A lot of popular business owners have created online communities to increase their conversion rate, and it has been working phenomenally! Online communities are a great way to organically build a loyal and long-term customer base. However, many business owners have also failed to keep their community active and engaged. This causes the members to lose interest in your community and eventually take off. In this article, we have listed down the key strategies to make people stay in your community. But before that, let’s understand what the online community means.
What is an online community?
An online community is a community where your customers can interact with each other and quickly reach the brand. The members of this community usually share the same interests and expect similar values. The key to building an effective online community is to offer value and keep the members engaged with your community. Let’s look at some strategies to do that!
Strategies to keep people in your online community:
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Ask questions:
If you have started a new online community, the best way to understand what the members want is by asking them questions like what do they expect from such a community? Or what type of content are they looking for? You may ask such questions at the time of registration so you know in advance what these members are looking for. Asking these questions will help you build a base for your content types and also for the potential members.
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Offer valuable content:
Remember, a member will join and stay in your community only when they are gaining something of value. Don’t let your online community become just a source of promoting your products. While there is no harm in doing that, members of such communities expect to learn more about you and your brand. You can have a Q&A session with members asking them about their problems with your brand. You can also make a how-to guide for products that require assistance. As long as the members get valuable content, they are bound to be a part of the community.
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Keep the community alive:
Make sure to update the posts in your community regularly. The members should always have relevant things to discuss and engage in. If the conversation dies out, members will not want to stay in the community. You can also try to include gamification techniques to boost engagement. We will look at this in detail in the next point.
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Use gamification techniques:
Almost every content management system provides plugins that can help you gamify your community. For example, you can add several quizzes and introduce score points for your members. You can also create a knowledge-based game relevant to your brand that can keep the members engaged. Introducing score points also builds a sense of competition and encourages newer members to participate in the activities. All in all, gamification of an online community is one of the best ways to keep your community alive at all times.
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Giveaways and coupon contests:
Conducting a product giveaway is another great way to boost engagement in your community. This brings a lot of new traffic to your community and has higher chances of them converting into members. Conducting giveaways on any social media platform is quite easy. All you have to remember is to keep the conditions of your giveaway clear and the gift prize must be relevant to your brand. You can also keep contests where winners can get coupon discounts in their wallets. It is easy to believe giveaways and coupon contests are just adding to the expenses, but they have proven to be very helpful in the long-term.
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Limit advertisements:
This might be the most important part of making your members stay in your community. Since advertisements become an added source of income, a lot of business owners make the mistake of adding too many ads to their online community. While generating revenue through ads is a great thing, make sure the ads are not so distracting that they are more visible than your content. In simpler words, don’t make advertisements more important than the community.
To Conclude
Online communities are a great way for a brand to build its online presence. However, engaging continuously with your members is the key! If you miss out on that, you may not be fully realizing the potential of your online community. Keeping that in mind, we have articulated this blog, because we don’t want you to miss out!
Keeping your online community engaged at all times just became a bit easier! All you have to do is ask questions to understand the needs of the members, offer valuable content, keep the conversation alive, use gamification techniques, conduct giveaways and coupon contests, and finally, keep the advertisements limited. We hope this article has been helpful! Thank you and all the best with your online community!
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