An online community is a place where people of the same interest can talk, discuss and interact with one another about a particular issue or topic is proven to be essential for building brand awareness, especially in this digital age where everything is digitized, and everyone tends to be affected by the things they see and read on the internet. Let’s find out more about online communities and their values.
RELATED: Reason Why You Should Join an Online Community
In This Article:
- What Is an Online Community?
- Different Kind of Online Communities
- Values of Online Communities
Online Communities Can Offer You More Values than You Know
What Is an Online Community?
An online community is a group of people who interact with each other on the internet. A community is a group of individuals working together to accomplish a common interest. An online community differs from a neighborhood in that members communicate via social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ rather than in the common yard. Even in the comments part of blog posts or news items, they express their thoughts and ideas with others.
- Community members chat about the same things they do in real life and gather around a certain topic or product or cause to exchange ideas and provide advice. In many cases, they join online forums since their offline friends don’t have the same interests. As a result, they seek out those who “get it” online.
- More than just a place for people to talk about their hobbies, online communities have evolved into more than just a place for people to share ideas about their interests. There are now dedicated Facebook and YouTube channels for household companies that are solely dedicated to selling things. It’s also functioning.
- Not only that, many other people are creating their niche online communities for different purposes, from connecting people, promoting their brand/service, raising awareness, spreading out a particular message.
However, not everyone is good tech-savvy and great at using the internet or know coding to create their online community. That’s where phpFox comes in; we help businesses across the globe to create one of the most unique and interactive social network/ online communities.
phpFox online community software includes the most powerful social networking capabilities found on the most popular social networks. The phpFox script is ideal for developing niche social networking or online communities with a wide range of social features and extensive management. In addition, the program may be tailored to meet the needs of individual users in terms of functionality.
Different Kind of Online Communities
There are various kinds of different online communities out there that serve different purposes. Here are some of the popular ones.
- Interest Communities
- Social Communities
- Local Communities
- Advocate Communities
- Insight Communities
- Professional Communities
- Support Communities
To learn more about each of these communities, click here:
[Different Kinds of Online Communities]
Values of Online Communities
Online communities offer a variety of different values that help you reach your goals. This include:
Increased Customer Service and Satisfaction
It’s no longer enough to rely just on the quality of your goods, services to attract customers. 61% of customers say they’ve discontinued doing business with a brand because of bad customer service.
In order to counteract this, corporations are using online communities to enhance their customer service. Creating an online community allows customers to connect with your business, ask questions, and learn more about your product. And having your own online community can help you stand out from the rest of the competition. Meaning you will have a higher chance to be the top priority of your customers when they make their buying decisions.
An Incyte Group whitepaper found that 27.3% of customers use online communities dedicated to a product or service while completing research before making a purchase.
Provide Better Data and Insights
Online communities facilitate direct engagement between brands and customers. These lines of contact are also critical for gaining the trust of your consumers. In fact, Microsoft discovered that while 90% of consumers feel they should be able to submit feedback to the business, just 24% say they are given the option to do so frequently or almost always.
Using an online community will allow you to collaborate with your consumers and enhance your product and customer experience. These initiatives have a great ROI as well; according to Bain & Company research, organizations that take consumer input and focus on improving their company from a customer experience aspect produce 4 to 8% more revenue than rivals.
Improved Brand Loyalty and Advocacy
Customer retention and loyalty may be improved via the use of online communities. What’s the big deal? Customers that are satisfied are five times more likely to return to your business, and they are also four times more likely to recommend your brand to their friends and family.
No, these recommendations will not go unnoticed. 83% of customers believe recommendations from their peers, according to Nielsen’s 2015 Global Prefer in Advertising survey; 81% of people trust advice from peers above advice from companies, according to Hubspot.
So if you want to stay relevant and keep up with the competitors, then you had better start considering getting your own niche online community. phpFox has all the tools you need to build an effective online community that speaks values. With various built-in features, highly customizable, our mission is to help community builders and their users do great things together.
We just recently launched the new version of phpFox 4.8.8 with many features and improvements to enhance the user experience even further. CLICK HERE to find out more about it.
Contact us now and let us help you bring your ideal social network to life.
UP NEXT: