If you are looking to join or build your own online community, you may find yourself overwhelmed with all of the different avenues available to you.
Instead of allowing yourself to be overcome by all of the online communities with no idea of how to discern one from the other, get to know the top three most important characteristics of a successful online community.
Only then, should you find and/or build an engaged and scalable online community.
Characteristic #1 : Excellent Content
The first vital characteristic of a successful online community is one that has excellent, relevant content.
Without providing the members of an online community, your audience, with consistently high-quality content, the community is dead in the water.
Be sure that when you’re creating an online community, have relevant, value-added content and update regularly.
For example, if your business deals with skincare, then you will want to regularly add content about new products and procedures that can help your community members keep up with the latest developments and changes in the industry.
You also need your content to flow, and have proper grammar and formatting to be taken seriously.
Characteristic #2 : Group Members Who Actually Care and Participate
Of course, high-quality content alone is not enough to make an online community successful.
You need community members who are able and willing to engage with that content, ask questions, and even post and promote their own content.
Your community members need to be passionate about the topic that the community is based on. If they are not active and passionate in the community, then you will not have the collaboration and discussions that you want from your online community.
There are a few ways you can ensure this. When people join your online community, you can have them fill out a type of application so that you have community members who are truly interested in the subject matter and who want to participate and be a part of it.
Why?
Because online communities are one of your best opportunities for membership and customer engagement.
Characteristic #3 : Content Variety and Community Features Will Make the Difference
You don’t want your online community to fall into the ranks of all of the white noise on the internet.
As such, you want to keep your content style fresh and unique. This means you cannot just post blog posts with bulleted lists every time you add content.
Instead, try varying your content with audio, videos, images, and charts and graphs to keep everything interesting and visually stimulating.
Additionally, offering unique community features for your online community can help bolster membership and success. Features such as badges and points for contributions can help encourage participation and improve engagement for any online community.
Now that you know the three most important characteristics of a successful online community, you can be sure that any community you join or create has these features and you get the best online community experience possible.
What are the important characteristics that you look for in an online community?
Let me know in the comments section below.