Is An Online Community A Criteria For Business Growth?

Grace Christos

2 years ago

The continuous growth of social media has lately led to greater access to information and business growth at large, because it contains unlimited forums for customers to express themselves.

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Nowadays, consumers now have the power to explore business and brands before making a decision, and refer others as well, so that at any given moment, someone somewhere is talking about your brand, product or service. Generally, customers have an increasingly more influential voice, especially on social networks, and this has caused most companies to adjust their marketing strategy to align with the continuous growth of social media. Most companies or business organizations now pay more attention to business communication as a business growth strategy, and one of the ways to achieve this easily is by building an online community around their business or brand. Online communities are important to promote positive connections and lead community members to interact with each other, and with the brand/ business meaningfully.

How Online Community Affects Business Growth

Increases Customer Loyalty: Building an online community for your customers creates a positive brand experience for them and increases your differentiation from competitors. This has a way of naturally making your customers feel like part of your brand, therefore, resulting in a special kind of loyalty that is hard to attain by any other means. And the moment a customer becomes a part of your community, they are harder to lure away. The same way people identify themselves with their customers offline, the same effect takes place in the virtual world.

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Increases Website Traffic: In most cases, what is said in the community never stays in the community, as humans tend to share and invite others to be part of your brand community. They will share links to their favourite content or profiles. They will talk about their community experience, naturally creating a buzz. Through this means, a good percentage of your new visitors will stay and join the community themselves, continuing to increase your traffic.
Generate Real Customer Testimonials: Most customers naturally recommend and share positive and negative experiences about your brand and services, and some others conduct thorough research on the internet before making a purchase decision from your brand. This means that your online community serves as an army of evangelists that can convince these customers to purchase your products and even influence their buying decision.
Generate Highly Engaging Content: One of the key elements of business growth, especially on the internet, is user-generated content. Anyone can create content, however, dynamic engaging content gives users a reason to return regularly to your site. The bigger and more active your community is, the more content the members will create.

Building a community around a brand or business mainly brings an advantage in terms of competitiveness, as well as in terms of flexibility, as communities bring valuable feedback from customers to the company. A community allows companies to increase their range of products and services, based on their customers’ needs, as well as to quickly identify changes in consumer behaviour. A community is above all, a group of people connected with their interests or something in common. The stronger a community is, the greater the consistency and relevance of the brand, leading to a greater interest in people wanting to collaborate with it. The main goal in the creation of online communities is to drive or increase the engagement between people/customers and the brand. This means that building an online community around a brand/ company is more relevant than ever, since it helps companies to obtain and maintain their customers. Featured Image Source: Business 2 Community

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