Building and managing an online brand community has its challenges.
While the benefits of building and owning your community are tremendous, building a community does require long-term strategy, consistency and a genuine effort. Like with creating anything else of value, you've got to put your heart into it.
After a lot of interactions with community experts and people managers, a key learning that comes out is that communities must not be looked at as a mere transactional endeavour.
Here are some top challenges and strategies to address them for community builders and managers:
1. Engagement and Participation
- Challenge: Sustaining member engagement over time can be difficult.
- Strategy: Foster a sense of belonging - encourage discussions, host events, and provide exclusive content to keep members interested. This is where finding your community-content fit is crucial, and where distribution becomes key as well.
2. Moderation and Community Guidelines
- Challenge: Balancing freedom of expression with maintaining a positive and respectful environment.
- Strategy: Clearly define community guidelines, actively moderate content, and encourage community members to report inappropriate behavior.
3. Building Trust
- Challenge: Establishing trust among community members.
- Strategy: Be transparent, consistent, and responsive. Address concerns promptly and showcase the community's positive impact on members. It's important for a community manager to be keyed in and to set the narrative.
4. Diversity and Inclusion
- Challenge: Ensuring a diverse and inclusive community.
- Strategy: Actively promote diversity, implement inclusive language, and create a safe space for all members. Encourage discussions that celebrate different perspectives.
5. Technology and Platform Issues
- Challenge: Dealing with technical glitches, platform changes, or data security concerns.
- Strategy: Stay updated on platform changes, have contingency plans for technical issues, and prioritize data security. Choose the right platform to power your community.
6. Content Relevance
- Challenge: Keeping content relevant to the community's interests.
- Strategy: Regularly solicit feedback from members, use analytics to understand content preferences, and adapt your content strategy accordingly. Keeping refining that community-content fit.
7. Scaling Community Management
- Challenge: As the community grows, managing interactions becomes more challenging.
- Strategy: Invest in community management tools, empower experienced community members as moderators, and consider hiring additional staff as needed.
This is where choosing the right platform for your community becomes crucial as well. Does it have moderation features, are you able to add more admins? How easy or hard is the platform making it for you to grow and manage your community?
8. Measuring Community Success
- Challenge: Determining the effectiveness and impact of the community.
- Strategy: Define clear key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with community goals, regularly assess them, and gather feedback from community members to understand their needs and expectations.
9. Monetization without Alienating Members:
- Challenge: Generating revenue without compromising the community experience.
- Strategy: Introduce non-intrusive monetization methods such as premium memberships, subscriptions, (transparently) sponsored content, workshops or exclusive events. Always communicate changes transparently.
10. Adapting to Change:
- Challenge: The online landscape evolves rapidly.
- Strategy: Stay flexible and adapt to changes in technology, member demographics, and industry trends. Continuously seek feedback and be willing to adjust strategies accordingly.
By addressing these challenges proactively and staying attuned to the needs of the community, online brand community builders can create a thriving and sustainable environment for their members - and then challenge it for their collective success.
Share your questions for our community experts in the comments.