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. Do you know how they achieve this cult-like loyalty? The answer is community.
It’s not just musicians who achieve this level of customer loyalty. Brands like Apple and Nike maintain their competitive edge by cultivating a strong sense of identity among their customers.
It’s no longer enough to offer competitive pricing or create eye-catching content on social media—many businesses do this. To set yourself apart, you must create deep connections with your customers.
In this article, you will learn how building an online community strengthens customer relationships and drives business growth.
What is an online community?
An online community is a digital space where like-minded people meet to discuss topics of interest, share news, collaborate on projects, or learn from each other. Digital communities revolve around common interests or goals. The point is to cultivate a sense of belonging.
For example, an anime cosplayer may create a private Facebook group for fellow cosplayers to organize events, showcase their transformations, and share tips.
In fact, if you’re on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit, you may already be part of an online community. These social media platforms are one of several digital spaces where like-minded people can connect and create brand communities.
Keep in mind that a community isn’t the same thing as an audience. Here’s how Brandon Hufford, Founder of Growth Sprints and All In community, explains the difference between the two:
I want to punch myself in the face every time somebody conflates “audience” with “community.”
Your “audience” is everybody who buys a ticket to your movie.
Your “community” exists when you can post a random 37 year old picture of Cameron’s father’s garage (from Ferris Bueller) and everybody instantly recognizes where it’s from.
Big difference.
I see so many paid marketing “communities” that give my email to their sponsors (when then SDR me to death – yuck).
That’s audience.
Audience is you helping them.
Community is them helping each other with you in the background.
“Community” is not a marketing function.️
Brendan Hufford
Founder of Growth Sprints and All In community
Types of online communities
You may create different types of online communities depending on your goals, member composition, or hosting website. Here are the common types you’re most likely to encounter:
Event communities
These are communities built around in-person or virtual events such as business conferences, fan conventions, or annual physical activity (think climbing Mt. Everest).
Event communities keep members engaged all year round, fostering continued connections between brands, sponsors, and customers.
Learning communities
These communities focus on learning goals. Instructors build courses around academic, professional, or non-professional pursuits, sharing their knowledge and skills with enrolled students.
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These communities typically meet on online learning platforms that facilitate social learning and peer-to-peer support.
Content communities
These communities help content creators share creative works and build engaged audiences. Members engage with each other’s content through likes and comments.
Online forums
These communities interact through message boards, where users discuss various topics by posting and responding to conversation threads. These conversations don’t occur in real-time and can last months or years as users contribute to the dialogue.
Online brand community
These communities center around a company or individual. Members include employees, customers, and partners sharing knowledge, feedback, and more.
Benefits of an online community
If you’re looking for a reason to build an online community, here are five:
1. Boosts engagement
Building online communities creates a two-way conversation between brands and target audiences. Engagement tactics like polls, Q&A sessions, and gamification encourage customers to participate and interact with the business and other users.
2. Brand awareness
Community members advocate for your brand through word-of-mouth marketing, increasing your online visibility to potential customers and generating high-quality leads through referrals. Moreover, Google indexes user-generated content from public communities, allowing your brand to appear in search results.
3. Builds trust
The key to building trust is open and transparent communication. When you build a community online, you give customers space to express their opinions, share ideas, make recommendations, and report problems.
That shows them that the brand is open to feedback, making them feel valued and increasing brand loyalty.
4. Increases revenue
Community members tend to recommend products and services to people like them, i.e., qualified leads. As a result, lead generation and nurturing are faster and easier when you build an engaged community.
Referred customers are also more loyal than non-referred customers, increasing your customer lifetime value (CLV) rates.
Furthermore, building online communities reduces customer support costs since members help each other find solutions to problems.
5. Real-time feedback
Community member engagement can help you discover issues with your product much faster. You can also use your community to test new product features and fine-tune them before they’re released to the general public.
Moreover, it’s easier to notice trends within the customer base when you have an active community. These trends can inform your product roadmap and decision-making.
10 steps to build an online community
Turning your customer base into a close-knit community is easier said than done. Several factors must be considered.
For instance, is your goal to improve customer retention or create brand awareness? Should you host your community on a social media platform or build a dedicated platform? Will the community be self-sustaining or managed by the business?
Let’s explore step-by-step how to build an online community.
1. Define your community’s purpose and goal
The first step in building an online community is defining its purpose. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve and how members benefit from participating.
Your goals will determine the type of community you create, its members, your content strategy, and how the community will run.
Let’s say you want to increase customer engagement with a particular feature. You would lead community discussions to raise awareness of the feature and encourage customers to use it.
Contrast that to a customer support goal where customers lead discussions, and your role is reactionary.
Common business goals for community building include:
- Building brand or product awareness
- Promoting customer engagement
- Providing customer support
- Feedback collection
- Networking
- Preventing customer attrition
Once you’ve outlined your goals, you can set appropriate metrics to track them. So, if your business goal is building product awareness, you would track product mentions, traffic to product pages, and product search volume.
These aren’t the only measures you should implement. You also need to track your community’s effectiveness. Metrics for user growth (total users, new users, and churn rates) and user engagement (number of likes, comments, and inactive members) are crucial to monitor.
Furthermore, certain key performance indicators will be specific to the community. For instance, online course creators will also consider completion rates and student scores.
Setting goals ensures you’re not wasting time and resources on objectives that don’t benefit the business or meet your customers’ needs. Without a clear objective, members won’t understand the community’s purpose, and it will die a slow death.
Having a clear objective also helps you stay motivated and in for the long ride. Here’s what Jimmy Daly, the Cofounder and CEO of Superpath says about this:
You can literally start a Slack community in like two clicks and zero dollars. It’s very easy to do.
I think many people get a quick dopamine hit from doing that and then realize relatively quickly that for the community to be actually good you have to continue to facilitate it every single day.
And to continue doing that part, the day-to-day of it, you have to have the incentive.
In my case, that incentive is that the community is part of a greater business model. We monetize the community in two different ways. One is through a paid membership, another is through sponsorships.
We also have other parts of the business which do overlap with the community.
We have the marketplace where we pair freelance content marketers with companies who need freelance content help. And we source all of those people from the community.
That doesn’t monetize the community directly, but you get the idea. I’m highly incentivized to keep the community growing, engaged, valuable. I want it to be a nice place to hang out.
Jimmy Daly
Cofounder and CEO of Superpath
2. Identify the target audience
In conjunction with outlining community-building goals, you must identify your target audience. You should be clear on who the community is for and how they benefit from participating.
Only some customers will be community members. Depending on your goals, your community may consist of a specific customer segment.
Here’s an example:
Lego Ideas is a product development community. The purpose of the community is to support the product development department. Therefore, members are made up of enthusiasts who participate in challenges, showcase their builds, and submit ideas for the next Lego product.
Creating an ideal member profile will help you understand their values, preferences, pain points, and motivations, enabling you to create quality content and desirable community features.
Let’s say you’re creating a community for urban farmers. Knowing where members live and what plants they grow allows you to curate relevant content, from species-growing tips to vendor recommendations. For example, growing tips for Norwegian urban farmers will be different for those in South Africa due to varied climate conditions.
3. Choose a community hosting platform
Defining your target audience doesn’t only enable you to create appealing content and features. It helps identify the right platform on which to build an online community. Ideally, these are the channels your customers frequent, like your website or social media pages.
A leading factor when considering which online platform to choose is the platform itself. These platforms fall into two categories: Free and owned.
Free community platforms include social media websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit.
Below is an example of a Facebook learning community that helps nurse practitioners prepare for certification board exams.
Free platforms, like Facebook groups, are borrowed spaces. That means you have no control over the look and feel of the community. You must comply with the terms of service and compete with other content. Moreover, there’s nothing you can do if the site goes down.
Paid community platforms include Slack, Skool, Mighty Networks, Circle, and more. You can also build a community website. Owned or branded platforms operate under the business’ domain name.
Unlike social media platforms, you have control over the look and feel of your community, ensuring a consistent brand experience. Best of all, you don’t have to compete with other content for your customers’ attention.
Additionally, you can guarantee exclusivity or monetize the community using membership features like member logins and invitations.
Another factor that influences platform choice is community engagement. You want a community site that supports the preferred engagement style of your customers. For instance, a real-time communication app like Slack would be ideal for members who need answers quickly.
4. Select community stakeholders
For your online community to remain successful after the initial excitement of the launch, you need the cooperation of internal stakeholders. These stakeholders fall into two groups: those who will manage the community and those who will gain from it.
The first group includes the community manager and customer support. The community manager oversees the running of the community, and customer support helps answer technical or service questions.
The second group includes the sales, marketing, and product development departments. These groups promote within the community and gather valuable feedback to improve their processes.
The sales team announces promotions, the marketing team collects emails from newsletters, and the product team shares updates and asks for product feedback.
5. Build a community engagement plan
Engagement is a vital part of a vibrant community. The more engaged your community is, the higher the chances of meeting your business goals. The community engagement plan outlines strategies and tools to help you foster active member participation.
Once again, we asked Brendan Hufford to share his community engagement strategies:
My community playbook:
- Checking in with members who haven’t been active
- Following up with members who are working on something cool
- Connecting members that have things in common and could help each other
- Welcoming new members to the community
- Weekly wrap up emails
- Getting guests and coordinating Monthly AMAs
- Quarterly ‘Demo Day’
- Members of the month + gifting
The goal is to keep finding ways for them to add value for eachother.
You’re the guide, not the main character. This should be true in all marketing, but holy crap if I haven’t seen an AWFUL rise in communities where every post is asking people to comment for access to a freebie/product, or constant self-promotional webinars, or whatever.
Those communities never grow, or only grow through paid acquisition, because why would you ever invite your friends to a pitch-fest?
Brendan Hufford
Founder of Growth Sprints and All In community
If you’re unsure how to keep your members active and engaged, here are a few ideas to get you started.
Start a discussion
Asking questions on trending topics is a great way to spark discussion and encourage interaction.
It can work the other way around, with members asking the questions. Regular ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions offer businesses an excellent opportunity to touch base with their customers and identify topics of interest or gaps in information. It also turns customers from passive audiences to active community members with user-generated content.
Post polls and quizzes
Fun content like this Chronotype quiz posted in Atlassian’s community increases community participation and communication, driving engagement.
Incentivize member contributions
Gamification encourages member engagement with badges, reputation points, or special status. The more they participate, the higher they rank. Be sure to offer perks to ensure continued participation.
Apple’s support community incentivizes member contributions with reputational points. Users earn points by correctly answering questions and sharing technical expertise. As you accumulate points, your user status rises, making you eligible for privileges like customer avatars and MVP meetups.
You could take this idea even further and recruit community contributors. Alina Moskalova, the Slack Community Manager for Digital Olympus, shares how they’ve gone about this when setting up their DO community:
We get how important first impressions are, which is why we’ve taken a different approach: we’ve invited a select few people to be our community contributors.
There are about ten of them, and they play a big role in keeping the community active and engaged. Their involvement helps new members see that our community is lively and growing.
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.
For example, we use Slack Analytics to monitor how many posts are happening in public channels. That way, we can make sure the activity is steady and matches our community goals. This approach keeps things engaging and sets the stage for real growth and interaction
Alina Moskalova
Slack Community Manager at Digital Olympus
Create themed content
Themes keep your community focused on relevant topics and give them ideas on what to post.
Here’s an example from an online writing community.
Members write and share stories based on given prompts and guidelines.
Create cohort-based groups
Cohorts facilitate accountability by emphasizing partnerships and networking between members. It works well in learning communities where members go through online courses together. It provides an interactive learning experience, resulting in higher course completion rates.
6. Set up your community
You can use two structures to build a community online: forums and groups.
Forums host discussion-driven content. They are more organized than groups because posts can be divided into categories, allowing members to find the information quickly. Reddit is an example of a forum.
Below is an example of an owned community forum for model train owners and enthusiasts.
Members post about brands, repairs, storage, and reviews on conversation threads.
Groups host multi-media content that appears on a feed. There are no categories. So, members find content using hashtags. An example of a group community is Facebook or LinkedIn.
This community group’s layout is familiar to us. Members scroll through the feed to see new posts and messages.
Your community’s structure will differ depending on the type of platform you choose. On social platforms, you’re limited to the app’s format. If you build your brand community website, you can structure the community however you want.
Either way, there are steps you need to take when setting up your community.
- Incorporate branding standards – logos, brand colors, fonts, and images.
- Create initial categories or group topics to get the conversion started.
- Define community roles such as moderators, super users, new users, etc.
- Assign permissions or restrictions to community roles.
- Review sign-up processes. The easier it is, the more likely people will sign up.
- Enable features or tools like user profiles, messaging/chat, content sharing, etc.
- Implement gamification to increase engagement.
- Set up welcome messages and onboarding content.
There is an additional step if you’re going to monetize your community website.
Monetizing owned communities is straightforward. Choose a subscription plugin that enables you to create membership tiers and integrates with popular payment gateways.
An indirect route is required if your community lives on social media. You have to use funding platforms like Patreon, where you can gatekeep exclusive content.
Note that members aren’t only paying to access your content. They’re paying for exclusivity, such as bonus or early-release content. You must think about what added value you can offer to justify the charge. For example, if you’re a spiritual coach, you can give paying community members one-on-one guided meditations.
Test every element of your community space before you launch to ensure it’s working as it should before proceeding to the next step.
7. Begin a soft launch
The purpose of a soft launch is to preview your community to a select audience before opening it to your entire customer base or the general public. Think of it as a test run or dress rehearsal. It also allows moderators to become comfortable with the platform and their roles.
There are two types of soft launches:
- Internal soft launch – available to employees
- Public soft launch – available to targeted customer segments
A soft launch is a great way to validate your idea. What you think is a good concept could be a complete dud. You need input from staff, friends, and family members to see how others perceive your community and refine any rough edges.
You can collect feedback surveys, focusing questions on the user’s experience. For example, you could ask how the community helps solve a problem, whether their expectations have been met, what features they would like added, and more.
These questions will help you understand what customers expect from online communities.
8. Invite members to join your community
Your community launch is like a welcome party. No one’s going to come if they don’t know about it. So, you should send out invitations detailing the what, where, and when.
Generate excitement through social media posts, marketing newsletters, and blog posts. Tell customers when the community goes live and what they benefit from joining.
Pipedrive launched its sales community through the above blog post.
Joining online communities can be intimidating for new users. Onboarding is an opportunity to foster a sense of belonging and instill community values from the get-go. You can do this with emails, videos, or guided tours of your community.
Whichever way you choose to onboard new online community members, be sure your process includes the following:
- Formal welcome to the group
- Tutorial of community tools and resources
- Calls to action that encourage members to introduce themselves in the group
- Community Guidelines
Welcoming group members and sharing community guidelines sets the tone for how the community will operate.
9. Moderate and manage your community
Your online community is part of your corporate or personal brand. It should be an inclusive and safe space, and that starts with community rules.
Community guidelines are essential to maintaining a welcoming and cohesive environment. They should highlight community expectations and consequences in case of violations.
Lattice is an HR community on Slack. The code of conduct outlines expected behaviors, including respectful language, no unsolicited marketing, confidentiality, and active participation. The guidelines include a legal disclaimer and the course of action for community violations.
Clear terms and conditions and effective moderating practices prevent community platforms from becoming hostile spaces. They ensure productive conversations and maintain a positive and consistent community experience.
In addition to community guidelines, you need community moderators. They welcome new members, facilitate engagement, monitor user-generated content, and enforce codes of conduct.
You can assign moderator or administrator status to members of your community (loyal customers or super users). However, choose carefully. Moderators can make or break your community. You must select individuals who are proactive, passionate about your brand, knowledgeable, and have good interpersonal skills.
It’s also important that your community guidelines are available to everyone and if bad behavior ever happens your moderators do act on this. Jimmy Daly says that it’s one of the most important things that needs to happen if you want your community to work:
This hardly ever comes up, but occasionally, there will be some bad behavior in the Slack group. It’s very important that we act swiftly to keep that kind of behavior out.
We have community guidelines that outline how we want people to behave in this group. That means being kind, being respectful, and never putting others down. Any type of racism, sexism, etc., is absolutely off-limits. We don’t want that in this group.
As I mentioned, it doesn’t come up often, but it has happened. And when it does, we make a point of addressing it seriously.
We make sure to ban those individuals, we announce it to the group, and we explain what we did, why we did it, and how it aligns with our community guidelines.
I think it’s very important for people to see the moderators actively enforcing the values they’ve set and expect others to follow.
That sends a strong signal to the community that the people running it genuinely care. They care about maintaining an inclusive, feel-good space to hang out.
The community only works if people are willing to be somewhat vulnerable. That can’t happen in a hostile environment, so we work hard to keep it a laid-back, respectful, and open place.
Jimmy Daly
Cofounder and CEO of Superpath
10. Grow your online community
Once you’ve created your community, you should promote it. It can’t grow if people don’t know it exists.
Your website is a great place to advertise your community.
Ahrefs promotes its private Facebook community on its homepage. You can also use website banners and pop-ups.
We’ve mentioned social media and email newsletters for the community launch. Other marketing channels include:
- product onboarding for new customers
- chatbots for existing customers
- gamify referrals
- partnering with influencers
Don’t shy away from paid advertising initiatives like PPC or social ads if your budget can manage it. These campaigns can be expensive, but they generate twice the traffic of SEO content. They are also an effective way to get traction for your community.
Be sure to track your marketing campaigns. Otherwise, you won’t know where the traffic comes from and which content performs best.
Examples of online communities
Looking for examples to model your own community after? Here are three.
Trip Advisor
Tripadvisor is an online travel planning service that helps millions of travelers plan trips. You can find accommodation deals, book experiences, and reserve tables at the restaurants.
Its online community – Tripadvisor Forums – offers members a space to share and learn from each other travel experiences. You can search discussions based on destinations or themes such as honeymoons, adventure, or solo travel. You can also use the search bar to personalize your search.
Anyone can view the posts on any forum. However, you must sign up for a free account to post or comment.
Airbnb
Airbnb is an online marketplace for short or long-term homestays. The platform’s community center is where hosts gather to share tips and swap stories. Hosts connect with other community members through conversation threads or in-person meetups.
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. The host circle is exclusive to hosts. So, you must sign up to access content there.
The community also provides customer support and a resource database to help hosts meet their goals.
Visa
Visa Developer delivers effective payment solutions to businesses through application program interfaces (APIs). Its online community forum connects developers and helps them troubleshoot solutions.
The community has a welcome video, orienting group members to the platforms. The five primary message boards are on the home page. They include the beginner’s forum, where new members can find conversations to get started with Visa APIs, and the troubleshooting board, with tips and tricks for writing or debugging code.
You must sign up to ask or answer questions. The more answers you give, the higher you rise in the ranks.
The community also provides blogs, tutorials, and webinars. Best of all, community members have a direct line of communication with the Visa Developer team.
Online community FAQs
1. Why is building an online community important?
Building an online community is important because it improves customers’ experiences, leading to brand loyalty, customer retention, and sustainable growth.
2. How do I build community engagement?
There are several ways you can build engagement in your online community. They include asking for feedback, creating polls, organizing virtual events, and incorporating gamification. However, it all starts with an environment where members interact freely.
3. What types of community platforms are there?
Community platforms fall into two categories – Free and owned. Free platforms include social media websites like Reddit, where users create community pages. Owned platforms operate under your business’ domain name.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages. 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.
4. Do I need a community manager?
While an autonomous online community is ideal, you need managers or moderators to create an inclusive and safe online environment. They welcome new members, encourage discussions, monitor or create content, and enforce codes of conduct.
In closing
Learning how to build an online community is invaluable, whether you’re an eCommerce business owner, online course creator, or Fortune 500 company. Online communities help create meaningful relationships, driving customer satisfaction. When customers are happy, they’re loyal. And when they are loyal, they help increase revenue.
However, launching an online forum or social media community page doesn’t mean you have a community. We outlined ten fundamental steps to building a successful online community. If you take away anything from this article, let it be these:
First, you must be clear on why you’re creating the community, and for whom. Answering these two questions ensures you choose the correct strategies to achieve your goals, including which platform to use and what content to share. Second, engage! Community is all about engagement. Meaningful interactions drive customer satisfaction, customer retention, and customer loyalty.
Turning your customer base into an engaged community of active members takes time and effort, but the result is a dedicated group of brand ambassadors.