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What would your bottom-line look like if your customers increased their spending with your company by 19%?
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Take some time during your busy day to stop and look around.These are historic times when it comes to an organization’s abilities to leverage the online communities it sponsors and the communities it participates in to improve business-level results.The way this is happening is evolving too, just as we have seen in other areas of business.
For some customers, engagement is not the golden ticket that you think it is.Both business professionals and consumers are busier and more frazzled than ever. They don’t have time to engage on your terms. Chances are that your target audience wants help with the task at hand and then wants to move on. How can this bit of information have a significant impact on your business or membership organization?
Is a private online member community worth your organization’s time and investment? At Socious, we are in the process of crunching the numbers for the 2012 State of Online Communities in Associations report (thank you to all of the association executives who participated). We want to share some of the preliminary data with you regarding how private online member communities can impact a membership organization.
The world is going visual! YouTube is the #2 search engine on earth. Pinterest has become the #3 social network based on sharing visuals. And tools like video sharing app, Socialcam, are seeing adoption skyrocket. How can you translate the popularity and comfort of video into your private customer or member community?
Online customer communities, private social networks where customers, partners, and employees are brought together by companies for the success of their customers, are often thought of as the domain of the social media team.
You and your team worked your tails off building an online community and now, only a small percentage of customers or members are using it. Creating and growing a new online community, even if it is built on top of an existing customer base or membership organization, takes a vast amount of planning and community management activity.
With Facebook’s recent acquisition of photo effects and sharing mobile app, Instagram, it is easy to see how one could say that simplicity wins the day in social networking software. Twitter’s meteoric rise and the success of employee collaboration tool, Yammer, are also examples of the power of simple, easy-to-learn social applications with easy-to-use social networks.
As we discussed in our video on understanding the online community lifecycle, there is no “silver bullet” to building a private online community. It takes time, understanding of your audience, and persistent value-added activity. Whether you are engaging customers, members, employees, prospects, or another stakeholder group, building community always includes a series of steps including onboarding, profiling, and nurturing.
According to a multitude of reports, social business growth is only ramping up in 2012 and will continue to increase over the next several years. However, some organizations are debating whether or not to scrap their private online community. This trend is especially prevalent in the association industry where resource-strapped membership organizations set up basic private social networks expecting them to organically sprout into thriving online communities.