How to Manage an Online Community: A Complete Guide for Success
Customer connection is more than a mere over-the-counter transaction. When you create your own online community, you can fully comprehend how your customers perceive your brand. However, learning how to manage an online community can be tricky, especially if you’re just starting your brand.
In business, an online community is a space where loyal customers can talk about their experiences with a brand. This is called a branded online community. In this type of community, you can easily access the insights of your patrons and identify their sentiments and pain points to conceptualize fresh strategies for improvement.
Indeed, a branded online community is beneficial for expanding your reach and visibility. However, with so many people confined in a single space, it may be a challenge to maintain harmony and safety. With threats also lurking online, you must learn to oversee your community like a pro.
Let’s tackle all that and more in this blog!
Proven Online Community Management Strategies for Growth
Online communities need someone to nurture and take care of them. Lack of active management can lead to unruly behavior, which could turn off brand loyalists.
An online community manager is the one responsible for managing an online community—from developing strategies and choosing the right platform to setting guidelines and encouraging discussions. This person or team keeps interactions aligned with the brand’s mission and goals.
Online community managers must wear many hats to fulfill their role. Below are some proven online community management strategies for growth that they should apply:
1. Be firm and consistent with guidelines
Every community has its own set of rules on what users can and cannot post, as well as how they should and shouldn’t behave when interacting with each other. Introducing these guidelines should be at the top of your to-do list, especially when acknowledging new members or followers.
More importantly, be impartial when enforcing your community’s rules. Avoid showing favoritism or bias toward any of your members. People instantly become disinterested in following a specific set of guidelines the moment they see that it does not apply equally to everyone. When you are consistent in implementing ground rules, it boosts reliability and authenticity on your part.
2. Set up and monitor community metrics
Another effective online community management strategy is to set up insightful metrics. Do you want to monitor how many members join your forum each day? Or do you want to set your eyes on topics that your supporters follow? Are you determined to discover which channels help drive the highest number and quality of traffic to your websites and pages?
If so, then define and prepare the key areas that you want to focus on as you measure user engagement and activity in your communities. See to it that what you are measuring reflects your business objectives and strategies.
Arrange a weekly or monthly report to organize all the gathered data. Document every report and observe changes and updates in your members’ activities.
3. Promote respectful and meaningful conversations
Sometimes, interactions between followers become difficult to predict. It can either go smoothly or escalate into a misunderstanding. Although disagreements between community members are normal and inevitable, there is still a way to minimize arguments and negativity within your user base.
Emphasize the importance of upholding respect in every discussion they join. There is a reason why online community management tips create a separate section to highlight peaceful and wholesome conversations. Positive communication leads to a favorable image of your brand.
An online community that supports and acknowledges each other’s differences indicates that community managers are setting an example to the brand’s followers. It is a testament to how people support you enough to remain objective on opinions that contradict their views.
4. Encourage feedback
A community cannot be an exclusive space for your target audience if you do not lend an ear to what they have to say. Take time to listen to their concerns and suggestions. After all, one of the main purposes of establishing an online group for your brand is to gain an understanding of what motivates and defines your unique cluster of customers.
Lend an open ear to what services they favor the most. Are they having issues or troubles with some of your products? Initiate conversations about their overall experience and offer to help them out.
In the end, it’s not enough to moderate member discussions. You must also be an integral part of their conversations to really see areas where you are lacking and how your audience can contribute to your improvement.
5. Do your research
The commitment to learning how to manage an online community entails a healthy dose of research.
Brand supporters will not always flock to the same website or platform. Some brands are more famous on Twitter, while some are steadily strengthening their customer reach on Facebook. Your brand might also be benefiting from mentions and discussions on Reddit, Instagram stories, chat rooms, and Q&A sites.
Expanding your background on the different social networking sites and communication platforms used by your audience gives you leverage. It would be wasteful to keep implementing new campaigns and tactics for audience reach if you lack basic familiarity with what sets each social network or forum site apart from others.
By proactively learning how each website or platform works, you can categorize and measure your brand’s impact on every demographic that comprises your supporters.
Setting Clear Rules and Guidelines for Your Online Community
Effective management starts by setting clear rules and guidelines for your online community. As mentioned, these should emphasize what type of content and behavior will be tolerated in the group and what actions count as violations.
Follow these tips when creating community guidelines:
- Be Clear and Specific: Avoid vague language. Instead of saying “Be respectful,” define what that means. For example: “No personal attacks, hate speech, or trolling.”
- Use Positive Framing: Frame rules in a positive way to encourage the behavior you want. For example: “Supportive feedback is welcome” rather than “No criticism allowed.”
- Include Consequences: Let members know what happens when rules are broken—whether it’s a warning, temporary ban, or permanent removal.
- Pin and Highlight Your Rules: Make sure the guidelines are easily accessible. Pin them to the top of your community page or create a welcome post that includes them.
- Update Periodically: As your community grows or platforms change, revisit your rules to keep them relevant and effective.
The Role of Moderation in Building Healthy Online Spaces
As the backbone of your community’s culture, guidelines must be reinforced with steel hands. With trolls and keyboard warriors ready to pounce at the perfect opportunity, a strong content moderation solution must be in place to de-escalate the situation.
Content moderation can be done by human moderators or through an AI-powered system. Sometimes, businesses adopt a combination of both solutions. You can add keywords and automatic filters for swear words and other offensive terms not accepted in your community. It’s also useful in checking harmful depictions on images, avatars, banners, and multimedia content shared by community members.
The role of moderation in building healthy online spaces is truly diverse. More than filtering user-generated content, it also helps you identify fake accounts and profiles from genuine followers and supporters. This can help avoid identity theft and other forms of scams.
Encouraging Engagement and Interaction Among Community Members
Managing online communities is not just about keeping things in order and depending on your followers to maintain the hype about your business. You need to do your part by encouraging engagement and interaction among community members. This can be done by sharing blogs and visual content that lets your community learn more about your brand.
Spend time discovering topics that pique your audience’s interest and create original content out of them. Publishing content for your users to consume also prompts them to share their ideas and opinions. Not only are you able to regulate user engagement in your communities, but you are also taking the initiative in bringing your brand closer to your audience.
Conclusion: Cultivating Connection and Community Through Active Management
The workload that comes with managing online communities can be overwhelming. But with clear rules and guidelines, you can keep your community aligned and thriving. To ensure success, start with clarity, lead with empathy, and evolve with your community.
For your moderation needs, you can always rely on Chekkee. Our team of content moderators has an extensive background in managing branded communities and can use AI tools to assist in the moderation process.
Contact us today to know what solution you need!
