We’ll cut to the chase: Community is currently one of the most inexpensive means of user acquisition. 76% of internet users belong to at least one online community. It’s almost as sure as we are about our commitment to marketing talents that you are currently a member of at least one online group. From fitness to recipes for bachelors/bachelorettes, heck, even Instagram recently incorporated a community system for creators on its platform.
The obvious truth is community is gold! Notion, for one, has 20 million+ users, social community membership on Reddit of over 150,000+ subscribers. A figure that is 10X that of Slack, a conversation-centered app, and 6X that of Zoom. This company has tapped into their core user community, making it one of the most shareable apps (through templates, tutorials, or hacks). If big companies like Instagram, Duolingo, Hubspot, Notion, and a long list of others are on it, then there’s something in it.
What is an online community?
A community is a group of people connected by shared interests, experiences, goals, Pain points and the chase for a worthwhile solution. An online community houses these individuals online through a social media platform like Facebook, Telegram, Discord, or WhatsApp or a uniquely built platform. These communities facilitate interaction between community members that suit the purpose of the group’s creation. Connection is key, and through that, online communities aim to foster allegiance to what they stand for.
Types of online communities
In-app communities
An in-app community is a feature that is directly integrated into a mobile app, allowing users to interact directly within the app. Users can engage in discussions, share content, provide feedback, ask questions, and build relationships with other users who use the app. For in-app communities, there is no need for users to leave the confines of the app; every discussion, group discussion, etc., is held within the app. Duolingo and Circle are good examples of mobile apps with in-app communities.
Externally built communities
This type of community is not hosted internally, like in-app communities; rather, it is operated on a separate website, social media platform, or messaging app, such as Discord or Telegram. Externally built communities are mostly integrated with the main apps, so it’s easy for users to navigate between the app and the community. Integration choices can vary from direct links on the app to single sign-up for both the app and the community, anything to simplify the process for users. It’s essentially a community, so the same goal applies: communication, connection, feedback, and a sense of belonging.
Community Tactics to Increase Active Users
Ensure Organic Discussion of User Pain-points
Two things: One, people can smell when you’re trying too hard. Two, people will go wherever their issues are discussed, given that there’s a potential solution. Take those two things and turn them into a community that your target audience can identify with. By prioritizing and discussing your users’ challenges, you’re building trust and imbuing them with a sense of solidarity with your brand and what it offers. The trick is not to bombard them with sales-led content (there’s a reason we added “organic”). You would most likely run from a sales guy who hounds you every single time you go to the supermarket. Show genuine interest in the different lenses through which they view the challenges they’re facing and the problem you’re solving. This arms you with feedback you can incorporate into your product.
Tilt Towards Personalized Experiences
People are on the hunt for more personalized experiences; it’s one of the reasons AI is gaining massive popularity. They study user behaviour and regurgitate, creating personalized experiences. To boost active usage of your product, it isn’t merely about adding first names to your newsletter. It involves personalized support and guidance to your users’ problems, incentives or rewards on special days like birthdays or remarkable moments, and individualized seeking of feedback. This provides them with an exclusive feel. Your community doesn’t have to be grumpy or devoid of individual experiences. Everyone always goes where feels like home; it’s why personalization leads to a 20% increase in user engagement and 65% of B2B customers feel misunderstood without it.
Encourage User-generated content
There are a number of reasons why user-generated content is important. Topping the list is its high-level potential to build brand trust amongst consumers by 65% and cause an increase in return users by 25%. Community members producing user-generated content provide you with live scenarios of everyday users engaging with your app. These pictures, videos, or testimonials can be posted on your social media platforms, incorporated into your emails, and even push notifications.
On the other hand, it also gives your community members a sense of ownership, making them feel they have a stake in the success of the product. In the first place, the creation of UGC content requires usage of the product, your initial indication of active usage and retention. Not to mention its ability to attract more users.
Segment Your Audience (Community within Community)
Although a relatively new strategy in community management, segmenting customers based on their product needs has proven to be remarkably effective. There has been a reported up to 50% increase in conversion rates, a 33% improvement in customer lifecycle, and a staggering 760% surge in revenue. With such compelling statistics, there seems to be no reason why this approach cannot be applied to online community marketing.
Creating subgroups within your community and addressing their pain points and peculiarities helps keep your users engaged with your service. Segmentation based on interest or level of usage (or any other factor) can help increase participation or encourage healthy competition among community members. Both of which increase active usage of your product.
Incentivize The Right Way.
Unfortunately, some think of incentivization as “splashing money to get results”. Sure, you might have to spend some money but incentivizing the right way will save you from wasting resources. Providing special discounts or rewards or even a spotlight on your social media channel exclusively for community members can help increase their active usage of your product. Especially if the activity tied to the incentivization is linked to a crucial product feature.
Integrate Social Media.
Social media expands reach and amplifies your community efforts; it is the perfect blend. Blending the two leverages an existing user network to attract new ones. The more users you acquire, the higher the percentage of active users you can amass. You can do this by promoting community discussion on social media and sharing controversial opinions of your community members, especially when they positively reflect your product, team, or brand. Additionally, hosting online spaces featuring community members who have had positive experiences with your product can be beneficial.
Rules Matter. Don’t forsake it.
Rules are like your CTAs, but in reverse. They’re crucial for maintaining the purpose of a community. It’s easy for people to disregard guidelines and stray from the community’s intended focus. Rules ensure that the community stays on track and doesn’t deviate from its original purpose, such as transforming from a group for e-commerce merchants into something else entirely. Enforcing guidelines defines acceptable behaviour within the community, covering language use, bias, hate speech, and abusive words. This would help make your users feel comfortable and encourage active engagement in community activities, thus potentially increasing product usage. Implementing rules within your community also helps filter out low-quality users, increasing the likelihood of conversion and retention.
Take Feedback Seriously.
With over 200 million users, Amazon still prioritizes user feedback. Customer feedback is invaluable, and your community is your avenue to harvest all of it. It helps with product development, pinpointing areas of dissatisfaction and enabling you to enhance customer satisfaction. This, in turn, boosts active and continued product usage. Collecting feedback from your community builds trust in the brand, team, and product. It creates a cycle of word-of-mouth marketing, expanding your product’s reach and facilitating faster acquisition of new users through your community. Imagine peer-to-peer marketing at your fingertips, simply by prioritizing community feedback.
Metrics To Track The Effectiveness of Your Community Building Tactics
1. Engagement
How well your community engages your posts, discussions, content and even each other can be an indication of their interest or disinterest in your product or its offering. High user participation is a good signal of increased product usage.
2. Quality of Interaction
Not all kinds of interaction are relevant to your community’s purpose. The content of the interaction matters as well. Does any of it revolve around your product and its use cases, feedback or user problems/pain points? While your community doesn’t have to be stuck up, a larger percentage of communication on your community channels should be connected to the aim of its existence.
3. Number of Live feedbacks.
How many reviews do you get from community members, both good and bad? Reviews and feedback of any kind first tell one thing: Someone has used your app. The more feedback you get, the more certainty of active users.
4. Success Stories
This shows the level of comfortability of your users. It shows trust in the brand and solidarity. If community members share their stories often in the group, it gives room for newer members to feel at ease with the brand or product. Usually, people find it easier to share in groups, when something works for them than on social media.
5. Community Growth
The number of people that join the community is also a good indication that you are doing something right and that your users are talking about what you offer. They are sharing your value proposition with friends and family. Tracking the membership growth over time helps you monitor what you did at certain points that spiked up new additions.
6. Social media mentions
The number of social media mentions or posts concerning your community show satisfaction with what the community stands for and how useful it is to users. Most times, this might be difficult to track especially as posts can sometimes be made without tagging appropriate handles. However, searching for your product’s name in relation to your community is a good hack to monitor what people are saying about your community. Also how you can improve to make it better for your users.
7. Community Dynamics
Over a set duration of time, you should keep track of the flow of interactions within your community. If it is centred on only one facet of your product beyond that duration without breaching other product offerings or value, then there might be a problem.
8. New Contributors
Keeping an eye on how fast new members start engaging your community is a good way to measure how comfortable they are within your community. It also shows how receptive they would be to using your product.
9. Churn Rate
This metric monitors the number of members that drop off your community over a while. This gives you ample data concerning the inactivity of users within your community. For instance, you can set a period of 1 month and churned users could be those who log off the community. The process towards churning could be inactivity in the community over a span of 2-3 months. That way, you can create strategies to boost re-engagement.
10. Term Frequency
By Identifying what words members attach to your product, you can track customer sentiment toward your product. How they feel about your product either through comments, questions or answers to polls. The words mostly associated with your product give you an understanding of customer communication and how to tailor your marketing comms to address pain points. It also helps you generate relevant content for your audience.
Conclusion
The beauty of online communities lies in their dual nature: they can be an end in themselves, but more importantly, they are a potent tool for achieving growth goals. Active users directly result from user acquisition. Online communities build a user base through various means: connection, authenticity, psychoanalysis of users, collaboration, and more, all aimed at nurturing members into active users of your product. While some may overlook this invaluable resource, you shouldn’t. Every conversation within your community is just a step away from converting and boosting your active user rate.