7 Reasons Brands Should Invest In Online Communities

Introduction

In the recent past, online communities have outsized the role played by them. The customer support professionals look up to it as a platform where all the innovations, cultural changes, and massive customer engagement take place. Then, there is a troupe of developers, influencers, customers, and volunteers who take part in such communities for meaningful conversations, respect, and belongingness.

As a result:

• Almost 75% of big brands own at least one online community, and
• Almost 1/4th of the entire earth’s population engages in monthly community development.

The 7 prime reasons your brand should invest in online B2B communities are:

1. Online community development supports extensive brand awareness. The emotional marketing value of your brand thus increases, resulting in better reach.
2. Customer engagement in online communities breeds customer loyalty and customer retention. Online communities encourage quick solutions to customer queries. It empowers innovative ideas and does not push the product to the customers.
3. Online communities help in optimizing the SERP ranking. It provides the much-talked-about keywords for attracting the right audience to the website.
4. Suggestions and feedback on online communities influence the buyer’s purchase decision. The opinions shared here are valued as trustworthy.
5. People are content receiving solutions to their queries from participants of the community. As a result, the need for the company’s support staff reduces, thus resulting in reduced support costs.
6. The preferences, expectations, problems, and needs of the public are discussed freely. Such discussions form significant data for improving the brand’s image, product, and services.
7. The fine-tuned online community strategy helps the brands in upselling and cross-selling their products. This results in increased revenue.

Wrapping up

LinkedIn and Facebook “Groups”, Google + “hangouts”, Twitter “hashtags”, Reddit “subreddits”, and Inbound.org “discussions”. These are the trending online community platforms where thousands of brands and their followers play an interactive active role.

But, are you one of those thousand brands?

If not, the time to jump on the bandwagon is now.