How to build an online community

Establishing the why

This is the most critical part of establishing your online community; “Why?” It should not just about the numbers. It’s not so you can say we have “so many thousands” of Facebook followers, or we have “millions and millions” of page views this year. It must be deeper than that. If you treat your online community and audience just as numbers, then you have missed the point and people will not feel the since of community that will make them feel a part of your organization.

The why needs to come from the core of your organization’s mission statement. Why does your organization exist? Why do you do what you do? What are you passionate about? The digital communication technologies available today are tools to help you achieve your mission and goals. They are not THE goal. Make sure to be specific and keep iterating on how you want your online community to look, feel, and achieve. Be sure to put yourself in the shoes of someone interacting with your organization for the first time online.

For example, let’s say are a non-profit whose purpose is raise money to support orphanages in Africa.  Some key goals of your online community could be:

• Connecting your financial supporters with one another to establish a since of family and ownership
• Connecting your organization and community directly with those who they are helping by giving the ability for the orphanages to update you on the impact that is being made and sharing milestones
• Growing your reach by providing your online community with resources to promote your cause within their networks across the globe
• Utilizing online donation tools to establish global campaigns for specific projects

Another example, for a church some good online community goals would be:

• Establishing an online prayer group to where prayer requests can be posted 24/7 and encourage the community to pray for one another
• Providing an easy way and invite those who visit your website to contact you with any questions and get immediate answers from a person
• You could also provide a setting where you could connect these new visitors to your site with members of your church to get an unbiased review
• Utilizing live videos to provide your online community with behind the scenes looks at how the staff and leadership are as people, allowing them to see a more personal side of their pastors that they can connect with

Identify your team & establish their roles

Your online community team needs to be comprised of people who have levels of ownership and engagement from the top to bottom. There needs to be a level of ownership and direction coming from management (staring with establishing the why discussed earlier). Leadership, even at the top level. should also participate; including middle management, directors, presidents, and even the CEO.  Utilizing these opportunities for them to engage with people in a public setting establishes a level of transparency, trustworthiness, and importance that will help ensure your online community feels connected and heard.

There needs to be a management and administration team whose sole purpose is to ensure the online community is growing, healthy, meeting goals, and is cared for. This should include people from departments such as marketing, customer support, community care, and other externally facing departments. This team will look for new ways to engage with the online community as well as monitor and analyze data to ensure people are continuing to engage and the community is growing. They are the first line of engagement with customers; responding to comments, answering questions, providing information, promoting engagement, and welcoming new users into the community. They also need to provide training across the organization to ensure staff is prepared and comfortable with engaging digitally. Here are some ideas as far as roles within this team:

Community Manager

Leads the community engagement team ensuring the team members have all the resources, training, and equipment they need while also monitoring online community health overall.

Content Manager

Over identifying, developing, and creating new content for the online community and archiving content that is irrelevant or deprecated.

Growth Manager

Looks for new and different ways to engage and invite new users into the online community to ensure the community is growing. This also includes getting feedback from community members who are leaving or disengaging to identify any problems.

Engagement Coordinator

Leads the charge for setting the pace and frequency of engagement with the online community members. This person would also be the lead for the user experience team, which is discussed later.

Events Coordinator

Coordinates events that the online community can engage with. This could be online only events, and/or making a way for the online community to engage with live events.

Data Analyst

Tracks key metrics to ensure health of the online community. These metrics would be things like number of comments, online viewers, engagement statistics, and attendance for online events. The key metrics need to be established together by the organizational leaders and online community team.

One more team that would be key to have is a user experience team, or those who are impacted by the community. These people are not going to be staff, but key, highly engaged online community members or repeat customers.  The goal would be to get strategic feedback from actual online community members on what is working, what is not, what needs to be improved, and also generate ideas to make things better.  They could even help you promote engagement and invite others into the community from a peer level; which can often times be more accepted than an invite coming from the organization itself.

Choose your platforms

There are several options for digital tools and platforms that you can utilize. The best choice for you will be determined by the goals and mission of your organization, and the subsequent online community.  If one of your goals is fundraising the finding a platform that supports online giving will be important. If online discussion and communication is key then a platform that offers more of a forum style format maybe more beneficial. If you are event driven, then a platform that provides functionality for scheduling and managing events will be important. Again, it is up to you to do research on the available platforms to determine which is best. Below is a list of some of the more popular ones right now to get you started:

Quora

Quora is a place to gain and share knowledge. It’s a platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.

Jive

The company that created the social intranet, Jive Software, is helping organizations across the globe improve employee engagement and collaboration.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp Messenger is a freeware, cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service. It allows the sending of text messages, voice calls, documents, location, and other media.

Prepare for launch

One cool thing about building things digitally is that you can build out your entire platform before you are ready to launch. That way you are operating at 100% from day one. This will ensure that your online community has the best experience possible from the start which will create the best chance for your platform(s) to go viral and grow.  Below are some important things to consider as you prepare your team and our platforms for launch.

Keep it private

Keep the privacy settings on all your digital platforms private and hidden from the public as you build out your content. You don’t want people seeing your content half done as it could look unprofessional and cause them to not return.

Build out your engagement funnel

The engagement funnel will be the steps that a user can interact with your organization from high-level, low-touch down to very personal, high-touch interactions. This will be a roadmap for your team when providing ways that your online community can take the next step for further engagement. For example, a high-level, top-of-the-funnel engagement would be liking one of your photos on social media. A fully engaged, bottom-of-the-funnel interaction would be having one of your online community members host a remote event on your organization’s behalf.

Establish the rules for engagement for your team

Make sure your team has clear roles, expectations, guidelines, and responsibilities. As well as all the equipment and resources they will need to fulfill their duties. For example, if your engagement manager is going tasked with responding to the online community any time and any place, they will need mobile equipment with constant connection to the internet.

Pre-load your initial discussions and content

Build out some of your most common topics with discussions and frequently asked questions. Don’t fake it though! Ask some key partners, stakeholders, or repeat customers to help write out responses and come up with topics so they are real conversations.

Create a continuous improvement atmosphere

Establish a culture and expectation of continuous improvement. The reality of it is that you probably are not going to get things right 100% from the start. Create an atmosphere where your team feels safe to fail; to try new things and if they don’t work that it is ok. One big advantage here is that with digital, you get feedback pretty much instantly. Build on things that are working and learn from things that are not.

Promote, launch, and pivot

This isn’t necessarily like the “Field of Dreams” philosophy of, “Build it, and they will come”. There needs to be strategic promotion and invitation to join your online community. The more people you have in your online community at launch, the easier it will be to grow in the future. On average, people have 300 Facebook friends. If you launch with 10 people in our online community and get all of them to share on their Facebook network, that is exposure to 3,000 people. Now if you have 300 people at launch in your online community, that equates to 90,000 people. The growth grows exponentially.  So heavily promote your online community prior to launch, during launch, and then have some type of continuous, sustainable promotion running long term.

Launch day! Now is the time you official unveil and invite the world to join your community online. You should make a big deal about it. If people seeing you (the organization) putting a lot of emphasis and importance on this, then it will translate into making members of the online community feel like they are important as well (because they are). Here are some ideas to make launch day fun, exciting, and important:

• At your main campus having a launch day party, inviting everyone to join you. Have food, entertainment, the works. Be sure to livestream the event and festivities to include your newly launched online community.
• Online exclusive giveaways where people have to engage or interact in specific ways online to enter. Make it fun and also promotional. For example, the first person to get 100 likes on their social media post about your online community wins a prize.
• Identify some social influencers in your network that can help with promotion. Look for people who are influential in your community and/or have a large social media following. For big names you may have to pay for this service, but it could be worth it depending on how much more exposure you would have.

Be agile and ready to pivot. Pivot meaning change direction or course to adapt to circumstances. As you hear feedback from your community, analyze engagement metrics, and implement new technology; your strategies will need to change.  Let the people and environment steer how the online community will grow. Don’t get set in your ways or you can stifle growth. Keep doing and building on what is working and let what is not working fade away. Ensuring that you have systems set up to get direct feedback from your community will be crucial in ensuring health, growth, and longevity.