Level up your digital business by creating online communities
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| Level up your digital business by creating online communities | Times of Rising |
Branding is the vital differentiator for any business. It has a definite impact on
saleability, reputation, trust, and customer retention. However, with so many
players in the market, it is becoming more and more difficult to convert your
business into a brand. One of the easiest, most effective, and inexpensive ways
to achieve this is online
community building.
Community building allows you to turn your customers
into brand ambassadors, reach relevant audiences more effectively and gain good
market traction. It builds a direct relationship between businesses and
targeted audiences. In this post, w are going to describe some of the major
advantages of building an online community:
Online Community: An Introduction
In simple words, an online community refers to a group of internet users who use a common digital platform for interaction and forming a community based on common interests, profiles, or objectives.
For instance, one can form a digital community for Keto diet lovers where the people following this diet gather, seek and share advice, exchange ideas and information, and help each other achieve their health goals through the Keto diet.
An online community can be as small as 15 members- or even less and as big as several million of people.
Peer impact and community feeling not only bond the members together but also result in peer impact which makes it easier for a business to convey its message to a large audience in a more convincing way with fewer efforts.
For instance, you can identify some of the oldest or high influential members of the community and create a strategic communication strategy to turn them into your brand ambassadors.
Here are a few major benefits of creating an online community:
Tailor your products to customers’ expectations
One of the major concerns of digital stores is to get honest customer feedback on product/service improvements to work on weaknesses and build on strengths. It allows them to tailor the products specifically according to their customer expectations which eventually helps in increasing the sales potential.
By building an online community it becomes easier for businesses to understand what their customers love, their likes, and dislikes, additional features they want to see in your products, and how happy they are with the pricing. Acting on this information it becomes easier for you to introduce the changes to meet customer expectations.
By offering products tailored to your customer’s expectations you can easily increase the sales potential of your products.
Enhance support quality and reduce overall costs
Stellar customer service plays a vital role in customer retention and brand building. With an online community, it becomes easier for you to offer almost instant support services.
, Unlike standard support services, the customers won’t have to struggle with the formalities like opening a ticket, escalating their queries through several layers, or waiting for long hours to get the query resolved.
They can directly tell you about the issues they are facing which allows you to take quick action and resolve the issues before it starts annoying the customers or affecting their operations.
By quickly identifying the issues you can deliver timely support and also check with the customers if their issues have been resolved. You can also invite their post-support comments which deliver a positive message that the issues were resolved and the customer is satisfied.
Get honest feedback directly from your real customers
Social media is widely used by prospective buyers before purchasing any product. They want to see what people are saying about your brand. How happy or annoyed they are with your products and after-sales services?
Lack of a dedicated well functioning branded community force your unhappy customers to vent their anger on other common community platforms, review sites, and forums.
By creating a branded community you invite such customers to directly share their experience on your platform. It keeps everyone on the same page. Prompt issue-resolving also strengthens your brand identity.
Most importantly you can stay connected with your customer base and get valuable feedback that will help you to improve your products and services.
Turn customers into brand ambassadors by strengthening engagement
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| Turn customers into brand ambassadors by strengthening engagement | Times of Rising |
An online community can also be used to build your brand from the scratch. Unlike bigger
players, small businesses and start-ups don’t have the huge volume of resources
and influence to create their brands through massive advertising campaigns.
However, through online communities, they can use the personal factor and human
touch for building their strong community over time. It may take some time to
build a brand this way but you can be assured of the real organic reach and an
intimate closer bond with the customers.
In that capacity, online community building can act as an affordable and strong
brand-building tool for small businesses.
How well, you engage with your targeted audiences determines the rapport you will share with them and it ultimately makes your marketing communication more effective and convincing. Your online community is a virtual ecosystem that allows you to enhance the engagement level by regularly posting material that is useful and relevant to your targeted audiences.
It also invites them to comment, like, and share your posts which eventually increase your reach organically. Moreover, with increased engagement levels your social media reputation will also be strengthened. Even when new visitors discover your community they are pretty convinced that it is a well-managed professional community with an active engagement by members.
One of the easiest ways to achieve this is o regularly publish the posts that are most relevant to your targeted group. For instance, if you sell tools for bloggers then publishing informative articles like how to start a blog can help you connect better with potential buyers.
Conclusion
As more and more players are competing with each other to gain the lion’s share of the market it has become an uphill task to convert your business into a brand. However, there are some inexpensive yet effective ways to create a strong brand recall value for your business.
One such solution is to create online communities. When created using the right strategies and maintained appropriately these communities can easily convert your entrepreneurial venture into a trusted brand with lots of organic brand ambassadors.
I hope this article was helpful for you, so don’t forget to share it and share your experience with us in the comments section.
Thanks,
Always you’re well-wisher
Admin and RISING TEAM of
