Community Management, General
Top Challenges to Community Management
Apr 11 2023
Community Management is no easy task. Creating your own community online is a big investment and should be considered carefully. There are two challenges to community management – No Members and Accelerated Growth.
You are excited to launch your community and start inviting everyone to join, but no one accepts. This can be a huge bummer for any company wanting to expand and grow. Additionally, it can result in a waste of time and resources.
Before launching a community, consider if creating a group is right for your business. Ensure you have a clear value proposition for your audience, and consider polling some customers to gauge interest.
Your goal is to turn customers into loyal fans and drive brand advocacy, if you do not have a strategy to do that you will not gain membership or customers.
The second challenge is that a community grows too quickly and has lots of members and participation. This sounds like a GREAT thing, right? The challenge with this is that it can take a lot of resources to manage and moderate to be sure that the group stays impactful. Some online groups rely on 10+ moderators for 10K – 20K participants.
If your strategy does not include a way to manage complaints and compliments, build relationships, or respond to positive/negative feedback, then you could be in trouble of your community bursting.
Be sure that you invest in quality community management resources if your group starts to grow quickly so that you are set up for success.
Think about location! It’s helpful to consider where you want to create your community. For example, some businesses create their community portal on their site, while others create groups on Facebook or LinkedIn to build their community.
Creating a community on your site can be difficult and expensive. The challenge is that you need a good enough value proposition for people to specifically visit your site, log in, and participate.
Using a social network as the basis of your community can be easier to set up. In addition, since people are already on the social network, participating in the community is often easier. The downside is that your community is at the mercy of the social network. For example, if Facebook makes changes to how groups work, your group will be impacted.
Big Idea: Join Communities!
Before even considering creating your own community, start by participating in other communities. You may find that it is easier and more effective to participate in existing communities vs. creating your own.
This based from an excerpt of Krista Neher’s best-selling book, “Digital Marketing That Actually Works”. You can find this and more books at Boot Camp Digital.
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