The Guide to Online Community Management
Want to learn more about online community management or what it takes to be a good community manager? Find out here – and learn 5 steps to building your strategy!
Why Have an Online Community?
In today’s world, with most people glued to their screens and devices, it’s hard to believe that people still feel disconnected. But the truth is, our always-on digital environment can feel lonely if we aren’t truly engaging with others. This is particularly true when it comes to relationships between organizations and their members, and brands and their customers.
So where’s the disconnect? Why don’t people feel engaged with the organizations they join and the brands they buy from? Often, it has to do with a lack of community building.
An online community allows people to connect with an organization and other like-minded people who are passionate about the same topics they care about. Community members gain a sense of belonging – they can share experiences and resources and discuss the things that matter to them. And associations and businesses that build online communities meet their members and customers where they already are – online. They can humanize their business and create meaningful relationships with their customers or members, which increases engagement and drives loyalty and retention.
Once you have an online community, though, the next step is to apply strong community management strategies to drive adoption and community engagement.
Let’s dive into!
- What online communities are and how they help associations.
- How online communities and engagement strategies have changed.
- The role of online community managers.
- Tips for creating a winning online community management strategy.
- Measuring your community success.
What is an Online Community and What are its Origins?
In-person communities have existed almost forever – online communities came from that same instinct to connect. Online communities as we know them today really started to grow in the 1990s and early 2000s, as online forums and social networks where a group of people with a shared interest could communicate with each other. As the communities grew, people recognized the need to ensure that they were functioning, safe, and on topic – and the role of community manager was born.
Forward-thinking organizations and brands realized how beneficial online communities could be, and they started building their own branded communities where members, customers, and/or brand advocates could discuss their industry, best practices, and products or ask for help and learn from each other. As other organizations saw the success that communities could bring, online communities caught on more widely.
Today, there are powerful software solutions, like Higher Logic Thrive and Vanilla, built to facilitate your online community, with community features that make it easier to engage people across the entire member or customer lifecycle. Online communities allow organizations to take a many-to-many approach to engage their members and customers – and they allow members, customers, and/or fans to connect directly with each other!
How has Online Community Management Strategy Changed Over the Years?
In short, it hasn’t. Over the past decade, the best practices of successful online community management have remained the same. It takes listening, empathy, and the ability to truly engage people in a positive way.
What has changed, however, are the tools available to for managing your online community – as well as the documentation of how to do it, how to teach it, and how it is valued. As organizations see the value, they dedicate more resources to online community management, see better results, and allow community leaders to apply community in new ways to show us what is truly possible.
Learn more about the differences between forums, communities and other software when it comes features and capabilities for supporting your members and customers.
What is the Role of an Online Community Manager?
An online community manager is the person or team of people responsible for owning your online community – setting the strategy, choosing the right online community platform, training your organization to get involved, building out the experience, and making your community a great destination where people want to engage.
The day-to-day work of online community managers includes setting guidelines for your online community, moderating and encouraging discussions, and fostering online community engagement.
What the actual role looks like depends on the size of the organization, the maturity of the community, and the needs of community members. For example, at smaller companies, your community manager may do everything, while at larger companies, you’ll find community managers doing more strategy, planning, and programming. They can manage moderation teams and work on the overall concept of how community members engage with one another in the community. They may not get into the nitty-gritty of moderating actual discussions.
But every organization needs at least some dedicated community management. Lack of community management is one common reason a community will flounder – lack of active management. Communities need somebody to take care of them. A small community may not need a full-time community manager, but a large organization with a lot of customers, members, or users probably will.
If you don’t have the resources to hire a community manager, consider getting Higher Logic Thrive Services, where our industry experts can help you achieve your goals – fast!
A winning online community management strategy is comprised of many elements. Here’s a breakdown of some of the most critical components to consider.
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1. Choose the right platform
Choose the right online community solution
Before building out an entire strategy, online community managers first need to evaluate which community platform to work with and understand the features they’ll need (both now and in the future). Some organizations start their communities using social media groups, but that’s not ideal for engagement tactics and growth. Others invest in a dedicated online community platform that offers features to help you build a flourishing online community.
That said, not all providers are created equal. As you look at different solutions for your online community, think about:
- Whether the platform you choose lets you customize the look and feel to really make your community your own.
- Whether the platform enables you to moderate discussions, control segmentation, and set user flows.
- Whether the platform supports automation, so your team doesn’t get bogged down with repetitive work – things like email triggers, automation rules,gamification elements like awards/badges.
- Whether the platform seamlessly integrates with your other technology (your marketing platform, job board, mentor and volunteer management, chapter management, submission platform, etc.)
Higher Logic Thrive checks all these boxes. It easily integrates easily with most AMS providers, and offers solutions that are built to work together to create a complete member experience, including Marketing, Jobs, Submissions & Review, Mentoring & Volunteering, and Component Management (and Credentialing, coming soon!).
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2. Create a moderation framework
Create a moderation framework
With your platform in place, your first order of business is to define some ground rules, both for your online community and its moderators. Come up with a set of guidelines or terms & conditions – what’s allowed, what’s not tolerated, and what can members expect from your community?
This ensures everyone joins with a common set of beliefs and it gives you a guidepost for moderation. If any discussions start to go off the rails, you have the tools to steer the conversation without killing your community’s vibe. Make sure to share these guidelines across your organization to ensure that all internal stakeholders know and abide by the rules.
Once your online community is up and running, be firm and consistent with the rules you set. If a member is breaking the rules, make sure to remove inappropriate posts immediately and be respectful when explaining why you removed the post – often, a user doesn’t even realize that they were breaking the rules! And, if a heated discussion gets a little too fiery, remember to de-escalate by confronting problems, not people.
Learn more from our guide, 7 essentials steps for any online community moderation process.
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3. Plan your launch
Plan your launch
As you plan your new online community (or a relaunch) think through how you introduce your online community to current and future members and customers. If you don’t orient your users to the community, and spread the news, you could end up with an empty community.
- Before launch, recruit users to help you work out bugs by beta testing. If you have a group of community ambassadors, customer advocates, or a product advisory board, they’re great options for your beta test group. A small group will give you the best feedback, so aim for 25 people (you may need to invite more, as many might not get back to you). Beta test can provide helpful feedback if you have any gaps in your plan and they often help you recruit new community members after launch.
- Think through the initial launch messagingto raise awareness of the community and get people logging in.
- Make sure you have an onboarding flowto get users familiar with your community and make it part of their routine.
- Plan out your content calendar and posting schedule for at least four weeks so you can always be one step ahead. Ideally, you’ll have your quarter planned out as you move forward, with room to add things in,
- Develop and document your posting cadence/schedule, and seed some contentin advance so that you get the most engagement. Your content repository can help if you hit any unexpected speedbumps in your launch planning.
Once you feel good about your plan, get potential community members excited! Hype up your launch with a series of promotional materials or plan events around the launch to drive signups and logins.
Learn more from the Association of Change Management Professionals on how they launched their community.
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4. Drive engagement
Implement engagement strategies
When your community is up and running, your job as an online community manager is to give members a reason to engage with you and with each other so they’ll keep coming back for more. To do this, make sure you’re properly segmenting users, delivering the right content and information at the right time.
Having a content calendar that covers all your planned resources, events, education, recognition, and interaction is crucial for seeing the bigger picture and planning what’s next. A staffing calendar, meanwhile, can help you ensure all the right people know their responsibilities to keep your online community engaged.
All the while, keep an eye on the data to see which content and topics perform best and worst so that you can adjust your planning accordingly. Don’t be afraid to test out new ideas or formats!
- Consider gamifying the community experience to encourage engagement by rewarding members for taking action (e.g. for their first post or their loyalty).
- Build recurring content ideas like Tip Tuesdays or member spotlights so that members know to come back on those days.
- Create a list of experts at your organization and super users who you know you can always tap for Ask-Me-Anything sessions, answering questions, webinars, and general content creation.
When it comes to the tone, remember to keep it human. Your online community is a way to humanize your brand, not a wasteland for marketing jargon, promotion, or obvious automation robots. The more human your discussions and questions, the more engaged your members will be. They’ll also develop a much deeper relationship with your brand.
Learn more about the Higher Logic Community features that make engaging members easier.
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5. Get other employees involved
Get other employees involved
Your online community management strategy should not live in a silo. It should be part of a wider company strategy to become member- and customer-centric. One part of the community manager’s job is to get employees engaged with your community by providing guidance, training, and support.
Having more of your organization engaged with your branded online community not only spreads the work and responsibilities, but it creates a more engaging experience for your community members, who might be interested in talking directly with people from different teams (e.g. your events team about a conference, your membership team about their member benefits, or the product team who can best explain a new feature).
While some employees might feel a little reluctant to get involved, once they do, they will discover all the ways the online community can make their day-to-day work easier. Employees can gather feedback to improve product development, identify subject matter experts for mentoring programs or event speaking opportunities, test new ideas to inform future communication strategies or content planning, understand how customers really use products, identify loyal members for referral/advocacy programs, and more.
Learn more in our guide to Getting Internal Buy-In for Your Online Community.
Measuring Community Success
One fantastic thing about online communities is that they are rich with data. Use it. Not just for KPIs and reporting (although that’s important, too), but for the big picture stuff like learning about your customers or members, their evolving needs, and how you can best cater to them.
You’ll start to see recurring topics in your community that you can address, or complaints that you can fix. Your community can help steer departments in their planning – from marketing to education to sales to product to support. You can even use your community as a sounding board for new ideas – just ask what they think! This can be particularly useful for content ideas, new feature developments, UI/UX changes in your product, and more.
And when it comes to KPIs to measure the health of your online community, keep an eye on things like new users, logins, digest open rate, number of posts/replies, or connection requests to understand how your community is growing and engaging.
Learn more about what metrics Higher Logic measures and how you compare to your peers by watching our On-Demand webinar, Benchmarks for Success (which explores community, email, and member experience metrics).
Planning for the Future
As your online community management strategy evolves, it will most likely need further refinement and segmentation based on user activity. Your most engaged community members will want (and deserve!) different treatment than those who are brand new to the community or those who only engage sporadically.
You are missing a huge opportunity if you don’t approach your different community personas with different tactics. Do something special with your loyal crew, rewarding them with special offers or experiences and helping them spread the word about your community, and think about ways to nudge others toward more engagement.
A Final Word on Online Community Management
Developing and optimizing your online community management strategy involves a lot of moving parts and people! But once you get it rolling, all the pieces will fall into place, and it will be well worth the effort. When managed well, online communities are the single best way to connect your association or brand with your members or customers. You’ll build deeper relationships and drive results for the people you work with and the people you serve!
Looking for more tips for online community management? Learn from 13 experienced community managers.
This post was originally published June 29, 2021; it has been updated as of June 12, 2024 to reflect our latest resources.
