There are benefits to running your community strategy through a combination of free and owned communities. You’ll also want some tangible metrics, called Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure how successful you are at reaching your goals.
As your community expands, it might become necessary to increase the resources and strategies dedicated to managing and supporting its members effectively. What’s important when that happens is to have an objective stance and hear out both sides of the disagreement, helping people involved in the process reach a mutually agreeable solution. You can also incorporate gamification elements, such as badges, challenges, contests, or leaderboards, to make engagement more fun and rewarding.
BuddyPress benefits from the larger WordPress community, where users share insights, troubleshooting tips, and solutions. It offers extensive documentation that provides guidance on installation, configuration, and customization. Also, it allows users to engage in discussions and seek help through forums and related online groups. Customer support communities play a crucial role in enhancing customer satisfaction and support. Notable platforms in this category are Zendesk Community and Salesforce Community Cloud, which provide dedicated spaces for users to seek help, share solutions, and provide feedback.
Its email tool (Email Hub) is offered as a paid add-on, with pricing based on your number of contacts—for example, $19 per month for 1,000 contacts. Spaces function as dedicated containers that house various content types in your community such as discussions posts, courses, events, resource library orchat. For those who want to start on a course platform instead of with their own course, Udemy is a good option.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of online education, the importance of community engagement cannot be overstated. Creating an online community has the power to enhance the overall educational experience, foster collaboration, and encourage knowledge sharing. Carefully assess the features offered by each platform, ensuring they align with the specific needs of your community.
Choose a subscription plugin that enables you to create membership tiers and integrates with popular payment gateways. They are more organized than groups because posts can be divided into categories, allowing members to find the information quickly. Gamification encourages member engagement with badges, reputation points, or special status. Below is an example of a Facebook learning community that helps nurse practitioners prepare for certification board exams. That doesn’t monetize the community directly, but you get the idea. I’m highly incentivized to keep the community growing, engaged, valuable.
Today, The Wealth Builders Community has over 1,000 members–all of them people who didn’t grow up with wealth and want to break the generational cycle of poverty. Ashley Fox was in her early 20s when she did the unthinkable; she quit her 6-figure, Wall-Street job to launch her own business. Play with a demo, go through hands-on onboarding with a sales rep, or spend time on the platform to understand what you can do.
Professional Networking Platforms
The forum has six main discussion boards offering help with listings, bookings, general business, and design tips. The community café is where hosts can chat about their hobbies or arrange social meetups. But for us, community engagement isn’t just about looking good— it’s about real value. To make that happen, it’s important to set clear expectations from the beginning. Decide what kind of posts you want to see, and use tools to track engagement. The first step in building a thriving online community is defining its purpose.
However, its native live events features come with serious some limitations of up to 90 minutes for its high end plan. During live events, you can share your screen, enable chat, and even create breakout rooms, making it easy to host interactive sessions. You can also record your sessions which can make good learning materials.
- Similarly, popular content-sharing platforms like Medium allow users to engage in discussions through comments, emphasizing the collaborative nature of content creation within a community context.
- “The more you can align your success metrics with what the business cares about, the better off you’ll be,” she adds.
- This is for creators and organizations who want to monetize their knowledge, run programs, or offer exclusive access.
Start Simple
Either way, it can work as part of your content marketing strategy to attract and engage potential customers, while helping you build an authoritative source of information in your niche. Video platforms like TikTok and YouTube dominate the internet—and it’s easy to see why. Video is the most engaging, versatile form of content out there, and with tech advancing so fast, things like storage and bandwidth aren’t really a problem anymore. Swarm reimagines community with asynchronous video messages and hubs that feel more personal than chat-based spaces. Facebook Group’s make it easy to form a community within a platform your audience already uses.
Circle also allows you to host your community on a custom domain, fully white-label the experience, and even launch branded mobile apps. Podia checks the basics and could work if you just need a simple digital business setup. The interface looks dated, templates are basic, and the entire community feature feels tacked on as an afterthought rather than a core part of the experience. I started by making a list of 30 popular and top rated online community software.
They also offer a calendar for group events, email broadcasts, auto affiliate features for your courses, and even metrics to allow you to see how your business and community are doing. Most businesses will need to pay for the pro plan because they’ll need to retain access to company information and communications. For bloggers and online creators, the free plan may not be suitable if you don’t want your messages to expire after 90 days. Kajabi offers the most features and integrations out of all the platforms on this list because it’s a multi-use platform.
As a result, lead generation and nurturing are faster and easier when you build an engaged community. It’s no secret that the key to long-term and sustainable growth is customer retention. You’ve probably noticed how Beyonce, BTS, and Taylor Swift have hordes of die-hard fans. Get inspired with success stories from customers and businesses just like yours. A user-friendly interface and features like gamification, including badges and leaderboards, further contribute to a satisfying user experience.
“I would recommend having a detailed promotion plan before you launch to ensure you understand how you’ll get folks into your community. If you build it, people won’t just show up, you need to find the right folks, introduce the value to them, and then really double down on building trust with them,” says Sowyrda. Success looks different for every online community, so it’s essential to decide the success metrics to track based on your goals.
Circle gives you a clean, branded community with real-time chat, courses, events, and embeds so it feels native to your site. In this guide, we’ll show you what a community platform actually is, the main types out there, and how Whop stacks up against 22 other options for creators and businesses. Having the same news feed can make your community boring.Try adding some interactive elements for boosting engagement. Implement gamification elements to make the community experience more enjoyable and rewarding.
Like Thinkific, Skool provides you with a place to create a much more interactive learning environment. It also requires considerable server resources in order to function properly, which could become costly for large communities or audiences. It’s still most often used by people in the gaming industry, so others may find that it has a little bit more of a learning curve. Discord also has a pretty high level of customization on the platform so that you can tailor your experience for your needs and preferences.
This will create a challenge and encourage community members to talk about why they chose specific dishes, bringing the whole tribe together. For example, if you’re a cooking community, ask members what their favorite sweet treat is or, if they could only eat one meal for the rest of their lives, what would it be? This is a fantastic way to bring people together and get to know them better. You don’t have to be a cooking community to try your hand at this community activity. Create a dedicated sub-channel or space for users to swap their favorite recipes with each other. You could even theme it, encouraging them to exchange cookie recipes one week and omelet recipes the next.
Use small groups or pairings for discussions, employ written prompts or surveys, and start with light vulnerability activities like sharing a favorite food or color. Onboarding Introductions with a Twist on GroupApp can automate this process and help new members connect. Successful activities have a clear purpose, are designed for peer-to-peer value, maintain low social risk, and produce a visible output. They should also link together for continuity, turning intentions into practice. This process is central to creating a supportive environment where members feel safe to participate and learn.
A community built for everyone is a community built for nobody. Even if your community could apply to almost anyone, pick one clear segment first. When we look at successful communities, it’s notable how many of the Hosts are driven by a compelling personal WHY. Online communities harness the network effect as members direct energy and passion into the community. Hosts direct the conversation and keep everything working, and often moderators as well (many of which are recruited from supermembers).
At this point, you have everything you need to build your own thriving online community. But the knowledge of how to build an online community isn’t the same as just doing it. The more that you listen for the language they use and the things they care about, the better you’ll be able to build an online community around what’s most important to them. For example, Martinus Evans started an Instagram account -@300poundsandrunning – to launch his fitness journey. This means whether you’re looking for a powerful brand community, a side hustle, or something just for fun, online communities are unlike anything else.
The mini-meetings help introduce newbies to existing staff or supervisors. Donut calls are also great for making office friends with a low chance of meeting, for instance, remote colleagues who do not collaborate or interact regularly. Virtual community-building activities and ideas will help transform remote offices into a haven of companionship and belongingness. Over time, this engagement builds loyalty, trust, and shared identity — the true markers of a connected enterprise. Building a successful community isn’t about amassing numbers — it’s about creating a shared sense of purpose, trust, and connection.
Premium memberships that grant access to exclusive features and content increase incentives for active engagement. In addition to giving members a feeling of community, it offers educational resources such as manuals, e-books, tutorials, and online courses to support them in reaching their objectives. Robust technical support is essential for resolving problems and maintaining a community platform’s reliability. The ability to customize enhances a platform’s uniqueness and attractiveness, thus increasing user engagement. Having a community platform allows for enhanced adaptability and control over branding and the user experience. Understanding the goals and Lauradate review purposes of your online community is essential to its development.
It comes with a dedicated Help Center with how-tos, tutorials, and Daily Webinars to help you familiarize yourself with the platform. The Mighty Pro plan allows you to build your own branded, native mobile app. Below are our top 4 choices out of all the platforms mentioned in the article, compared based on pricing and key features.
Ask members to bring unusual flavors to the event, or send them their own. This classic party game is a fun way to break the ice, create funny moments, and bring your community together. Make sure everyone is on camera for this, and ask them to hold up their hands. Each person puts a finger down (or takes a sip of their drink) if they’ve done what the question is asking.
For example, a startup might start with a free option, while a brand may prefer investing in WordPress for greater control. Choosing a platform your members already use or can easily join is key. It’s like meeting them at their favorite coffee shop—it makes everything smoother and more inviting. For example, if your audience is young and mobile-first, an app like Circle might be a perfect fit.
For example, free platforms cost nothing, but you don’t have control of the site. Owned community sites give you maximum authority over web design, but there is a bit of a learning curve as potential members won’t be familiar with them. The community has a welcome video, orienting group members to the platforms.
Many communities find this shared interest group becomes a key asset for customer success and sustained content creation. Online community engagement thrives on rhythm and good community management. Community leaders should post regularly in discussion forums, host live events, and use discussion threads to spark meaningful conversations. Strong content creation and recognizing member contributions make the community experience rewarding and keep members feel connected. In this guide, we’ll share some of the best online community platforms that exist, their key features, and their strengths and drawbacks.