15 Essential Tips for an Active Social Community
10. MAKE IT SEO-FRIENDLY
Another way to ensure that the online community gets traffic is to put it directly in customers’ paths. Organizations can do this with a widget that links to the community when customers are on the company Web site or FAQ page looking for technical support or product information.
This applies equally to customers—or potential customers—who haven’t quite made it to the company Web site yet. Another way to attract people to online communities is to make sure Google and other search engines index members’ posts.
When communities are very active, however, and a lot of content is flowing in at all hours of the day and night, companies might not have the time or personnel resources to tag and attach the proper keywords and other metadata to every single article. It might help, therefore, to educate the most frequent contributors on basic elements that impact SEO rankings, calling special attention to desired keywords, brand and product names, headlines, subheads, and bulleted lists. By doing so, companies can build an elite group of content producers and optimizers.
11. SHARE THE LOVE
Optimizing content is only part of the battle, though. Because social sharing and incoming links can significantly affect how well online content performs in search engine listings, experts also suggest rewarding community members not only for their original posts but also for commenting on, linking to, sharing, rating, and liking other members’ content. After all, an article with 100 “likes” and 200 retweets will do much better on Google than content that isn’t shared as much.
12. DISCOURAGE DUPLICATION
Conversely, a surefire way to sabotage an online community is to duplicate content that is already available elsewhere. Not only does this compromise SEO efforts, but it could render a site obsolete very quickly.
In very extreme cases, where a lot of the same content is available elsewhere, it might not even make sense to launch an online community at all. “To reduce the risk, find out if there are other communities that you can tap into,” Wollan says. “It’s a lot easier [to work within an existing community] than creating your own community or forum from scratch.”
13. INFLUENCE, DON’T CONTROL
And then, the community needs to be adequately staffed from within the company. Leader Networks found that the overwhelming majority (92 percent) of businesses with successful online communities have at least one dedicated community manager on staff.
Having employees moderate the community is fine, but these employees need to be careful not to take over the conversations. It’s OK to provide content from time to time, but the ideal situation is for community members to do most of the work. That might make some company executives a little uneasy, fearing that their companies could easily lose control over their communities and what is posted within them.
“You need to recognize that [community leaders] will use social media whether you help them or not,” Wollan says. “You can’t control these folks. As soon as you think you can, you run the risk of undermining them in the community.”
A better strategy, he suggests, would be to “enhance them behind the scenes to make them look smarter within the community.”
14. MAINTAIN RESPONSIBILITY
DiMauro emphasizes that no matter how much control is handed over to certain members of the community, ultimate responsibility has to sit firmly on the shoulders of the company whose brand it bears. “At the end of the day, the community is owned by the company that sponsors it, and it is their responsibility to ensure that it serves its customers and partners well,” she says.
15. ALIGN WITH THE ORGANIZATION
Once the decision has been made to launch a community, and the site starts getting traffic, it remains vitally important that all the effort continues to be aligned with the rest of the business as well, according to experts. It is crucial that any support community is tied to other, more traditional customer support channels, DiMauro says, noting that community managers might not have the needed customer service skills, while contact center managers might lack the equivalent skills for running an online community. “However, when they work in partnership, share best practices regarding their respective disciplines, and support each other, world-class support communities can be created,” she says.
Senior News Editor Leonard Klie can be reached at lklie@infotoday.com.