DIGITAL STARTUP SOCIETY BLOG — Building an Online Community

The content you share within your online or brand community is important. However, it can stop your success instantly. If you don’t have content to share, you don't have a community worth joining. Customer or member interaction is far from the only thing you need to rely on to build a successful community around your brand. The content you share can make a powerful impact even if you don’t see any engagement right away. Maintaining useful and valuable content can be overwhelming and stressful. As long as you know your target audience, their needs and pain points, and what your...

Building a community around your brand may sound like a personal choice and more valuable to your business than your customers. However, it is quite the opposite. Your community allows your customers or members to be more successful in many different ways.  Well-run communities are packed full of valuable information and engagement to enable your members to feel more important and empowered. In addition, maintaining their loyalty is easier in a community as you can provide both traditional and self-serve support -- meaning you no longer need to rely on normal business hours to value your customers.    Here are...

The first step to every marketing funnel includes creating brand awareness. Brand awareness is essential to growing a profitable and sustainable business. When potential customers know who you are, it is easier to form deep connections that prevent them from running to your competitor.  In other words, brand awareness influences the trust and credibility needed to make purchases, create loyal customers, and maintain a competitive edge. Building a community is an affordable and powerful way to get the brand recognition you need to be successful.    The following are four ways to create more brand awareness with your online or...

Did you know that brand communities pull nearly seventy percent of traffic from search engines? In other words, communities due to SEO attract larger audiences from the search engines as they have the power to reach more customers and provide more value than other resources.  As time goes on and you share more content or encourage your members to interact, developing user-generated content, you increase the keywords or data you need for search engines to find you and your business.  Not only that, but people also thrive in communities—people like feeling connected to others. Even self-professed introverts are online and...

Brand loyalty is what makes the effort of building and moderating an online or brand community so important. Member-to-member interaction, social proof, and the quality content provided within the groups inspire them to stay around and seek more.  These relationships also fuel them to share your communities or become brand advocates. Thus, saving you even more money while also increasing your potential to reach more people.  In other words, brand loyalty is essential to not only solidify current success but future success too. To grow a profitable and sustainable business, building a branded community is essential.    The following are...