Beyond The Numbers: Getting The Most Out of Your Online Community

As digital technology continues to spread and connect the threads in all aspects of our daily lives, small business owners are slowly realizing its untapped potential, especially in consumer marketing. Nowadays, many people are spending more time than ever before browsing the internet, either looking for specific information, random entertainment, or just learning new stuff. Whichever way you look at it, online is the future. Since the pandemic struck, we have seen a lot of SMEs re-engineer their business models through extensive and intensive digital transformation strategies.

For those who boarded the digital train a long time ago, one of the most critical performance metrics has been community numbers. However, today, the conversation has shifted from merely gaining numbers to actively monetizing the online community. Previously, most digital marketers were obsessed with shoring up their social followings. On Twitter, we had follow-trains where social media managers pushed hashtags, soliciting follows from strangers. On Facebook and Instagram, the majority opted to buy followers by boosting the company page through ads.

Over time, they realized that there’s more to community management than just having a large following. At the end of the day, the astronomical numbers didn’t quite translate to business. Further, they noted low to zero engagement after signing up the community members. Of course, it won’t work if people you’ve signed up weren’t really interested either in your company, product, or services. Probably, following your page was a bit of a fluke on their part. But assuming you got your community members through organic ways, built consistently over time, should you stop there and celebrate the milestone? No, not quite. While bolstering your community online will provide you with enviable social proof, you need to go beyond the numbers and engage the community members with the goal of impacting your company’s bottom line. Now, if you have been struggling to sustain the attention of your community members, here are five ideas that you can implement for your business and turn your digital marketing into a runaway success.

1. Hold regular Q & A sessions
Instead of simply posting content every other day, consider holding question and answer sessions for your community members. Currently, almost all social media platforms have introduced live-streaming tools where you can hold real-time conversations with your business fans. On Facebook we have Facebook Rooms, Twitter, we have Twitter Spaces, and Instagram, we have Instagram live. Through the Q & A Sessions, your customers, existing or potential, can get a chance to make general enquiries relating to the business, raise complaints or issues, or even share ideas for product or service improvement. If you are operating a medical clinic, for example, you can organize a Q & A session where community members will ask their most burning questions. Obviously, some will almost certainly convert to billable consultations and treatment opportunities.

2. Run polls
People love sharing their opinions, views, and ideas, whether solicited or unsolicited. Thus, opinion polls are a great way to keep your community members engaged with your brand. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn all have simple, inbuilt polling tools that digital marketing managers can use in running opinion polls on any relevant issue to the community. In all of them, one can vote and still be able to add a comment just underneath the poll, thereby further pushing the conversation and exchanges among participating members. If you are a manufacturer of popular consumer goods, say shoes, for example, you can get to ask your followers to vote on a design approach. Indeed, polls can be excellent in collecting consumer insights that can go a long way in helping you craft responsive marketing or even a clever business strategy.

3. Run contests and reward schemes
Humans, by their very nature, are very competitive. And as a business, you can leverage this innate need to spark engagement levels amongst the members of your online tribe. Depending on the nature of your business, you can organize competitions and reward winners with gift hampers. Using game theory framework, come up with interesting but relatively simple contests that can drive engagements through the roof. The most common one I see is comments with the most likes win. Even so, ensure it is well-designed and thought out. I once saw social media promotional competition for a company offering free high-end leather bags fail because the social standing of their customers couldn’t allow them to participate. They didn’t want to be seen competing for freebies. So, try coming up with fresh gaming approaches while considering the characteristics of your core target audience.

4. Be responsive and act quickly
Social media platforms have now been mainstreamed as customer care service platforms. Gone are the days when enquiries and complaints used to be private. These days, a customer can post their experience, positive or negative, online where everybody will be able to see. People, both within and outside the community, are watching, waiting to see how long it will take for you to respond and what you’ll say when you actually do respond. It may seem benign, but response time matters a lot. Customers prefer buying from businesses that are responsive to their enquiries and act quickly. When the members post their ideas, issues, share feedback, and offer suggestions to improve the community or the product itself, be highly receptive. Ensure that they know you have indeed recorded their concern and swiftly convey that your team is looking into it.

5. Entertain with fun content
Life is already difficult as it is. So, don’t make your online community aloof and straight jacketed with unrelenting promotional content. Instead, infuse a good dose of fun content and put a smile on the faces of your followers. I’m sure you must have seen how KCB Bank and Safaricom, the top two biggest corporates in Kenya, feature banter on their digital content much to the amusement of their customers. Funny videos have the ability to go viral and can provide unprecedented brand visibility in the process. People like sharing interesting things. Organize your creative team to brainstorm on fun content. Tapping into the ongoing social buzz that is relatable and relevant can be a great way to unleash your creative power. Therefore, don’t be boring. Churn out fun content from time to time, even if you are operating a no-nonsense brand. The resulting good feeling will go a long way in strengthening the customer bonds and boosting brand likeability.

Final Thoughts
For a long time, when hiring digital marketers, small business owners have been overly concerned with increasing community numbers just for the sake of it. But the time has come for us to take the discussion beyond the numbers. Attaining a huge number of followers is a great feat that can be used as social proof of how popular your brand is but isn’t an end in itself. Many assume that the community members will just stay on once signed up. But nothing could be further from the truth. Retaining and monetizing your online community fans takes much more effort. There are many companies out there like yours who are also busy luring your fans, and if you don’t do anything, they’ll most likely leave. Hence, deploying the above-suggested tactics can help you sustain engagement whilst constantly renewing interest in your company and its brands.

Stephen Osomba currently serves as the Lead Partner, Communication & Marketing at SMD Consulting Associates where he helps SME clients deliver value by adjusting the solutions to each company's mission, product, strategy, and industry.