Keep reading to learn more.
8 Tips on How to Grow an Online Community
Every community manager wants to build a successful online community. However, developing a thriving community requires more than a mere online presence.
These indispensable tips will help put your community on the list of the best online communities in the digital space.
1. Create Valuable Content
Create content that resonates with your community members to foster engagement. You should develop a solid content strategy to ensure you always post quality content. First, you must understand your audience to deliver personalized user-generated content.
For instance, when creating content for TikTok, sharing bite-sized tips, hacks, or guides is the best way to provide value and engage with your audience. For a better reach, you can even buy TikTok likes to boost your engagement and showcase your content as valuable and authoritative in your niche.
Also, create a content calendar with different content types for different profiles within the community. Content creation can be exhausting, but knowing what to post on specific days can help ease some of the burden.
2. Get Ideas from Thriving Online Communities
The beauty of having people ahead of us is that we can always observe them to make adjustments in our endeavors. Look out for successful communities in your niche. Find out what they’re doing and how they’re doing them. Then, analyze your findings and determine if you can implement them for your community’s growth.
Drawing inspiration from other creators doesn’t mean you have fewer ideas for your community. Rather, it means that you’re committed to continuously evolving and enhancing your community experience.
3. Provide a Memorable Onboarding Process for New Members
Show new group members you’re happy to have them onboard. Create a welcome post and personalized offer. Also, don’t leave your new members to ‘find their way’. Find ways to hold their hands while they navigate the community. It could be a series of emails/posts highlighting the most important details about the community or a virtual orientation.
You can also encourage them to participate and mix with your existing members rather than leaving them to lean on the sidelines till they get “comfortable.” For example, you can host virtual icebreaker activities like a group discussion to facilitate bonding.
4. Develop a Unique Community Culture
You need to make your community a safe space for everyone in it. To do this, you must set basic rules that reflect your community’s values and encourage a positive and respectful environment. As a leader, you must follow these rules to set an example.
In addition, you can make your community unique by developing a distinct identity for it. Give it a name, logo, or slogan that represents your goals. You also need to encourage your members to build relationships with one another to set the tone for positive and constructive communication.
5. Promote Your Online Community Through Various Channels
You never know where potential members could be lurking. So, cross-promote your online community across various social media channels and online platforms. Also, you can appear on podcasts and talk shows to tell people about your community’s values and interests. Your voice can be a strong pull for potential community members.
You may also find paid advertising helpful. Using your member personas, you can target your ad to people who are likely to join your group.
6. Collaborate with Other Community Managers
Find other communities with a complimentary audience and collaborate with them to get your brand message to potential members. Community managers will be willing to hop on such collaborations if they offer any value to them. So, you should highlight how the collaboration will benefit each party in your proposal.
You can also just forge connections with fellow community managers to share insights and learn from their experience. In any case, it’s a win for you.
7. Recognize and Reward the Most Active Members
In your community, you may notice that some members are more active than others. One of the ways to get more members to be active is by recognizing and rewarding the active members and top contributors in the group. Seeing their peers receive prizes or recognition can be the boost they need to contribute more.
Additionally, rewarding top contributors is a way to encourage them to continue to be loyal and active. This helps retain members and subsequently build brand advocates.
8. Encourage Active Participation Among Your Community Members
Community engagement is crucial to keep your community going, and you have to foster engagement. The goal should be to develop a self-sustaining group where members can begin and maintain discussions with little effort from you.
But before you get to that level, you need to be consistent and stay active. You can set up weekly challenges, invite industry experts for guest posts, host frequent giveaways, and create surveys or other interactive content.
For Newbies: How to Build a Community Online
If you’re new to the content creation industry, you may need help starting your online community. Before you start to grow an engaged community online, first build a solid foundation to accommodate new members.
Here are six steps to build an online community:
1. Define Your Community Goals and KPIs
Setting goals is a crucial step in building an online community. You have to determine the problem you want to solve and set measurable goals with a specific timeline. Additionally, you’ll need to develop key performance indicators, such as operational efficiency and NPS, to measure your success.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
Your audience is the bedrock of your community. They are the recipient of all your efforts. Draw up an ideal member persona, identifying their pain points, motivations, and preferences. This will tell your marketing team where to direct their efforts for launch.
3. Choose a Community Platform
Another crucial step to building an online community is choosing a suitable online community platform. There are two categories of online platforms: owned and free platforms. Free platforms include online spaces like a social network. While owned platforms are community forums developed by the brand.
In choosing one, you need to weigh your resources, goal, audience, and the level of control you want over the platform. Owned platforms offer more control.
4. Establish Strong Community Guidelines
Your community guidelines are the rules you expect members to follow in the community. They serve to maintain a sense of decorum and positivity in your community forum. You should carefully craft these guidelines and enforce them for a safe and inclusive environment.
5. Choose Your Management Team Wisely
You need an effective management team with a passion for your online community to create a positive and engaging environment as well as enforce guidelines. As the community manager, you’ll conduct interviews and training for potential team members. Ensure they are adept at community moderation and easy to work with.
6. Start with a Soft Launch
Introduce your online community gradually to a limited audience and get feedback to make adjustments before a full-scale launch. Once you’ve made the necessary fixes, you can go hard and promote your community to a broader audience.
Types of Online Communities
There are different types of online community groups. But here are some of the most common ones:
1. Brand Communities
A brand community is centered around a specific brand or business. They are often set up to encourage customer engagement, brand advocacy, and loyalty. A great example is the Lego Ideas community, which consists of members who provide feedback, insights, and idea validation to the brand.
2. Social Media Communities
A social media community is one that’s built on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This type of community group is easily accessible and often informal.
3. Membership Communities
A membership community is an online space where members pay a recurring membership fee for exclusive content, services, or experiences. Members of these groups may get access to online courses, expert insights, networking opportunities, and many more value-packed benefits.
4. Event Communities
Event online groups are formed around specific events or gatherings. They serve as a means for attendees and organizers to connect and share information before and after the event.
Conclusion
Whether you want to build a new community or develop an existing one, our tips on growing an online community are a sure guide to getting your results quickly. If you follow through with consistency, you can build a self-sustaining community in no time.
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