We’ve all heard of ‘virtual communities’… it seems to be the talk of social media in 2023. But what is it about communities that has everyone so hooked? it’s more than just an online trend, It’s a sense of belonging. A space for your members to feel welcomed by like-minded people, share their thoughts and collaborate on projects without any judgement. More importantly, the opportunities that having an online community can create for a business are unmatched by traditional methods. If you’ve ever considered turning your following or client base into a community… Now is definitely the time to do it.

So let’s start with the obvious; does it require a large team of people or a large budget? – The answer is quite simple…No! An online community is typically (but not always) led by one person who wishes to share their interests or beliefs with others who feel the same. Quite often a community starts out as a free resource, built on social media websites like Facebook or LinkedIn, though these tend to have limitations and can affect your success. The individual in charge manages the group and is often the sole content creator and engages with their audience on a daily basis.

A lot of people have similar questions when it comes to building a community, ‘will it work for my industry?’. There are no limits to whom can benefit from having an online community. Whether you’re an online coach, a fitness instructor, a charity, a business association, a sports club or in the education sector, the key is to identify the interest within your sector and acknowledge if they would benefit from connecting with like-minded people. Your audience finds value in both connecting with industry leaders and fellow members. It’s the ability to develop and nurture personal relationships that separate your followers to members of your community.

Types Of Communities 🔥 

Virtual communities come in many shapes and sizes. Below are some popular examples of the different types of communities…

Fan-based communities: These communities are based around shared hobbies, passions, or activities. Examples include communities centered around photography, gaming, cooking, sports, music, or any other specific interest.

Professional communities: These allow the collaboration of industries and professions. They encourage networking, knowledge-sharing, and partnerships between professionals. Some examples include communities for marketing, software developers, entrepreneurs, or health care professionals.

Support communities: Providing a supportive environment for individuals facing similar challenges, such as health conditions, mental health issues, parenting, or bereavement. They offer a safe space for sharing experiences, seeking advice, and finding emotional support.

Educational communities: These communities focus on learning and education. They can be online forums, discussion boards, or platforms that facilitate knowledge exchange, online courses, and peer-to-peer learning.

Coaching Communities: The number of personal trainers and others offering a variation of life coaching taking their communities online has surged. These communities allow for personal growth through 1-1 contact.

Action Communities: Communities like this usually have a particular cause behind them. Their purpose is to act, examples would be animal rights and environmental activists.

The Benefits ⚡️ 

Creating a private online community can have a wide range of benefits, not only for a business but for all parties involved. Here are a select few of the benefits:

Global Reach: Building an online community eliminates the restrictions of geographical boundaries. The beauty of existing online means that your community is available to anyone around the world.

Personal Relationships: The ability to connect with members allows you to create genuine relationships often building trust within your community. Although formed online – these relationships are often known to last years.

Knowledge: An online community is a platform for individuals to share their knowledge, experience, and expertise. It’s a great tool to learn new tips and advice on niche specific topics or industries.

Support & Motivation: Communities often serve as a source of support and motivation. Whether it’s overcoming challenges, pursuing personal goals, or seeking advice, online communities provide a space where individuals can find encouragement and empathy from others who share their interests or experiences.

Monetisation: We’re always looking for new revenue streams for our business and building an online community is a brilliant way of driving income. Monetising memberships and charging a small fee to join a niche specific community is an excellent revenue tool.

Mobility: With the ability to transform your online community into an app, accessing your community content has never been easier. Not only can you manage your community on the go, from any device – your audience can also access your content from anywhere, anytime.

The Downside ☔️ 

Like everything in life, online communities have their drawbacks too. On the plus side, the few disadvantages that come with building a community are almost always outweighed by the good!

Budget: Building a private community is an additional cost.

Time Consuming: Managing a community and helping it thrive requires a lot of time, planning and dedication.

Possible Loss of Data: These concerns are more prominent when using free resources like Facebook Groups or other social media sites. But being hacked and having data stolen is a possibility.

Privacy Concerns: Members need to trust that their personal information and conversations will remain confidential within the community. Any breach of privacy can have significant consequences and erode trust among members.

Businesses + Communities 🤝 

This year has seen a significant rise in the number of businesses building communities. A virtual community can offer businesses a valuable source of authentic feedback. Numerous businesses leverage their online communities as a platform for gathering opinions. They present exclusive previews of new products to community members and then adapt to the suggested changes before launching the product to the broader market. In this instance, the online community functions as a substantial focus group.

In addition, the virtual community not only serves as a focus group for product feedback, but also provides businesses with an avenue for further market research. By engaging with community members in discussions and participating in polls, companies can gather insights and relevant statistics on current market trends, customer preferences and the consumer needs. This real time access to customer feedback allows a business to stay relevant and adapt their strategies to match the needs and demands of their demographic. The online community becomes an essential tool when it comes to staying ahead of the game and making informed business decisions.

Another real benefit of building an online community is its ability to reduce customer acquisition costs.  When community members receive privileges and exclusive previews, they often become enthusiastic advocates for your brand, actively promoting it to others. This organic brand awareness can significantly lower the costs associated with acquiring new customers. Let’s not forget about the global brand awareness! As mentioned earlier, building a virtual community diminishes geographical restrictions. Your business can reach customers around the globe and is no longer limited to a city or country.

How To Grow 🌱 

The hardest part about building your community is knowing where to start. It’s definitely not as hard as you may think but it does require a lot of planning and dedication. Try these steps to get started:

Purpose & People: The first and most important step when it comes to building a virtual community is to clearly define your purpose and identify your target audience. It’s important to have a clear vision of what your community is aiming to achieve in order to maintain your niche specific structure, content, and engagement strategies.

Platform: Choosing the right home for your community is also a very important step and will often determine whether your community will sink or swim. Ensuring that your chosen provider is dependable and provides all of the tools your specific community requires will lead to your success.

Guidelines: Establishing clear guidelines from the offset governs member behaviour, content sharing, moderation protocol and community standards. By doing so creates a trusting, respectful and inclusive environmentfor members to engage in.

Content: Planning a content strategy will help your community thrive. Providing a variety of valuable content will keep members engaged and interested. It’s good to share a range of formats such as documents, videos, polls or exclusive member perks. Sharing relevant and informative content on a regular basis will keep members returning to the community.

Encourage Participation: Initialise conversations, ask questions and always respond to members posts and queries. Doing all of these things will encourage member participation and will really boost your engagement. Be sure to create opportunities for collaboration and networking.

In summary, building your own virtual community can have major benefits including, building personal relationships, global reach and driving new revenue streams.

Remember, launching and growing an online community takes time and effort, there is no quick fix. Consistency, active moderating, and genuine engagement between your members are the key tools when establishing a community that will thrive. It’s all about providing value to your members.

Creating a thriving online community can be a highly effective way of marketing and growing your business through brand awareness and user engagement – but that’s not all. Did you know that your online community can also be a source of revenue?

By offering users added value through paid-for services via online community platforms, it’s possible to boost user engagement and earn some additional income at the same time.

Before you start introducing fees to your online community, though, you need to make sure your community is already adding value, and that monetisation tactics will increase that value to users. More often than not, people are happy to pay more if they feel the perceived value is worth the additional cost.

If this isn’t the case, it may be better to focus on further community growth and value to ensure you don’t alienate existing members.

Assuming you’re ready to take that next step with your community and tap into its earning potential, here are 6 monetisation ideas to consider.

1. Paid membership and subscriptions

Most communities start out by offering membership access for free, which is a highly effective way to attract users and grow an engaged audience. However, as your community grows, so does the opportunity to diversify your membership options with different membership and subscription tiers.

A good place to start is by offering existing (and new) users paid membership. This can be done in two ways.

The first is to switch to being a fully paid membership site that charges all members a fee to access all content. This is only recommended if you’re confident your users will be happy to pay to continue accessing your platform.

The second is to introduce membership levels or tiers, maintaining a free membership option alongside paid subscriptions. The former would offer access to basic content to entice users in, while the paid-for option would offer exclusive access to unique, in-depth content and other perks.

Some ideas on how to deliver real added value to paying members include:

• Providing access to high-quality blog posts, white papers, ebooks and webinars
• Offering discounted event prices, exclusive access and special offers
• Providing access to additional platform features

2. Offer product or service promotions to members

One of the benefits of online community platforms is that they bring together individuals and businesses with a common interest – providing the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas.

For some members, this can also allow them to build brand awareness with a relevant audience – for instance, by answering a user thread that naturally promotes their product or service. It’s worth noting, though, that some community admins don’t allow self-promotion.

However, proactive hosts could see this as an opportunity to offer one-off product or service promotions for business members – allowing them to promote their business to an engaged and relevant audience.

This extra exposure through a one-off advert can provide a worthwhile incentive for businesses wanting to quickly and easily market their brand, as well as a source of extra income for hosts.

But you don’t have to stop at one-off opportunities – you can offer a suite of display advertising options that can help members and other external brands market their brand and generate income for your community.

3. Create a community hosted promotion area

Of course, it shouldn’t only be your members reaping the benefits of your engaged audience through product and service promotion.

As a host, you can also seize the opportunity for a little self-promotion. This shouldn’t take the form of a hard sell and should be done in the right space – we’d suggest setting up a dedicated community hosted promotion area.

With a defined space within your community where, as a host, you can promote your own services, you can make sure promotional content has maximum impact without negatively affecting the user experience in main community areas.

From exclusive content to job offers and new platform features (including some of your upgraded paid-for packages), a promotional area can be a great way to give your community monetisation tactics some focus.

4. Create sponsorship opportunities

Similar to display advertising, you could look to offer sponsorship opportunities across your online community platforms.

One option could be to offer sponsorship of a regular feature, or new virtual events that are hosted on your platform. In return for paid sponsorship, brands will receive onsite sponsorship banners and an agreed number of promotional plugs during that particular feature or event.

Alternatively, you can create sponsored post opportunities within your news and polls areas, where posts can contain promotional content to be pinned to the top of the board for an agreed period of time.

From a user perspective, with sponsorship opportunities, the key is to make sure they’re relevant and don’t negatively impact on the integrity of your community ethos. From a sponsor point of view, make sure you’re offering value to brands through high-traffic areas of your site.

5. Host paid events

Events can be a highly effective way to build a buzz within your community and drive engagement. In the early days of your community, you may look to offer free access to events as an incentive.

However, as your community grows and becomes more established, your events could be a viable source of income – from tickets to merchandise and sponsorship.

For users, events can be the perfect place to learn and network in one fell swoop, and most people are happy to pay for the privilege. To attract paid attendees, be sure to keep your pricing reasonable and make sure you’re offering them value – for instance, at least one keynote speaker, presentation or discussion with networking opportunities.

To maximise attendance, be sure to promote the event within your online community – offering incentives such as early bird discounts, VIP packages and more.

During the event, look to sell branded merchandise and swag like t-shirts, hoodies and reusable bags at a reasonable additional cost for attendees.

Equally, use your event as the ideal opportunity to partner up with other brands, either as co-hosts or event sponsors for an agreed fee – allowing them to gain exposure among a relevant, engaged audience.

6. Cross-sell to members

With ecommerce websites, many brands use their checkout process to cross-sell to customers with ‘suggested picks’ or ‘customers who bought this also bought’ – and this is a tactic you can use within your community platform, too.

Using community behaviour data, you may be able to identify user trends such as content connections or complementary features. From there, you can introduce content suggestions or community picks, along the lines of ‘you may also like this…’

As with the other methods, to gain access to these content and feature suggestions, users can opt to upgrade their subscription or pay a one-off fee.

Monetising elements of your online community can be a great way to double down on your marketing efforts, as this additional revenue stream can pay for your marketing while also supporting reinvestment into other areas of your business.

At Six Circles, our platform has a range of useful features that can help you to grow your community online and earn money from it while you’re at it. To find out more, get in touch with Six Circles today.

Here at Six Circles, we know that it can be challenging to encourage your online community to engage with you online, but we’re here to help.

Today, we’re shining a light on user polls, looking at 6 benefits that come with using them as part of your community engagement strategy.

So, let’s get started. 

1. Get quick and decisive insights 

Creating written and visual content for community building purposes can be a time-consuming process. It can also, in some cases, fail to yield the engagement levels you expected, which can understandably feel disheartening.

But what if we told you that there was another way you could create highly engaging content without having to spend hours on creation? Yes, we’re talking about user polls. 

Quick and easy to set up through social media platforms, user polls can be a highly effective tool to have in your arsenal when you’re struggling with content creation.

But, more importantly, user polls help you to gain quick and decisive insights into your audience. The key is to ask the right questions, though. Keep your concepts and execution simple to allow people to give their answers in just a few clicks.

2. Gain a deeper understanding of your audience

People love to give their opinion on things that matter to them, especially in the online community. And what better way to get them involved than by answering quick, snappy poll questions?

Whether it’s quizzing people on their favourite product or getting their opinion on ways to improve your services, quick, simple polls can be a savvy way to tap into the human need to make our voices heard.

Engaging your audience isn’t the only upside here, either. User polls allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your audience, too.

With the right analytical approach, you can learn about your community members’ pain points and preferences. Plus, they can help you paint a more accurate picture of your members’ identities to tailor future content to their specific needs.

3. Generate candid community feedback 

One of the major benefits of building online communities is the increased anonymity it provides users to freely express their opinions, which can be a powerful tool when harnessed in the right way. 

Community feedback can be incredibly valuable to brands, but the key is to find ways to make sure you’re getting honest, unbiased feedback.

When it comes to polls, make sure you’re using a model that allows users to hide their identity, as this will encourage people to be more honest.

As a result, your user polls will generate candid feedback on important topics that matter to you and your community members.

4. Drive an increased sense of community

If you’re looking to strengthen your community spirit, user polls can be the perfect driving force to bring people together.

Shared opinions and ideas are highly effective in generating a true sense of community as users love making their views known and finding other likeminded people in the process.

This also holds true when it comes to topics that divide opinion, as the ‘Marmite effect’ can cause groups on both sides of an issue to unite in their shared view. It goes without saying that, when going down the divisive route, it’s important to make sure it’s not anything that will alienate members or cause offence.

5. Create a buzz around upcoming releases

If you’re looking for a way to create some hype around an upcoming product release, new service or event, user polls can be just the ticket.

When you’re in the throes of planning releases, it can be easy to make assumptions on how your audience will feel based on your own ideas of what they like, need and expect from your brand. However, these assumptions aren’t always accurate – and many brands unwittingly miss the mark.

With the right questions asked via user polls, you can gauge user interest ahead of time and gain confidence in your overall strategy. 

Beyond this, polls can also provide the perfect platform to build excitement around these releases. By seeking out user views beforehand, you can create a sense of exclusivity, making people instantly feel included and excited about what’s to come.

6. Improve audience loyalty

Online communities can be a powerful way for brands to really engage their members and build a loyal audience.

But brands need to earn that loyalty, which means going the extra mile. This is where user polls can demonstrate the true value of online community members beyond their contributions to the company’s bottom line.

With polls, you’re clearly communicating to users that you care what they think, assuring them that their views on relevant topics matter. Of course, this requires you to respond and act on their opinions where appropriate to ensure these efforts go beyond mere lip service. 

In return, these community members are more likely to feel a stronger sense of loyalty to your brand, contributing to meaningful long-term community engagement.

Whether you have an established brand community or you’re looking to start a new one, user polls can help to create an open and honest space where members feel comfortable expressing their views. In return, you can gain deeper insight into your audience to grow your business and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to growing your online community, we’re here to help. Get in touch with Six Circles today and discover how our engagement platform can help you build a strong foundation for your online community.

Here at Six Circles, we love all things online community related – and that includes juicy new stats from the world of online community building.

For us, it’s all about learning from the industry data – and sharing our findings with you, our valued community.

That’s why, today, we’re going to be taking a look at 6 lessons we can learn from some of this year’s online community statistics.

1. 76% of online users take part in online communities

With less than a quarter of online users not participating in some form of online community, this statistic highlights just how important online communities are today.

From public Reddit groups to brand-led forums, blogs and vlogs, it seems that internet users just can’t resist getting involved in the online world beyond traditional social media platforms.

From a learning point of view, this stat serves to reaffirm the growing relevance and influence of online communities with respect to their end users.

Whether it’s finding answers to pain points on a forum or simply identifying like-minded people and feeling part of something, nurturing an online community can go a long way towards putting your brand on the map.

But that’s not all – establishing an active and engaged community online can help you build brand authority, authenticity and trust among your customers.

2. 66% of brands credit their online community for helping to retain customers

Every business needs new revenue to promote growth, but there’s a lot to be said for servicing your existing customers, too.

Generating new customers is reported to cost up to five times more than retaining existing ones, yet many brands still put more time, effort and money into the former.

However, even with rising costs for customer retention and ever-changing consumer expectations, the takeaway here is that focusing on growing customer loyalty could pay off in the long run.

Obviously, there are different ways you can do this. As this online community statistic proves, though, cultivating an active and engaged group of online followers could be a highly effective strategy.

With consumers actively participating through brand-led groups, you can tap into their likes, dislikes and pain points. This can make it easier to continually service them and make them feel valued.

Valued customers will naturally feel more loyal to your brand, keeping them coming back time and time again.

3. 27% of customers say online communities influence their purchase decisions

Even in today’s largely online world, the power of recommendation has a strong part to play in consumer decision-making.

In fact, the above online community statistic shows that a third of customers use online communities to help them make decisions on whether to buy a particular product or service.

These user-generated reviews, advice and recommendations are considered to give a more genuine and honest assessment of products. As a result, they can have a big influence on how trustworthy a customer believes particular brands and their offerings to be.

With this in mind, take the time to be an active participant in your community so you can gain insight into what consumers think about your products or services.

Having an active role within your community can help you to respond to negative and positive feedback and learn more about what your customers actually want and expect from you.

4. Almost half of users say that the importance of their online communities grow over time 

With users reportedly spending an average of 415 minutes online everyday, it’s perhaps little surprise that online communities have become an integral way of communicating, on both a personal and commercial level.

As a result, many of the communities that people participate in form an important part of their daily social lives. Naturally, over time, they become more embedded and gain greater importance.

For brands, this long-term increased importance offers the perfect opportunity to engage consumers in an aim to increase customer retention and revenue.

5. 66% of users say their primary reason for online community engagement is connecting with like-minded people

As human beings, we like to feel a sense of belonging and seek to form genuine and meaningful relationships with our peers. In the real world, this can be challenging, but online we can pick and choose who we hang out with and where.

This creates the potential to seek out and connect with people with similar interests, giving consumers more control over who they interact with.

As a brand with an online community, this desire to connect with like-minded people can give you a clear indication of who your target audience is and what interests them.

You can then tailor and moderate the content within your online community to make sure it appeals to your members of your audience and others like them. In the long run, this will entice users to keep coming back and interacting within your online community platform.

6. 90% of brands have used suggestions from their community to improve products or services

Online communities aren’t just about providing a place for your users to congregate and socialise. They can also provide the perfect platform for members to express their views around products and services, which you can use to your advantage.

In fact, for 90% of communities, this has led to brands using community member suggestions to inform improvements to their services and products.

By tapping into consumer feedback via your online community, you can discover a goldmine of constructive and practical ideas for product and service refinement.

You can allow feedback to come through organically or, if you want to focus on a particular product improvement, open up the floor to your users via your online community. This could be an Ask Me Anything session, a customer survey or an open forum thread.

Whether you’re just starting your online community or looking to expand it further, there are lessons to be learned from these online community statistics. They can help you to attract, engage and nurture your audience members to create a thriving community that positively benefits them and your brand.

Do you need a little help getting your online community off the ground? No problem. Get in touch with Six Circles today and discover how our engagement platform can help you build a strong foundation for your online community.

Community building works – and when you get it right, it really works. 

From improved customer retention to greater brand recognition, there’s a whole host of ways that successful community building can superpower your brand’s growth. 

Don’t believe us? Feast your eyes on these 6 examples of much-loved brands renowned for their top-class community building and super-invested customer communities.

Oh, and we’ll also spill the beans on how and why the approaches work to inspire ideas for your own community-building strategies.

Apple 

There’s no better example of the power of community building than Apple’s unprecedented success.

Over the years, the brand has strategically built a global community of devoted Apple lovers who proudly identify as owners of its latest and greatest products. 

In fact, Apple has been so successful in building a community identity around its brand and products that we no longer bat an eyelid at long overnight queues outside our local phone shop when the latest iPhone is released.

It’s these scenes that demonstrate just how valuable fostering this level of customer engagement and loyalty can be to a brand’s growth. But how did Apple do it?

Well, the core of Apple’s community-building strategy is its unwavering commitment to customer service and support.

You only have to walk into any Apple store to immediately experience it for yourself, with attentive ‘geniuses’ assisting customers with everything from purchasing decisions to product maintenance, repair and tutorials. This support extends online, too, with detailed support forums for individual products and customer problems that encourage customers to share solutions. 

This has been paired with a very conscious brand sensitivity that always remains culturally current and progressive. Not only does this project a forward-thinking brand image that asserts Apple as the leader of its space, but it also encourages an all-encompassing brand community the world over.

Lego 

In an age where children’s eyes are regularly glued to screens, Lego has effortlessly stood the test of time and remained at the forefront of its space. 

But Lego hasn’t only remained consistently appealing to its core child audience – it’s also managed to cultivate a loyal and passionate community of adult customers. 

While a global franchise of movies, video games, theme parks and more has helped to ensure the longevity of Lego’s brand recognition and customer interest, it’s the introduction of Lego Ideas in 2008 that elevated the brand’s community building to the next level. 

Lego Ideas encourages community collaboration by enabling followers to submit ‘construction ideas’, with the most popular build themes and ideas ending up in production.

By empowering customers with the chance for their voices and creative inputs to be heard, Lego has created a product ideation community that removes the gap between customer and brand. This heightens customers’ sense of value, improving engagement and retention as a result.

Gymshark

No matter whether you’re a fitness freak or couch potato, you no doubt know of Gymshark.

Far and away one of the fastest-scaling fitness brands on the planet, Gym Shark has adopted a customer-first approach to its content creation that has seen its community building scale at a rapid pace.

The brand’s blog, Gymshark Central, acts as a knowledge hub packed full of tips, tutorials and more to position the Gymshark brand as the number one source of health and fitness information. As a result, brand authority and trust signals are significantly strengthened, incentivising customers to keep coming back for more.

All the while, this best-in-space content strategy was paired with an influencer campaign that saw a team of trusted, well-known and respected athletes act as brand ambassadors. 

This amounted to the Gymshark community becoming all but synonymous with the wider fitness community, helping the brand grow significantly as a result.

Starbucks

Nowadays, community is all but embedded into the DNA of Starbucks’ brand image. 

To reach the resounding community building success the coffee giant has achieved (most notably across the pond), Starbucks focused on two key assets: user-generated content and loyalty schemes.

Let’s start with the former.

If you’re in the right demographic, there’s more than likely a picture of a Starbucks cup on one of your social media feeds today. Filtered Instagram snaps of Starbucks orders (featuring customers’ names written on the cups by baristas) have become something of a trend with millennials and beyond – a genius user-generated content trend that strikes up FOMO by projecting the community as socially desirable.

Combined with the Starbucks Rewards program (a customer loyalty initiative that offers members personalised rewards for making purchases and engaging with the Starbucks app), customers have a whole host of incentives to join this ever-growing brand community.

Red Bull

Red Bull’s unique community building strategy is centred around reinforcing its brand image and values.

This is the reason you’ll see the market-leading energy drink’s name featured at a wide range of sporting events – usually ones with a particular focus on high energy and endurance. In other cases, it’ll be an event that’s just downright insane – like this, for example. 

The idea is that, by sponsoring events that relect the high intensity of the brand’s ethos, the brand will more effectively communicate its image and values and better resonate with its target audience.

The result? A community of like-minded customers actively invested not only in the product but in the dynamic brand and what it represents.

Harley Davidson 

Harley Davidson is so invested in its brand community that it has its own name: the Harley Owners Club.

The club started as a way to bring customers and fans together through meetups and events organised all over the world. Since then, the Harley Owners Club has become one of the most popular motoring communities on the web – all with the Harley Davidson brand at its heart.

Recognising the advantages of encouraging community connection, Harley Davidson’s community building strategy centres around the social instinct to connect with likeminded people who share the same passions and interests.

Oh, and not to forget a range of hugely popular perks, including exclusive events, insurance and roadside assistance. All of this drives customer loyalty by demonstrating value to the customer, providing endless incentives to stay engaged and invested.

As these brands have masterfully demonstrated, there are countless ways you can approach your brand’s community building strategy. It’s all about getting to know your customers – their wants, needs and expectations – and leveraging this to incentivise your audience to return time and time again.

To begin implementing your brand’s community building strategy, get in touch with the experts at Six Circles today and discover how our community engagement platform can help to superpower your brand’s growth.

Here at Six Circles, helping brands build communities online is our bread and butter. 

But we also know that successful community building doesn’t just take place digitally. 

After all, your customers are living breathing people who embrace your brand not just online, but in their real day-to-day.

This is why our online community platform boasts a dedicated event area where brands can promote their upcoming in-person events and exhibitions.

It’s also why we’re exploring 6 ways hosting events can help you grow your tribe and strengthen your brand’s community building strategy in today’s post. Let’s explore.

Your brand can be experienced first-hand

Community building is all about reducing the distance between brand and customer. Enabling the customer to experience your brand first-hand is one of the most effective ways to do this.

Why? Because it establishes authenticity.

Anyone can say anything online. Brands can claim to be driven by certain values or to operate in a certain way – but to actually prove this to an audience online takes time, effort and consistency.

At events, on the other hand, you can quickly establish trust by demonstrating authenticity to your audience.

Allowing customers to experience how you interact and engage with your audience first-hand (as well as overcoming conversion hurdles by previewing your products, services and offerings ‘in the flesh’) will make it far easier for your brand to resonate in a real way. 

This turns potential customers into budding community members willing to align themselves with your brand.

You become more memorable 

You’ve probably noticed, but there’s quite a lot of information online, which means standing out from the crowd and sticking in consumers’ minds is easier said than done.

In-person events and exhibitions, on the other hand, allow brands to appeal to the senses of their potential customers – they can be seen, heard and experienced.

As a result, it becomes an awful lot easier to build brand recognition through this marketing method. Consumers are far more likely to, at the very least, recognise your brand name and, ideally, know exactly who you are and what you do.

Plus, in-person events are an ideal opportunity to offer up some free branded merch that spreads the word about your brand that little bit further.

Greater opportunities to experiment and engage

Hosting events and exhibitions opens up plenty of possibilities to explore more experimental marketing campaigns.

Experimenting with fresh and innovative ways to engage your audience can start to become a real challenge online. In person, though, the world is your oyster.

As this post proves, there are endless ways to engage, entertain and capture the attention of in-person audiences to the benefit of your brand recognition and your customers’ enthusiasm for your brand.

Best of all, you can even document these experimental events and experiences to create engaging online campaigns, too – expanding your audience even further!

Community members connect with each other

Community building isn’t about building a following – it’s about growing a tribe. 

As a result, your engagement and growth strategy should place your brand at the heart of the community, not the head.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to encourage conversation and interaction among your community members.

This is significantly easier to promote organically in person, where opportunities for interaction are more natural and your audience feels more incentivised to connect.

Of course, this has a natural positive impact on your community building efforts. Members who are connecting with one another feel a greater sense of belonging, meaning they’ll form a greater connection – not only with their fellow community members, but also with your brand.

You gain a deeper understanding of your audience

In today’s digital world, data reigns supreme. 

Data enables brands to form a better understanding of who exactly their customers are – it gives welcome insight into their habits, behaviours, interests, pain points and more.

Off the back of these insights, brands often build buyer personas and audience profiles to better visualise and get to grips with who their average customers are.

The key word here is ‘insight’. Data is simply a snapshot into a customer’s background – a sneak peek behind the curtain to see what makes them tick.

While there’s undeniable value in these insights, the personas and profiles they inspire are estimations – there’s still an element of assumption around the audience.

When hosting events, on the other hand, you get to meet your real customers. You see faces and learn personalities, and can judge sentiment and observe expectations and reactions.

In short? You gain a deeper understanding of who exactly makes up your brand’s audience, helping you to refine your community engagement strategy in the long term. 

Generate a greater buzz 

Providing you pull it off, your brand event is likely to generate buzz – this is great news for your community engagement efforts.

What exactly this buzz looks like will ultimately depend on the type of event you host – it might be going viral online, bolstering your brand recognition through word of mouth, or recruiting an enthusiastic army of brand ambassadors.

Whatever buzz your event generates, the hope is that it captures attention and ramps up the FOMO (fear of missing out) to attract a wider audience of people who can be nurtured into dedicated community members.

Event marketing is a powerful way of ensuring a robust community engagement strategy. That’s why, at Six Circles, we make it easy for you to promote your events on our first-class community building platform. And better yet, our event area will be undergoing further developments in the coming weeks!

Want to find out more? Get in touch with us today to learn how Six Circles can help your brand community grow.

Here at Six Circles, we love hearing from our customers. 

Feedback helps us to grow our product, grow our business and grow our community. 

Put simply, customer feedback is invaluable to the success of our community engagement. 

Today, we’re offering up 6 reasons any brand hoping to build a thriving customer community should always be seeking customer feedback to learn how to better serve their audience. 

(And you can find exactly what you need to learn from your audience right here).

You learn who your customers are 

We hope you have already have a pretty good idea of your target audience and who your customers and community members are.

But customer feedback enables you to go deeper than generic customer profiles and top-level data insights.

Feedback enables you to discover who your customers really are – what makes them tick, how they interact with your product or service, and what they expect from you as a brand. 

As a result, you’re able to make worthwhile updates to your strategy – from your brand voice and message to your product or service development – to better align with your audience.  

This all leads to a targeted and ultra-effective community engagement strategy that will rapidly expand a loyal following of brand enthusiasts who subscribe to your values and message.

You receive honest insights

Customers don’t have an incentive to lie. 

This means the feedback you receive is likely to be impartial and honest, making it far more valuable than the input and opinions of family, friends and anyone with a vested interest in your brand.

The result? It’s far easier to obtain an accurate understanding of customer satisfaction, including what you’re doing right and wrong with your sales, marketing and community engagement strategies.

This all amounts to efforts that are more closely aligned with the wants, needs and expectations of your customers – the pillars of any successful community building endeavour.

You improve customer retention 

Customer retention is at the very heart of community building – after all, it’s those returning customers that form your devoted community.

Unhappy customers are, of course, unlikely to return – unless you can demonstrate a willingness to go the extra mile, that is.

Customer feedback provides you with a valuable opportunity to make amends with dissatisfied customers by addressing their grievances and improving their perception of your brand. 

Get this right and you might just turn an unhappy customer into a prospective community member – 70% of unhappy customers whose problems are resolved are willing to shop with a business again.

That’s not to say customer feedback only aids in mending damaged customer relationships. Those satisfied customers also need an incentive to keep coming back for more, and feeling unappreciated is the leading reason customers switch products and services. 

With this in mind, encourage feedback to strengthen your blossoming customer relationships and turn satisfied customers into enthusiastic community members.

You gain customer service experience 

The quality of your customer service has a major impact on how customers perceive your brand and how likely they are to join your community.

In fact, 65% of customers have switched to another brand after a poor customer service experience.

Regularly requesting and addressing customer feedback exposes you and your customer service team to an array of real-life customer issues.

Understand how to deal with different customer types by utilising feedback as a learning experience that can strengthen your customer service team moving forward. What are the common problems customers are facing and what can be done about them?

With this customer service experience, your brand will be better equipped to provide an above-and-beyond service that strengthens customer trust and increases your potential to grow a loyal customer community.

You identify brand ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are invaluable assets to any brand community. 

That’s because customers trust other customers – often far more than they trust your brand. It’s why 76% of internet users say they’re more likely to trust content shared by ‘normal’ people than by brands.

This only becomes more effective the more authentic your brand ambassadors are – and what better place to find genuinely enthusiastic customers than via audience feedback?

Encouraging customer feedback means you can avoid the big-name social influencers who do a little for a lot and instead recruit authentic community members proud to be associated with your brand.

This will send positive trust signals to your audience, reaffirming your brand’s trustworthiness to the benefit of your community engagement.

You appear more transparent and trustworthy 

Brand transparency and trust have become more than just a consumer preference – they’re an expectation.

It’s why 70% of consumers say trusting a brand is more important today than in the past – a belief shared across all age groups, genders and income brackets.   

A further 81% of consumers need to be sure they trust a brand before doing business with them (even once!), meaning trust must be successfully earned before community building can even begin.

Demonstrating that you value audience input by encouraging customer feedback is a sure-fire way to send your audience positive trust signals. 

But, like most things, actions speak louder than words. With this in mind, it’s not enough to simply say you value customer feedback – you need to prove it.

From actioning suggestions to addressing common complaints and pain points, to earn your audience’s trust and increase the likelihood of them becoming budding community members, regularly show how you’re embracing and valuing the input of your customers.

Whether it’s positive or negative, customer feedback is gold dust for any brand looking to unlock the power of community building. Begin leveraging your audience’s thoughts, opinions and perspectives today to begin implementing a more effective and targeted community engagement strategy.

Oh, and if you’re a Six Circles customer, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on our market-leading community engagement platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

Successful community building is about consistently engaging your audience. 

You want to strengthen relationships between customer and brand by demonstrating value and understanding. In turn, this will help you build trust, authority and credibility within your space. 

Sounds easy, right?

And the truth is that it can be, providing you know a thing or two about your audience’s habits and behaviours.

That’s because successful community engagement requires you to know what content your audience demands and, as a result, what content you should be shouting about the most loudly.

In this post, we’re exploring 6 types of content always worth promoting to your audience.

Internal news 

Your brand is the heart of your community. It’s the hub your audience is built around and the driving force for its growth.

Keeping your community informed on all of your latest internal news and developments will put your brand front and centre.

Not only will this help to strengthen your brand’s authenticity (a trait that 90% of consumers agree is important), but it will also make your community members feel more valued. 

Giving your audience extra insight into your brand will make them feel less like consumers and more like community members, bridging the gap between you and your audience. 

This can create authentic brand ambassadors – an asset 89% of marketers agree is effective in growing a community.

Shouting loudly about your internal news also provides a distinct opportunity to demonstrate how you’re embracing your brand values.

Not only will this further strengthen your authenticity, but it will also help audiences to identify with your brand (growing your community as a result!).

External news 

Promoting external news is also a powerful way of engaging your community.

From important updates within your industry to current affairs that align (or contrast) with your brand’s values, share external news to position yourself at the forefront of your space.

Be sure you’re adding something new to the conversation, though.

The point is to demonstrate your expertise by providing valuable insights, opinions and solutions as a means of strengthening your brand’s authority and your community’s trust in it. 

Be sure this content is being produced and promoted with a quick turnaround – external news is rarely evergreen, so you need to participate in the conversation while it’s still happening. 

Providing you shout about it loudly, this finger-on-the-pulse content will likely drive plenty of engagement and conversation within your community.

Polls

Community members like to be heard – in fact, a significant 89% of consumers want companies to ask them for input.

Polls can be a great way of collecting audience opinions. 

Firstly, they give community members the chance for their voices to be heard without having to spend time on exhaustive forms and laboured feedback.

Secondly, polls are interactive and visually engaging, allowing them to drive active participation.

The benefits here are crystal clear. Your community relations will be strengthened by your members feeling valued and heard, which, in turn, builds greater trust in your brand.

Oh, and all the while, you’re collecting valuable audience feedback and insight that can be utilised to further enhance how your brand connects with its community.

Of course, all of these perks rely on your community actually engaging with your polls – so be sure your audience knows every time one goes live.

Resources 

If your brand community is growing, it’s likely you’re creating customer-first content. 

These resources provide your audience with solutions to common pain points, and can take the form of blog posts, ebooks, guides and more.

This content is driven directly by the needs of your audience and, as such, tends to generate meaningful engagement.

As long as these resources provide high-quality and high-value solutions, they’ll prove invaluable in asserting your brand’s expertise and authority.

It’s the reason 92% of marketers agree that their company views content as a business asset.

If you’ve taken the time to create customer-first resources, be sure to seize the opportunity for engagement by ensuring your audience knows where to find them.

Social posts  

Your brand’s socials are likely your go-to promotion channels. 

As a result, shouting about your social channels and your social posts can often be a long-forgotten afterthought.

This means there’s untapped potential for you to build a greater social following that helps to widen your reach and grow your community.

With this in mind, be sure to wax lyrical about your most-used platforms. Go further than merely linking your social icons in the footer of your website, though. 

Instead, directly promote your best-performing posts by integrating feeds across multiple platforms and channels.

With over 53% of the world’s population on social media, ensuring a strong social presence is key to asserting brand authority and trust. 

With this in mind, be sure to capitalise on your existing community by shouting about your socials to ensure a consistent and enthusiastic following wherever your brand’s visible online. 

Promotions 

We don’t need to tell you about the power of promotions. 

From unmissable perks to exclusive discounts, providing users with incentives to engage is a sure-fire way of keeping your community active.

Shout loudly and proudly whenever you’re running a promotion to stir up a healthy amount of FOMO (fear of missing out).

Remember: 69% of millennials experience FOMO, with the emotion driving purchasing decisions in a significant 48% of this demographic.

Make sure you’re highlighting active promotions to maximise the success of your offer and improve your community engagement to boot.

Successful and sustainable community building means consistently meeting the wants, needs and desires of your audience. With this in mind, don’t fall at the final hurdle by failing to promote what matters most to your brand and, of course, your community.

On the Six Circles community engagement platform, our latest update has given small and large business owners more community-building power than ever before. 

For example, our new featured tiles panel allows admins to pin important content (like the types mentioned in this post) so it’s the first thing users see when they arrive on the platform. Want to learn more? Get in touch today to find out how Six Circles can help your community building go further.

Establishing trust is vital to building successful long-term relationships with the modern consumer.

In fact, a huge 81% of consumers need to be sure they trust a brand before buying from them.

Community building can be a super-effective way for your brand to demonstrate these important trust signals and foster longer relationships with your customers.

In today’s post, we’re sharing 6 handy tips on how to build trust through community engagement.

Look to implement these tips as part of your own community engagement strategy for purposeful community building that drives your business towards its commercial goals.

Be authentic

Authenticity is key to earning customers’ trust.

90% of consumers agree that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they support. That’s up from 86% in 2017, too, meaning the importance of authenticity to the modern consumer is only increasing as time goes on.

One of the key drivers behind this shift is millennials – 64% of whom are ‘belief-driven’ buyers – becoming the largest consumer demographic.

This consumer group expects more transparency and authenticity from brands – they want to know who you are and what you stand for. They also want proof these aren’t just empty words.

A mammoth 92% of marketers believe the content they create resonates as authentic with their customers. However, a significant 51% of consumers disagree.

This is because marketers are more likely to believe their branded content is more authentic than user-generated content – 2.1x more likely, to be precise.

On the flip side, consumers are 2.4x more likely to believe user-generated content is more authentic than branded content.

The takeaway? Consumers trust other people far more than they trust brands. 

So, to earn your customers’ trust through community engagement, let your community members do the hard work for you – highlighting real customers and telling real stories.

Be consistent  

Consistency breeds reliability and credibility – both of which are key to building consumer trust. 

On average, it takes 5 to 7 brand impressions for a consumer to even remember your brand, let alone become a trusting community member. So, pursuing community engagement every once in a while isn’t enough to drive the results you want to see.

Instead, to build trust and grow your community, engagement needs to become a fundamental part of your brand’s online activity.

Meaningful customer relationships need to be nurtured, requiring you to repeatedly demonstrate value to assure consumers that you’re a trusted authority within your space (more on this shortly).

Be sure to keep your community building consistent, both in terms of your messaging frequency and the content of this messaging.

Not only will this help you to project the right trust signals, but it will also provide you with a bank of extra engagement data you can use to better target your community building approach in future.

Be a value provider 

Providing value is integral to your long-term community engagement. Why? The more value you provide, the more trusting your community becomes in your brand’s authority.

Creating and promoting high-value content and services wherever possible is the most effective way to achieve this.

Delve into all kinds of audience research, from polls and surveys to data deep-dives and trend analysis. Identify popular topics and common pain points – what solutions do your audience need? What types of content do they engage most actively with?

Look to satisfy these demands by providing relevant and genuine value in the content you produce and the engagement strategies you pursue.

Remember: you’re not the only brand in your space, so be sure you’re going above and beyond to provide the utmost value to your audience.

The aim is to be the best in your space – this is the most effective way to assert your authority and expertise, effortlessly building customer trust as a result.

Be a leader

From demonstrating thought leadership to being at the forefront of developments in your field, look to establish a sense of leadership in your community engagement strategy.

If you’re providing high-value, best-in-space content as part of your community engagement approach, your brand will be halfway to becoming a leader of your industry.

That’s because becoming a leader is all about strengthening your brand’s credibility, authority and, as a result, trustworthiness.

If you’re a B2B brand, this approach can be particularly useful in securing the trust of more community members – 83% of B2B buyers consider thought leadership to be a trust signal.

Once again, the key here is quality. 49% of B2B buyers said their opinion of a company had decreased after reading poor quality content, and 33% have removed a company from consideration based on its thought leadership output.

No matter whether yours is a B2B or B2C community, demonstrate why you’re the go-to option by going further than your competitors – offer unique insights, high-value solutions and fresh perspectives.

Be accountable

Always openly engage with your community, whatever the sentiment of the conversation. 

No brand gets everything right 100% of the time – the occasional misstep is only natural. 

Instead of trying to swerve negative feedback, comments and complaints, though, own up and demonstrate accountability – your community will think more of your brand as a result.  

That’s because accountability promotes a culture of transparency and authenticity – two integral elements to building trust among consumers.

Being accountable can often be about more than owning up to your mistakes. To really earn the trust of consumers, you need to demonstrate action. Don’t just tell your community that their voice is being heard – show them.

Be responsive 

Delivering great customer service is a tried and tested way to build consumer trust – almost 90% of customers report trusting a company whose service they rate as ‘very good’.

So, whenever a member of your community reaches out, be responsive – you want to look as accessible and attentive as possible. 90% of customers rate an ‘immediate’ (10 mins or less) response as important or very important when they have a customer service query.

This means it’s key to ensure you’re not just responsive in public areas (like the comments section) – you need to be just as responsive in private areas (like DMs), too.

After all, a customer’s trust is most effectively built through their own positive experiences, not those of others.

If you lack the resource and manpower to operate an instantaneously responsive service, consider auto-replies and chatbots – customers need assurance that their voice is being heard. 

Trust and community engagement go hand in hand, meaning brands who gain their audience’s trust are able to grow their brand community more quickly. The trick is to assert your brand’s expertise with authenticity and transparency.

If you’d like a short demonstration of how to make the most of these tips on the Six Circles platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

So you’ve optimised your community engagement platform to embody your brand and engage your audience.

Time to sit back and relax, right? Not exactly.

Whether you’ve just begun building a brand community or you’re looking for new ways to grow an established audience, knowing how to drive new users to your platform is key to its success.

That’s where this post comes in.

Today, we’re exploring 6 proven ways to drive users to your community engagement platform, providing a wave of new opportunities for your brand to foster long-lasting customer relationships.

Shout on socials

From Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram to Twitter, your business likely has a social channel or two.

Whether you have 50 followers or 5,000 followers, your socials are the perfect place to shout about your platform to an audience with a proven interest in your brand – so do it.

Post about your platform frequently and enthusiastically, covering everything from what it is to why your audience needs it (accompanied by a handy link, of course).

Doing this will soon see you convert idle followers into engaged community members.

That’s not to say your message is restricted to your followers – far from it!

Believe it or not, social media usage is still growing – it’s expected there’ll be 3.96 billion users worldwide in 2022, up 4.8% from 2021.

Whether you rely on the power of organic shares, promote a post or run targeted ads, social media is a powerful channel to promote your platform (and brand) to a new audience.

Offer exclusive perks 

Users need incentives.

From exclusive previews to special promotions, make your community engagement platform the place to be with a range of unmissable perks.

The best way to ensure your platform has a pull your audience can’t resist? Stir up FOMO (fear of missing out).

A mammoth 69% of millennials (today’s largest consumer demographic) experience FOMO. Most find it too powerful to resist, too, with 48% of millennials spending money they don’t have to keep up with others.

Use FOMO to your advantage by offering exclusive perks – emphasis on ‘exclusive’ here.

To ensure these perks incentivise your audience, conduct audience research to discover what your audience is looking for. Then, leverage it on your community platform and let FOMO work its magic.

Be responsive 

Brand communities should never be a one-way street – it’s a sure-fire way of turning potential members away.

Demonstrate that you’re present in your customer relationships by always being responsive wherever you’re visible, from comments and threads to queries and reviews.

74% of millennials say that their perception of a brand improves when it is clear the company responds to customers’ social media comments and queries.

On top of that, 69% of consumers agree that responsiveness is “very important” when it comes to remaining loyal to a brand.

So, by demonstrating that you actively participate in customer conversations and problem solving, you’ll promote a positive brand image that incentivises loyalty.

In turn, your members of your audience will be better primed to convert into community members who regularly engage with your platform.

Promote at every opportunity

How will you drive users to your platform if they don’t know it exists? 

Be sure to shout loudly about your community engagement platform at every opportunity – promotion is the best way to increase traffic to your hub.

Start with your website, ensuring your platform is visibly linked in your footer. If your design permits it, also look to include a banner on a suitable page (or two) to catch the eye of both new and repeat visitors.

Don’t forget about your onsite content, either. From page copy to blog posts, update with commanding CTAs (calls-to-action) that push more users towards your community engagement space.

Of course, there are countless other promotion opportunities at your disposal – perhaps most notably, engaging email marketing.

40% better at converting than social marketing, email can be a powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal.

21% of emails sent are opened within the first hour of delivery, so, if you’re directly promoting your community engagement platform via email, consider your timing.

Launch email campaigns in tandem with publishing exciting content or unmissable updates on your platform. Give those recipients who’ve clicked through a reason to become a member.

That’s not to say you can’t promote your platform indirectly through email. It doesn’t have to be the subject of every email – a short and snappy CTA at the end of confirmation emails, newsletters and the like will work wonders when it comes to attracting new visitors, too.

Create customer-first content 

We’ve already covered the importance of incentives when attracting new community members to your platform.

Exclusive perks are an effective short-term solution, but, for a longer-term approach to incentivising, look to create customer-first content.

Customer-first content offers solutions to your audience’s common pain points, becoming supremely valuable as a result.

The more of this content you create, the more engagement you generate and the more authority you build. As a result, customers are given a constant incentive to stick around.

For this reason, in a recent survey, 92% of marketers reported that their company views content as a business asset.

The format and style this customer-first content takes will ultimately depend on your brand, industry and audience. That being said, you can find out more about the types of content your customers want to see here.

Find brand ambassadors

Users trust other users – in most cases, more than they trust your brand. 

In fact, 76% of people say that they’re more likely to trust content shared by “normal” people than by brands.

So, look to promote brand ambassadors who willingly champion your brand and platform, embodying your values wherever they go.

89% of marketers say this style of ambassador marketing is effective. That’s providing the approach is authentic, though – a quality that 91% of consumers are prepared to reward. 

With this in mind, don’t turn to big-name social influencers who’ll plug anything for a quick buck.  

Instead, recruit genuine members of your community to be your proud brand ambassadors, from enthusiastic employees to common customers.

This authentic use of brand ambassadors will see consumers built trust in their opinions, so make sure that they’re waxing lyrical about your platform wherever possible.

Your community engagement platform is a convenient and effective space that gives you the tools to foster long-lasting customer relationships and build a community around your brand. 

Brand communities can be a powerful way of finding that competitive edge, so don’t miss out on all that yours has to offer by failing to promote your platform.

By following these 6 tips, you can ensure you’re sending meaningful traffic to your platform, discovering a wave of new users primed to convert into loyal community members.

With users on your platform, the next thing to do is engage them. If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Alternatively, if you’re new to community building, get in touch today to learn more about what it can unlock for your business.