TMCnet Online Community News
What is the Point of Hosting an Online Community?
With all the talk surrounding online communities and why they’re growing in popularity, it’s important to take a few steps back and think about their purposes before you plunge ahead with one simply because “everyone else is doing it.”
Online communities have significant impacts on a business’ ability to reach its customers, but they are also hubs for new potential customers. While ROI is the end game for most companies hosting online communities, other factors should be given equal weight. One purpose is to generate thought.
Your online community ideally focuses around a central topic or theme, and the content you publish to it should be well-written and thought-provoking. When readers find themselves intrigued by new thought, they generally want to learn more, and this leads them to explore and ask questions. Generating thought, in a broad sense, on your online community will solidify your brand in this reader’s (and potential customer’s) mind as the authority on such matters. Don’t we all want to buy from the ones that know best?
Asking questions leads to the second important point considering for online community owners: promoting conversation. Half the point of an online community is to engage readers. Provoking thought comes first, then comes the conversation. If you enable chat functions, the opportunity to comment, or email the writers, you are effectively engaging your readers. While these readers might be your customers already, in which case they will feel attended to by such engagement, they might also be prospective customers, which will ignite their interest in your products.
Both of these ideas lead to the ideal point of hosting an online community, which is to open doors for new interested (and paying) parties. But you cannot have one without the other. No successful online community ever just slammed visitors in the face with promotional items without some sort of informational or educational benefit. Take the time to create the space to grow in thought on your online community, and the visitors will come.
Ultimately, the difference between a decent online community and an awesome online community is based on how much a visitor can learn. After all, what was that lesson we all learned in 3rd grade? Oh, yeah. “Knowledge is power.”
Edited by Stefanie Mosca
