Introduction

Do you wish to figure out how to build an online community?

In lame man’s understanding of what an online community is, it is made up of an environment that houses a group of different people who engage, interact and connect through the use of the internet. It revolves around individuals who share the same interests, goals and aspirations.

Building an online community is a key consideration you may have to put into place these days if you hope to be visible. As the world keeps evolving each day, the things or activities that make up the world follow suit. I will tell you why this is necessary if you are lost in the thought of what favour it may do to you. Some of the things you must realise about the online community here is that it facilitates knowledge sharing in a particular area of expertise you’ve chosen, build connections with individuals of various background, and serves as a channel to provide you with valuable feedback that can help you improve in certain things you aren’t perfect in, and enhances customers support.

Each of these few benefits mentioned above is a driving force and a factor to consider when occupying the online space or possibly when you wish to build one for yourself. Meanwhile, if you’ve made up your mind to build an online community, let’s dive into the purpose of this article which is to show you how to build an online community.

HOW TO BUILD AN ONLINE COMMUNITY

 

Understand your Goals

To build an efficient online community, one necessity is to understand the motive for your push. In other words, that is the ideas that birth such a decision to build a community. For instance, you can ask yourself these questions, “Why do you want to build a community? What are the motivations behind your decision?” If you can answer these questions sincerely, then you are set to carry on. When the intent behind a decision is fully comprehended, it will be less difficult to carry on with whatever creativity you choose to bring into existence.

Needs of the users

This isn’t about just you. Remember that the community does not include you alone. Therefore, while making your decision on how best to run the community, you must also take the beneficiaries into consideration since they make up the community and put in appropriate measures to suit their needs

Choose a Platform for the Community

When it comes to building an online community, the use of the right platform that would suit the purpose of your community can’t be overemphasized. All you have to do is make research on each platform to ascertain that it has everything you need to sustain your community and also keep your audience or community members engaged and moving. Some platforms you can consider for social media are Facebook, LinkedIn groups and Twitter; forum platforms like discourse, phpBB; chats platforms like Discord, Slack, etc.

Get a Community Management Team

This way, you will need to employ more capable hands to ensure the smooth running of the community. That is where the community manager comes right in. The duty of a community manager is engaging the community members, addressing concerns, moderating online discussions, fostering a positive and inclusive atmosphere within the community, collating feedback and relaying it to the relevant team involved to help improve the community experience.

Develop an Engagement Plan

What captivates the heart of the community members has to do with how they see your community. Primarily, the focus of an engaging community is to help people find value that would be useful for them while they associate with such a group. It boils down to defining the goal you hope to achieve through consistent engagement in the sense that, it increases membership. Your plan could also come up in the form of creating a content strategy through informative posts, and arguable discussions, that you share to encourage active participation.

Take Charge of the Community Moderation

A wise saying goes thus, “Where there’s no law, there is no sin.” You must successfully take full control of your community by putting certain principles and guidelines into place. This is where you have to state the community value to the members, develop an outline on the acceptable behaviour, regular education and monitoring, educates members, etc. A safe community controls the conversation that happens in the group to maintain peace and order without entrenching another person’s rights.

Conclusion

Having gone through all of these points stated above, you shouldn’t find it seemingly difficult to build an online community if you follow each of them carefully. You must state by understanding the goal behind your idea to build an online community, know the needs of your users, get a suitable platform for the community, develop an engagement plan, etc.