The document provides guidance on building an online community. It defines an online community as a group that communicates and pursues interests over the internet. Reasons to build a community include growing business, increasing brand loyalty, and testing new ideas. Approaches to starting a community include creating your own site or group on an existing platform. Examples are given of successful communities like Etsy, American Express, and iFixit. Tips for community growth include posting engaging content, using social media, networking at events, email marketing, and targeted outreach. Moderating a large community may require hiring a manager. The overall message is that building community takes time but provides business value.

1. Community Building Online
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2. CONTENTS
T A B L E O F
What is an
online community?
3
Why build an online
community?
4 6
How to get started
How to grow your
community
How to keep the
conversation going
25
29
Moderate your growing
community
How start the
conversation
18 22

3. What is an online community?
“An online community is a group of people with common interests
who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc.) to
communicate, work together and pursue their interests over
time.” Jul 7, 2003, Commoncraft.com
From the date of that definition, you can also see they’ve been
around a long time.
The oldest, most active communities are in the gaming world.
Many brands and companies now run their own communities as
they bring value to their brands and bottom line.
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4. Why build an online community?
Great way to grow your business and keep loyal customers and
followers engaged with your brand.
Build an active community and gain value by:
1. upselling existing customers
2. increasing brand awareness and loyalty
3. testing out new ideas with your most loyal brand advocates
4. developing new products with a forum of those who will care
the most about providing insight and feedback
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4

5. Additional reasons:
1. Meeting your traditional marketing goals
2. Connecting with a web-focused audience
3. Beating out the competition
4. Attracting the right customers
5. Lowered customer acquisition costs
6. Increased trust
5

6. How to get started?: 2 Approaches
Create your own community and build up the site
Examples: Etsy.com, Amex – Open Forum, Inbound.org,
iFixit.com, Fantasyfootball.com
Pros: Significantly enhance your brand, fill a niche need that doesn’t exist,
directly relate content to your product or service
Cons: Higher costs, more time and effort to build and manage
Create your own group on a popular site for your industry
Examples: LinkedIn, Slack, Reddit, Facebook groups, Meetup
Pros: Set-up can take a few minutes, little to no start-up costs, leverage users
from an established site
Cons: Less flexibility with design, lower impact on your personal brand,
compete with other established groups on the same sites
6

7. Examples: Building Your Own Community
Companies that have created their own, robust
communities that have greatly impacted their bottom
line and brand equity.
In the next slides we look at a few of the best examples
of these communities.
Each is unique in design and the intended goal for the
company.
7

8. Best in Commerce
Purpose: When your community IS your product or service.
Community is the heart of Etsy’s brand.
From their website: Our mission is to re-imagine commerce in
ways that build a more fulfilling and lasting world.
We are building a human, authentic and community-centric
global and local marketplace. We are committed to using the
power of business to create a better world through our
platform, our members, our employees and the communities
we serve.
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9. 9

10. Best For Small Businesses
Purpose: When loyalty is a core part of your brand.
Amex has long known the value of loyalty marketing.
The goal of Open Forum, from its launch in 2007 was to help one
of their core target markets grow.
Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly, SVP of Partnerships & Business
Development for American Express OPEN, said, "We already
have a large part of the pie so our biggest opportunity is with
small business growth—if they grow, we grow."
10

11. Being
11

12. Best For Inbound Marketers
Purpose: When you are in a niche market without a community.
Two experts in a niche market are better than one.
Founded in 2012 when Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz and
Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot came together to
create a community specifically focused on inbound marketing.
Both Moz and Hubspot make tools for inbound marketing and
marketing analytics, so they were experts in this field.
They’ve used the forum to help others learn from their
expertise and grow loyal followers who also use their tools in
addition to their advice.
12

13. `
13

14. Best DIY Experts
When becoming an expert at fixing EVERYTHING is your main goal.
IFixit worked with their large community to learn how to fix
everything.
Founded in 2003 iFixit sells repair parts and publishes free wiki-
like repair guides for electronics. Founder Kyle Wiens said his goal
was to reduce electronic waste by teaching people to repair their
own gear and offering tools, parts, and a forum to discuss repairs.
Their community has been essential in helping them produce
guides, become experts, and serve their clients better.
14

15. 15

16. Best Interactive Games
When you want your loyal fans to have fun and be more
engaged!
Fantasy Football is a way for fans to participate in live games by
competing with other fans.
“Players” use their own strategy and tactics to participate in live
NFL games against other members who can be in the same
group of friends or in a larger community.
The amount of brand recognition, time spent and revenue for
engaging passionate fans in this way has had a great impact on
the NFL.
16

17. 17

18. How to get the conversation started
Interesting content.
Make sure to post interesting content, topics and ideas. Start a
challenge, ask a question, ask for advice and opinions.
If you are going to post anything that isn’t yours make sure it’s
cited properly.
Original content is good for branding your business and
displaying your expertise.
Remember: this is about the community participating, not just
selling your unique strengths vs your competitors.
Continually test your niche market and see what they
appreciate the most through with KPIs.
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19. 19
KPIs – Key performance indicators
Set goals for your community according to what you want
to achieve.
Make sure it is growing by measuring your performance.
If you are not reaching your goals, determine the cause
and change tactics or strategy.
KPIs are great indicators of the health of your community
and the efforts you are putting into it.
Make sure your goals are achievable and remember,
growth takes time.
On the next slides we go over a list of items you can
choose to measure for your KPIs.
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20. 20
KPIs – Examples of Items to Measure
Engagement
1. Followers
2. Shares
3. Likes, favorites
4. Traffic driven to website from
social or email
5. Brand mentions
6. Subscribers
7. User influence
8. First and return visits
9. Views for pages and content
such as email
Micro conversions
1. Downloads
2. Form completions
3. Watched videos, etc.
4. Advanced segments
Finally, measurements for ROI:
1. Conversions
2. Cost per acquisition
3. Brand equity or getting your
brand known
20

21. Additional Items to Discuss
Solve your customers problems.
Make it clear you care about solving the problems your customers have.
Ask opinions about new products or new features they would like to see.
Gather the feedback and make sure you act on it, this builds trust.
Share interesting and useful info about your company.
Don’t be afraid to be authentic and bring out your personality.
Share ideas and topics that are fun/interesting/useful.
Make the content worth saving, sharing, and revisiting as a resource.
Share causes or initiatives you support that are worth checking out.
21

22. How to grow
Use social media – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
They are extensions of your communities and a way to
increase followers and get the word out.
Additional tips and benefits:
Gain knowledge of the best channels for your distribution.
Target content specifically for success on these channels.
There are many outlets to choose from, but these big three
will maximize your ROI and time spent.
Getting into smaller channels can provide greater niche
market opportunity when done correctly (examples:
Medium, Quora, industry blogs).
22

23. Remember:
Have fun and frame topics in a way that make people take interest:
23

24. Physical Communities Help You Grow Online
Networking and Events
Physically meeting people at events is still very important.
Putting a face to your company is important if you are just
starting out.
It builds trust and can be really effective for reaching your
target audience.
Word of mouth is incredibly powerful marketing.
These questions that can be asked in a simple conversation.
Ask about their problems and you will almost always gain
useful insights.
24

25. How to keep the conversation going
Email Marketing
Use email marketing to update members and keep them
coming back to discussions.
Notify them as new topics come up, in case they aren’t
checking in, they can decide to join the conversation.
Metrics from email marketing allow you to understand in
which topics your community is most interested.
On the next slide we give an example of what your email
metrics could look like.
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26. Example of email metrics in Vbout.com
26

27. Grow Your Community
Targeted Outreach
Design and package your content specially for your target
market by covering the topics they care about and solutions to
their main challenges.
Use your pre-market research and your buyer profiles to
decide on your content and discussions.
Think of what the beginning of a play on a stage looks like. Put
all the right pieces into place. The same goes for your content
and your community building efforts.
27

28. Targeted Outreach
Questions to ask:
1. Who’s out there and active online?
2. Who is worth connecting to offline and how do we meet
them?
3. Who shares similar tastes and interests?
4. Where do they hang out?
5. Who do they hang out with?
6. Who do they follow/respect/admire?
7. What content have they liked in the past?
8. What type of content do they share?
9. What type of content do they ignore?
10. Who is listening to them?
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29. Moderate your growing community
Hire a Community Manager
If everything is set-up and you have a large, growing, active
community, consider hiring a professional community manager to:
1. Relay reports and fix issues like bugs or bad feedback.
2. Respond to community members in a timely fashion.
3. Be the presence of your brand continuously engaging and
moderating conversations as needed.
4. Understand the goals and the community values it shares.
5. Know that you cannot control a community.
6. Let’s the group thrive on its own, but shows that your
company is listening and cares.
29

30. Moderate your growing community
30

31. Get started!
It will take time to build a community so get started right away and be
patient!
You don’t need the community manager now, that is for when you have
a large enough community to need moderation.
You can start simply by posting on social media that your company is at a
meetup event learning about building a community.
Then, decide the main target and purpose for your community and start
posting.
Get the word out, network, invite people, start posting interesting topics,
and keep in touch with e-mail marketing.
31

32. Main takeaway:
Make it known that you care about solving
the problem your customer has.
32

33. Join our community
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