One major benefit of online communities to the owner and business is that all the members’ information is available when engaging with others in the group or the content you publish. This information will help you re-work and improve your products and services to keep them interested and buying more.
When you think about this fact, it means that communities are just as important to you as they are to the members who join. It’s simple, the more you know what your audience wants, the better you can deliver a high-quality and valuable product or service to them in the way they want it to be delivered.
Online communities improve your products and services in the following three ways:
Through Specific Feedback and Reviews
Day 3 Increasing Traffic, Subscribers & Customers To Boost Your Bottom Line
Generating various ideas and insights by asking for and receiving feedback and reviews from your community is very effective. If you make it easy for them to leave their thoughts and even reward them for doing so, you can encourage them to provide deep insight that can affect future products and services substantially.
You can take an especially well-written and delightful review and turn it into a blog post, place it on your website sales page, or even turn it into a case study to help encourage more people to buy that product or service.
Through Commonly Asked Questions and Frustrations
Being a part of your community gives your audience a chance to ask questions and even express frustrations. You can do this by using simple Google Forms if you want to or using your own website and another form creator. Just provide the link to the group members and tell them how to submit their questions or frustrations to you.
When you do get the questions in, or the frustrations are expressed, use that information to help each person directly but also use it to design a current blog post with information that solves these problems or directs them as to where they can find a solution if it’s not through your products or services.
Through Education and Member-To-Member Interaction
Each time you provide content that educates your members, always participate in discussing the information you provided. Encourage the member-to-member interaction and discussion by calling out particular experts or members who have already been educated in that regard. And remember, all of the discussions and user-generated content on your membership site, community boards, or groups are yours to use as you will as long as you set up permissions when they joined.
As you grow your community, please take advantage of these options to see how your members feel about your current products or what they are searching for to help solve their problems. These options provide you with more information that can be used to generate even more content. It also gets them engaged and makes them feel like they are valuable and a part of something important.