Have you ever wondered if building an online community would take your business to the next level? You already have a client base and perhaps a membership offering, but you’re craving a way to connect with your community on a deeper level.
Envisioning a personalized digital community is just the beginning. The path to its realization involves research, strategic planning, goal setting, implementation, testing and trials, and significant management. But with commitment and preparation, success is within reach.
Let’s dive in and discover the best platforms, practices, and examples of online communities.
Table of Contents:
Why Create a Gathering Space Online for Your Community?
Let’s face it: Humans need community, whether in person or virtually. The best online communities create connections, keep members up-to-date, help solve problems, and inspire critical insight to empower informed decisions and strategic moves.
Wellness business owners of all types should consider online communities as gathering spaces. Yoga and Meditation teachers, for example, don’t often invite two-way communication during practice; an online community has open forums for discussion outside of class time.
Characteristics and components for a thriving, supportive online community:
- Clear Purpose: Shared, transparent goals and objectives are critical. They inspire engagement and keep members coming back for more.
- Member Participation: Users are inspired to contribute to welcoming, safe communities. The more they engage, the more authentic it feels.
- Vibes & Management: Activity moderation is a must to prevent issues and maintain safety and brand synchronicity.
- Consistent Prompts: Regular discussion between members about events, concepts, challenges, pictures, and videos keeps the community buzzing.
- Accessibility: Users will quickly lose interest if the navigation is confusing. Familiarize yourself with it before you invite others to join.
Types of Online Communities
It’s hard not to be a part of an online community, even just by having social media accounts.
Some of the categories of online communities you have likely encountered:
- Professional: Career development, further education, job opportunities, knowledge exchange, networking, etc.
- Educational: Communication between students and teachers, online courses and classes, study groups, etc.
- Shared Interest: Hobbies, passions, sports, music, movies, books, gaming, etc. Professional Communities:
- Support & Health: Shared experiences through stories, advice, and assistance when dealing with specific issues and challenges.
- Neighbourhood & Community: Local issues, challenges, news, events, businesses, etc.
- Lifestyle: Wellness, fitness, parenting, relationships, travel, dining, design, cooking, etc.
- Campaigns & Causes: Politics, advocacy, environment, social justice, humanitarian, etc.
Want to Start Your Own Community Online?
Building an Online Community
Goal setting is the first and most important step in creating an online community. Like anything else in life and business, it is the foundation for success.
Perhaps your goals include better access to two-way communication with your clients, an avenue to tell students about in-person and on-demand classes, a way to engage every day during a monthly yoga challenge, or a method to supplement your email communication.
Lay the Strategic Foundation
Clear and measurable goals serve as the roadmap for your online community. They not only provide a clear direction but also instill a sense of purpose and motivation, both for you and for your community.
When setting your goals go back to the beginning. Why did you want to have an online community in the first place? What problem was having an online community going to solve?
If you could achieve anything through this online community, what would it be? Don’t be afraid to think big!
Use the SMART method to identify your top three goals.
S: Specific
M: Measurable
A: Achievable
R: Relevant
T: Timely
Discuss, refine, and revisit your goals. Update them based on the actions and observations within your community. Just like yoga, writing goals is a practice. It gets better with time and repetition.
Your target market is a specific group whose values and needs align with the goals and objectives of your niche. They are most likely to engage with your content and inspire others to do the same.
Identifying this group and its values is critical. You also need to determine if your community is transient, for example, a cohort for teacher training or a yoga challenge, or if it’s ongoing, like OfferingTrees’ private Facebook group.
Tasks to complete when laying the strategic foundation for your online community:
- Establish clear and positive community guidelines that serve as a beacon of respect and safety for your users. These guidelines are the first step in creating a secure and respectful environment, ensuring your community is a good fit for them.
- Create a list of your core values. This is the baseline for all interactions with and about your content. The core values help attract the right users and influence their behavior and interactions within your online community.
- Create at least three SMART goals in order of importance. Your goals should reflect the goals of your community to keep your audience hungry and coming back for more.
- Create a concise community mission statement. A guiding principle is your ‘why’ for the online community. Explain your brand and who you are in a short statement or a few sentences.
Choose a Platform
There are two main categories of online communities: public and private. Public virtual communities are accessible to everyone and have millions of users. One of the best features of these platforms is that they are free!
However, drawbacks are plentiful if you’re trying to eliminate distractions and avoid constant advertising, distractions from other accounts, and competition, especially in the wellness world. You also have less control over issues like hacking, impersonation, and algorithms.
Private online communities, typically subscription-based, offer a range of benefits. While the cost for businesses and users can vary, these platforms provide more control over external advertisements, algorithm battles, and competition for your audience’s attention. They also offer enhanced security and advanced data tracking and analytics, making them a valuable investment.
Aside from familiar online community platforms like Facebook and Reddit, you may consider these other three popular platforms:
- Slack: Users connect and collaborate in one space and have access to the same shared and searchable content, including audio, video, and text. It is faster, more efficient, and more secure than email and cuts out social media noise. Slack offers a free version with some limitations or upgrades to paid plans.
- Mighty Networks: This platform is easy to use due to its uncomplicated and helpful visuals. It is recognized for creating and offering excellent online courses, chat groups, events, live streaming, and more. It has both iOS and Android applications and fantastic analytics. It has four pricing options and a 14-day free trial.
- Swarm: Creates an in-person feel by focusing on video exchange between members as well as text and audio. To enhance user experience, Swarm has organized areas for various topics within your community. It has four pricing options and offers a 14-day free trial.
Setup and Design
The setup and design of your online community should represent your brand and feel like an authentic experience. It should have minimal clutter, be visually appealing, easy to use, straightforward and connected to your goals, and well-managed and moderated.
The space should invite members to share ideas and experiences and support each other. Consider space for discussion forums, virtual meetings, mentorship, and sharing, creating a sense of support and safety and inspiring growth and engagement.
Best practices for setting up and design:
- Set communication alerts to respond promptly
- Create an intuitive, user-friendly interface
- Make it visually appealing
- Add clear and visible community guidelines and rules
- Use features that encourage user-generated content and participation
- Make sure you have cross-device responsiveness: mobile, laptop, tablet, IOS and Android applications
- Include features that gather feedback, i.e. comment sections, surveys, votes, etc.
- Make your content searchable and shareable
- Consider personalized features that curate content for members of your community
- Permit your users to share video, audio, images and text
How to Choose an Online Community Platform
When choosing which online platform is best for you, consider the type of online community you are trying to create and your goals. Then, weigh them against the platform’s key features, the size of the community, the budget, and the community management resources available to you.
Most importantly, the platform you choose should allow you to create a safe, positive environment where you have control and your members feel supported and part of something.
Functions/features they should look for in a platform:
- Visually appealing layouts
- Mobile applications
- Branding capabilities
- Live streaming and recordings
- Monetization
- Integration with your website
- Create polls and surveys
- Engages as groups or one-to-one, direct messaging and private or secret groups
- Ability to tag members
- Pin important content
- Search and filter feature
- Analytics and date
- Number of members included in each plan
Examples of Successful Online Communities
Many wellness businesses manage and offer both public and private online communities. The private communities aren’t viewable, but here are three examples of thriving public wellness communities:
- 300 Days of Yoga with Adrienne: Adrienne and her team engage and inspire their members on Facebook with 10 x 30-day challenges over 10 months.
- Wanderingmat: Vikram is a yoga educator and mentor who engages his community on Instagram through questions and thought-provoking posts. He strives to authentically preserve yoga’s roots and make yogic wisdom accessible and relevant to his followers.
- Calm: This app is for meditation, sleep, and relaxation, but it also has a public Instagram community that includes daily inspirations, questions, and free content.
Strategies for Community Engagement and Growth
In this next section, we will explore getting members to join our online communities and, most importantly, inviting friends and keep coming back for more.
Create Valuable Content That Resonates
Make a plan and schedule for content creation and sharing. Stick to it, but be willing to deviate, get creative, and respond to the needs of your members. Consistency is absolutely vital. If your community becomes a content ghost town, motivation to visit, let alone contribute, will dissipate quickly.
The best types of content to share are:
- Relevant and interesting news and resources
- Fresh videos and photos
- Livestream videos and behind-the-scenes content
- Celebration of community member achievements
- Personalized content
- Tutorials
- Blogs and writing
- Manage the community space effectively
The community manager is you, the creator, or someone you hire. They play a critical role within an online community. The best community manager is responsible for curating, growing, moderating, and managing the community. They are always aware of branding and are the bridge between the audience and the content.
Best practices for community management:
- Facilitate, communicate, create engagement
- Mitigate issues, troubleshoot, resolve conflict
- Moderate, provide customer service
- Shut down disrespectful, aggressive communication
- Foster a sense of belonging
- Establish rules of engagement, guidelines, and repercussions
- Enhance customer loyalty
- Set the tone for how the community engages with each other
- Welcome, receive, and use feedback and insights
- Drive business growth
- Constantly analyze and respond to data and analytics
Include Interactive Features
Interactive features help members feel seen, heard, and part of something special. Creating an immersive experience inspires users to spend more time in your community, participate in it, and return for more.
The best online communities include interactive elements that grab attention and make the experience easy and enjoyable. Users are likely to engage whenever an experience feels personalized or relevant, a powerful tool that leaves a lasting impression and creates loyalty.
Impactful ways to interact/interactive features to consider:
- Animations, videos, quizzes, surveys, polls, Q&A sessions and user-generated content
- Videos and images
- Interactive buttons
- Challenges
- Calendars
- Live streaming video and chat groups
- Reviews and testimonials
- Calls-to-action
- Relevant links
Key Metrics to Track
- Active vs dormant community members
- New members acquisition
- Amount of feedback received and implemented
- Time users are spending in your community
- Engagement rate
- Number of discussions
- Number of subgroups created
- Number of community members now paying for offerings and products
- Overall impact this online community is having on your business
Build Your Community and Grow Your Business with OfferingTree
An online community can make your clients feel like they are part of something special and sacred and are valued, seen, and heard as individuals. It can be an incredible avenue to pursue if you need a way to deepen your communication and access to clients authentically and seamlessly. Well-managed online communities are sure to help grow your business and visibility.
In the wellness industry, feeling like a small fish in a big pond can be easy. By now, you should have a clearer picture of how this option could push your business to the next level and help you connect and engage with your clients effectively in a way that converts to more business.
Using OfferingTree’s all-in-one business management software with built-in analytics features, wellness business owners can streamline their operations and make more informed, data-driven decisions about whether or not their online community is supporting their existing efforts and strategies.
This holistic approach empowers you to stay competitive and responsive to your client’s needs, fostering a thriving business environment. Try OfferingTree free for 7 days or watch a demo to learn more.
