Newsletter #96 Building a Community

Created on 28/04/05

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Our last newsletter (30th March, 2005) was "Sex Online".

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According to a study in September last year by ACNielsen, commissioned by eBay, 40% of Americans said they participated in online communities. Sites built around hobbies or personal interests, and health-related issues were among the most popular.

Most of the top sites around the Net have community as the core of what they do. eBay is a natural community and Amazon introduced book reviews by members way back at the dawning of the commercial Internet. According to Jeremy Longhorn of Avenue A | Razorfish "Community is a powerful way to build content, a sense of belonging, emotional connections, and, ultimately, trust."

Most communities in history have been built around people who lived nearby and therefore could work together and get to know other members. Communities online form based on common interest, geography is no longer as important. "We are finding that affinity is quickly replacing proximity as the key driver in forming communities," said Bruce Paul, vice president of ACNielsen.

The idea of building a community on your Website is that it gives your visitors the chance to interact with each other and feel a part of something bigger. "These connections build a network between people and (hopefully) they will like interacting with people with similar interests and so will keep coming back." Jennifer Kyrnin

The ways you can do such community building are many. Things like:

• Bulletin Boards and Online Forums
• Web Based Chat Rooms
• Newsletters
• Calendars

".. new communities are self-policing networks that users turn to for social and professional connections, product/service recommendations, restaurant and travel reviews, and much more." according to Jeremy Lockhorn.

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All this is very well but how can smaller businesses build their own online communities when they don't get enough traffic to their Website to support them? The truth is they can't. But this is where the offline, or real world, comes in.

Sean D'Souza (free membership signup required) at MarketingProfs.com gives the example of Harley Davidson and their HOG (Harley Owners Group) that effectively pulled that company out of the financial mire. He also gives a small business example of Katrina who ".. runs a little dress store in a town that boasts of less than 15,000 residents." Every month Katrina organises a gathering of her clients at a quaint little cafe down the road, where she picks up the tab for coffee and cheesecake. She's building a community, one at a time as friends bring their friends and so on, and very successfully too.

Building a community for most businesses is not necessarily about building fancy online chat rooms or forums - it's about keeping in touch with, and helping your existing clients. Everyone knows (or should do) that real profit is made from repeat or referral business.

How can your company create a customer community that increases loyalty?

1. Host customer events that are fun and allow your customers to mix in a relaxed atmosphere.
2. Continually be on the lookout for ways that you can support and help your customers. For example with tips or articles appropriate to their industry or situation.
3. Create an email discussion group. They’re easy and free using Yahoo! Groups and Topica.com. Both services allow you to moderate discussions.
4. Support your customer evangelists by providing them with extra resources and marketing materials
5. Ensure that your newsletters feature your customer community.
6. Support fan web sites - if you're are lucky enough to have any. Make sure you email the webmasters and ask how you can support them.

So sure build those online systems where you have the customer numbers to support them and keep sending out those email newsletters. Online is important, but it's not the only way to build a community.

Newbies

In many email programs (like Outlook Express), messages are automatically previewed for ease of use ie. you can just click on a message to be able to view it. However many viruses run purely by being previewed. To turn off the preview pane in Outlook Express go 'View', 'Layout' then in 'Preview Pane' deselect the checkbox 'Show preview pane'.

Power Users

Last newsletter we talked about customising the SendTo right click menu in Windows. Now it can be a bit of a pain to add a shortcut to this menu, but how about this? Place a shortcut to the SendTo folder in the SendTo folder. Now if you want to add an item to the SendTo menu, all you need to do is right-click it, and send it there using the SendTo menu! Hopefully that makes sense!

For previous tips visit the Power Hot Tips page.

If you are at all interested in science, NewScientist.com is the ultimate science and technology website. With special in-depth reports and the ability to search over 60,000 articles from the last 15 years of New Scientist print edition and NewScientist.com, it really is a great resource. http://www.newscientist.com/

"The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting." Dave Barry, humorist.

You can see our other Quick Quotes on the front page of www.netinsites.com; just refresh the page to see another one randomly selected from our database. Great for presentations or times when you want to appear to be a techno-dude(ss)!

To access previous newsletters visit our newsletter archive.

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Best wishes

Alex Garden

Internet Strategy | Website Design | Website Promotion | Web Text Messaging | Email Newsletters | Online Sports Games | Content Management