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David, Author at Six Circles

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Posted by David in Blog Posts

what is an online community?

We’ve all heard of ‘virtual communities’… it seems to be the talk of social media in 2023. But what is it about communities that has everyone so hooked? it’s more than just an online trend, It’s a sense of belonging. A space for your members to feel welcomed by like-minded people, share their thoughts and collaborate on projects without any judgement. More importantly, the opportunities that having an online community can create for a business are unmatched by traditional methods. If you’ve ever considered turning your following or client base into a community… Now is definitely the time to do it.

So let’s start with the obvious; does it require a large team of people or a large budget? – The answer is quite simple…No! An online community is typically (but not always) led by one person who wishes to share their interests or beliefs with others who feel the same. Quite often a community starts out as a free resource, built on social media websites like Facebook or LinkedIn, though these tend to have limitations and can affect your success. The individual in charge manages the group and is often the sole content creator and engages with their audience on a daily basis.

A lot of people have similar questions when it comes to building a community, ‘will it work for my industry?’. There are no limits to whom can benefit from having an online community. Whether you’re an online coach, a fitness instructor, a charity, a business association, a sports club or in the education sector, the key is to identify the interest within your sector and acknowledge if they would benefit from connecting with like-minded people. Your audience finds value in both connecting with industry leaders and fellow members. It’s the ability to develop and nurture personal relationships that separate your followers to members of your community.

Types Of Communities 🔥 

Virtual communities come in many shapes and sizes. Below are some popular examples of the different types of communities…

Fan-based communities: These communities are based around shared hobbies, passions, or activities. Examples include communities centered around photography, gaming, cooking, sports, music, or any other specific interest.

Professional communities: These allow the collaboration of industries and professions. They encourage networking, knowledge-sharing, and partnerships between professionals. Some examples include communities for marketing, software developers, entrepreneurs, or health care professionals.

Support communities: Providing a supportive environment for individuals facing similar challenges, such as health conditions, mental health issues, parenting, or bereavement. They offer a safe space for sharing experiences, seeking advice, and finding emotional support.

Educational communities: These communities focus on learning and education. They can be online forums, discussion boards, or platforms that facilitate knowledge exchange, online courses, and peer-to-peer learning.

Coaching Communities: The number of personal trainers and others offering a variation of life coaching taking their communities online has surged. These communities allow for personal growth through 1-1 contact.

Action Communities: Communities like this usually have a particular cause behind them. Their purpose is to act, examples would be animal rights and environmental activists.

The Benefits ⚡️ 

Creating a private online community can have a wide range of benefits, not only for a business but for all parties involved. Here are a select few of the benefits:

Global Reach: Building an online community eliminates the restrictions of geographical boundaries. The beauty of existing online means that your community is available to anyone around the world.

Personal Relationships: The ability to connect with members allows you to create genuine relationships often building trust within your community. Although formed online – these relationships are often known to last years.

Knowledge: An online community is a platform for individuals to share their knowledge, experience, and expertise. It’s a great tool to learn new tips and advice on niche specific topics or industries.

Support & Motivation: Communities often serve as a source of support and motivation. Whether it’s overcoming challenges, pursuing personal goals, or seeking advice, online communities provide a space where individuals can find encouragement and empathy from others who share their interests or experiences.

Monetisation: We’re always looking for new revenue streams for our business and building an online community is a brilliant way of driving income. Monetising memberships and charging a small fee to join a niche specific community is an excellent revenue tool.

Mobility: With the ability to transform your online community into an app, accessing your community content has never been easier. Not only can you manage your community on the go, from any device – your audience can also access your content from anywhere, anytime.

The Downside ☔️ 

Like everything in life, online communities have their drawbacks too. On the plus side, the few disadvantages that come with building a community are almost always outweighed by the good!

Budget: Building a private community is an additional cost.

Time Consuming: Managing a community and helping it thrive requires a lot of time, planning and dedication.

Possible Loss of Data: These concerns are more prominent when using free resources like Facebook Groups or other social media sites. But being hacked and having data stolen is a possibility.

Privacy Concerns: Members need to trust that their personal information and conversations will remain confidential within the community. Any breach of privacy can have significant consequences and erode trust among members.

Businesses + Communities 🤝 

This year has seen a significant rise in the number of businesses building communities. A virtual community can offer businesses a valuable source of authentic feedback. Numerous businesses leverage their online communities as a platform for gathering opinions. They present exclusive previews of new products to community members and then adapt to the suggested changes before launching the product to the broader market. In this instance, the online community functions as a substantial focus group.

In addition, the virtual community not only serves as a focus group for product feedback, but also provides businesses with an avenue for further market research. By engaging with community members in discussions and participating in polls, companies can gather insights and relevant statistics on current market trends, customer preferences and the consumer needs. This real time access to customer feedback allows a business to stay relevant and adapt their strategies to match the needs and demands of their demographic. The online community becomes an essential tool when it comes to staying ahead of the game and making informed business decisions.

Another real benefit of building an online community is its ability to reduce customer acquisition costs.  When community members receive privileges and exclusive previews, they often become enthusiastic advocates for your brand, actively promoting it to others. This organic brand awareness can significantly lower the costs associated with acquiring new customers. Let’s not forget about the global brand awareness! As mentioned earlier, building a virtual community diminishes geographical restrictions. Your business can reach customers around the globe and is no longer limited to a city or country.

How To Grow 🌱 

The hardest part about building your community is knowing where to start. It’s definitely not as hard as you may think but it does require a lot of planning and dedication. Try these steps to get started:

Purpose & People: The first and most important step when it comes to building a virtual community is to clearly define your purpose and identify your target audience. It’s important to have a clear vision of what your community is aiming to achieve in order to maintain your niche specific structure, content, and engagement strategies.

Platform: Choosing the right home for your community is also a very important step and will often determine whether your community will sink or swim. Ensuring that your chosen provider is dependable and provides all of the tools your specific community requires will lead to your success.

Guidelines: Establishing clear guidelines from the offset governs member behaviour, content sharing, moderation protocol and community standards. By doing so creates a trusting, respectful and inclusive environmentfor members to engage in.

Content: Planning a content strategy will help your community thrive. Providing a variety of valuable content will keep members engaged and interested. It’s good to share a range of formats such as documents, videos, polls or exclusive member perks. Sharing relevant and informative content on a regular basis will keep members returning to the community.

Encourage Participation: Initialise conversations, ask questions and always respond to members posts and queries. Doing all of these things will encourage member participation and will really boost your engagement. Be sure to create opportunities for collaboration and networking.

In summary, building your own virtual community can have major benefits including, building personal relationships, global reach and driving new revenue streams.

Remember, launching and growing an online community takes time and effort, there is no quick fix. Consistency, active moderating, and genuine engagement between your members are the key tools when establishing a community that will thrive. It’s all about providing value to your members.

Posted by David in Blog Posts

6 Ideas for Monetising Your Online Community

money growing plant

Creating a thriving online community can be a highly effective way of marketing and growing your business through brand awareness and user engagement – but that’s not all. Did you know that your online community can also be a source of revenue?

By offering users added value through paid-for services via online community platforms, it’s possible to boost user engagement and earn some additional income at the same time.

Before you start introducing fees to your online community, though, you need to make sure your community is already adding value, and that monetisation tactics will increase that value to users. More often than not, people are happy to pay more if they feel the perceived value is worth the additional cost.

If this isn’t the case, it may be better to focus on further community growth and value to ensure you don’t alienate existing members.

Assuming you’re ready to take that next step with your community and tap into its earning potential, here are 6 monetisation ideas to consider.

1. Paid membership and subscriptions

Most communities start out by offering membership access for free, which is a highly effective way to attract users and grow an engaged audience. However, as your community grows, so does the opportunity to diversify your membership options with different membership and subscription tiers.

A good place to start is by offering existing (and new) users paid membership. This can be done in two ways.

The first is to switch to being a fully paid membership site that charges all members a fee to access all content. This is only recommended if you’re confident your users will be happy to pay to continue accessing your platform.

The second is to introduce membership levels or tiers, maintaining a free membership option alongside paid subscriptions. The former would offer access to basic content to entice users in, while the paid-for option would offer exclusive access to unique, in-depth content and other perks.

Some ideas on how to deliver real added value to paying members include:

  • Providing access to high-quality blog posts, white papers, ebooks and webinars
  • Offering discounted event prices, exclusive access and special offers
  • Providing access to additional platform features

2. Offer product or service promotions to members

One of the benefits of online community platforms is that they bring together individuals and businesses with a common interest – providing the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas.

For some members, this can also allow them to build brand awareness with a relevant audience – for instance, by answering a user thread that naturally promotes their product or service. It’s worth noting, though, that some community admins don’t allow self-promotion.

However, proactive hosts could see this as an opportunity to offer one-off product or service promotions for business members – allowing them to promote their business to an engaged and relevant audience.

This extra exposure through a one-off advert can provide a worthwhile incentive for businesses wanting to quickly and easily market their brand, as well as a source of extra income for hosts.

But you don’t have to stop at one-off opportunities – you can offer a suite of display advertising options that can help members and other external brands market their brand and generate income for your community.

3. Create a community hosted promotion area

Of course, it shouldn’t only be your members reaping the benefits of your engaged audience through product and service promotion.

As a host, you can also seize the opportunity for a little self-promotion. This shouldn’t take the form of a hard sell and should be done in the right space – we’d suggest setting up a dedicated community hosted promotion area.

With a defined space within your community where, as a host, you can promote your own services, you can make sure promotional content has maximum impact without negatively affecting the user experience in main community areas.

From exclusive content to job offers and new platform features (including some of your upgraded paid-for packages), a promotional area can be a great way to give your community monetisation tactics some focus.

4. Create sponsorship opportunities

Similar to display advertising, you could look to offer sponsorship opportunities across your online community platforms.

One option could be to offer sponsorship of a regular feature, or new virtual events that are hosted on your platform. In return for paid sponsorship, brands will receive onsite sponsorship banners and an agreed number of promotional plugs during that particular feature or event.

Alternatively, you can create sponsored post opportunities within your news and polls areas, where posts can contain promotional content to be pinned to the top of the board for an agreed period of time.

From a user perspective, with sponsorship opportunities, the key is to make sure they’re relevant and don’t negatively impact on the integrity of your community ethos. From a sponsor point of view, make sure you’re offering value to brands through high-traffic areas of your site.

5. Host paid events

Events can be a highly effective way to build a buzz within your community and drive engagement. In the early days of your community, you may look to offer free access to events as an incentive.

However, as your community grows and becomes more established, your events could be a viable source of income – from tickets to merchandise and sponsorship.

For users, events can be the perfect place to learn and network in one fell swoop, and most people are happy to pay for the privilege. To attract paid attendees, be sure to keep your pricing reasonable and make sure you’re offering them value – for instance, at least one keynote speaker, presentation or discussion with networking opportunities.

To maximise attendance, be sure to promote the event within your online community – offering incentives such as early bird discounts, VIP packages and more.

During the event, look to sell branded merchandise and swag like t-shirts, hoodies and reusable bags at a reasonable additional cost for attendees.

Equally, use your event as the ideal opportunity to partner up with other brands, either as co-hosts or event sponsors for an agreed fee – allowing them to gain exposure among a relevant, engaged audience.

6. Cross-sell to members

With ecommerce websites, many brands use their checkout process to cross-sell to customers with ‘suggested picks’ or ‘customers who bought this also bought’ – and this is a tactic you can use within your community platform, too.

Using community behaviour data, you may be able to identify user trends such as content connections or complementary features. From there, you can introduce content suggestions or community picks, along the lines of ‘you may also like this…’

As with the other methods, to gain access to these content and feature suggestions, users can opt to upgrade their subscription or pay a one-off fee.

Monetising elements of your online community can be a great way to double down on your marketing efforts, as this additional revenue stream can pay for your marketing while also supporting reinvestment into other areas of your business.

At Six Circles, our platform has a range of useful features that can help you to grow your community online and earn money from it while you’re at it. To find out more, get in touch with Six Circles today.

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Posted by David in Company Updates

September Bulletin

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Did you know that your community can do more than just promote user engagement? With the right features in place, you can actually monetise your community – making it an even more valuable business growth tool.

If you want to know more, here are 6 ways you can effectively monetise your online community to build better user engagement while growing an additional revenue stream:

  1. Paid memberships and subscriptions: free membership is the cornerstone of growing your community – but by introducing extra benefits, such as providing access to premium content, event discounts and more, you can effectively utilise paid memberships and subscriptions
  2. Offer product or service promotions: many business members use community platforms to build their own brand awareness, so offer these members the opportunity to purchase a one-off advert to promote their services or products to an engaged audience 
  3. Create a promotion area: this dedicated promotion area allows community owners to push forward their own offerings and services to members without impacting the purpose or functionality of the main community areas
  4. Create sponsored post opportunities: within news and polls areas, offer members the chance to gain additional exposure with a paid-for post that acts like sponsored news or a user poll
  5. Host events: from charging members for tickets to selling exclusive merchandise or event sponsorship, there are numerous ways events can help you generate revenue for your community
  6. Cross-selling: just like in ecommerce, you can use your community behaviour data to create cross-selling opportunities, such as content suggestions or community picks. To access these, members can upgrade their subscription or pay a one-off fee
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Future Roadmap

Throughout August, the team at Six Circles have been working hard to maintain your favourite features and developments – as well as continuing to work on a suite of new features and updates that will go live in the coming months. These include: 

  • Events updates: community owners will have the ability to set different prices for an event, depending on a member’s role or membership plan
  • Events updates: community admins will be able to set ‘early bird’ discount prices
  • Events updates: community admins will be able to upload downloadable files to an event
  • Content posts: community members will be able to use emojis within their content
  • Categorisation: admins will be able to categorise news, events and polls
  • Private groups: users will be able to create private groups within the forum area and resources
  • Events update: users will have a calendar view
  • Subscriptions: community owners will have the ability to add a free trial option
  • Subscriptions: users will also have the ability to offer discount codes to subscription members

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Posted by David in Blog Posts

6 Community Engagement Benefits of User Polls

question user poll

Here at Six Circles, we know that it can be challenging to encourage your online community to engage with you online, but we’re here to help.

Today, we’re shining a light on user polls, looking at 6 benefits that come with using them as part of your community engagement strategy.

So, let’s get started. 

1. Get quick and decisive insights 

Creating written and visual content for community building purposes can be a time-consuming process. It can also, in some cases, fail to yield the engagement levels you expected, which can understandably feel disheartening.

But what if we told you that there was another way you could create highly engaging content without having to spend hours on creation? Yes, we’re talking about user polls. 

Quick and easy to set up through social media platforms, user polls can be a highly effective tool to have in your arsenal when you’re struggling with content creation.

But, more importantly, user polls help you to gain quick and decisive insights into your audience. The key is to ask the right questions, though. Keep your concepts and execution simple to allow people to give their answers in just a few clicks.

2. Gain a deeper understanding of your audience

People love to give their opinion on things that matter to them, especially in the online community. And what better way to get them involved than by answering quick, snappy poll questions?

Whether it’s quizzing people on their favourite product or getting their opinion on ways to improve your services, quick, simple polls can be a savvy way to tap into the human need to make our voices heard.

Engaging your audience isn’t the only upside here, either. User polls allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your audience, too.

With the right analytical approach, you can learn about your community members’ pain points and preferences. Plus, they can help you paint a more accurate picture of your members’ identities to tailor future content to their specific needs.

3. Generate candid community feedback 

One of the major benefits of building online communities is the increased anonymity it provides users to freely express their opinions, which can be a powerful tool when harnessed in the right way. 

Community feedback can be incredibly valuable to brands, but the key is to find ways to make sure you’re getting honest, unbiased feedback.

When it comes to polls, make sure you’re using a model that allows users to hide their identity, as this will encourage people to be more honest.

As a result, your user polls will generate candid feedback on important topics that matter to you and your community members.

4. Drive an increased sense of community

If you’re looking to strengthen your community spirit, user polls can be the perfect driving force to bring people together.

Shared opinions and ideas are highly effective in generating a true sense of community as users love making their views known and finding other likeminded people in the process.

This also holds true when it comes to topics that divide opinion, as the ‘Marmite effect’ can cause groups on both sides of an issue to unite in their shared view. It goes without saying that, when going down the divisive route, it’s important to make sure it’s not anything that will alienate members or cause offence.

5. Create a buzz around upcoming releases

If you’re looking for a way to create some hype around an upcoming product release, new service or event, user polls can be just the ticket.

When you’re in the throes of planning releases, it can be easy to make assumptions on how your audience will feel based on your own ideas of what they like, need and expect from your brand. However, these assumptions aren’t always accurate – and many brands unwittingly miss the mark.

With the right questions asked via user polls, you can gauge user interest ahead of time and gain confidence in your overall strategy. 

Beyond this, polls can also provide the perfect platform to build excitement around these releases. By seeking out user views beforehand, you can create a sense of exclusivity, making people instantly feel included and excited about what’s to come.

6. Improve audience loyalty

Online communities can be a powerful way for brands to really engage their members and build a loyal audience.

But brands need to earn that loyalty, which means going the extra mile. This is where user polls can demonstrate the true value of online community members beyond their contributions to the company’s bottom line.

With polls, you’re clearly communicating to users that you care what they think, assuring them that their views on relevant topics matter. Of course, this requires you to respond and act on their opinions where appropriate to ensure these efforts go beyond mere lip service. 

In return, these community members are more likely to feel a stronger sense of loyalty to your brand, contributing to meaningful long-term community engagement.

Whether you have an established brand community or you’re looking to start a new one, user polls can help to create an open and honest space where members feel comfortable expressing their views. In return, you can gain deeper insight into your audience to grow your business and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to growing your online community, we’re here to help. Get in touch with Six Circles today and discover how our engagement platform can help you build a strong foundation for your online community.

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Posted by David in Company Updates

August Bulletin

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Are you looking for new ways to spark community engagement and create deeper connections with your members? We have just the solution: user polls. 

Here are 6 community engagement benefits that come with introducing user polls into your community content strategy: 

  1. Quick and decisive insights: with the right questions on relevant topics, user polls provide a quick, fuss-free platform to get almost instant insights from your members
  2. Deeper understanding of your audience: from their needs and wants to audience profiling, user polls can allow you to gain a better understanding of users in a non-intrusive way
  3. Honest feedback: online polls provide anonymity, encouraging users to be more honest with their feedback, which can result in valuable qualitative data for brands
  4. Increased sense of community: with a shared desire to make their voices heard, user polls can help to strengthen community spirit and camaraderie
  5. Promote upcoming releases: from new product releases to events, polls can help you to gauge the reception of planned activity and build excitement around it
  6. Improve brand loyalty: by asking for user opinions, polls can help to build brand loyalty by demonstrating to members that their opinions truly matter

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Future roadmap

Since July, the Six Circles team have been working hard to get the following features and developments live: 

  • Commenting and liking on news, resources and polls within the feed and individual pages
  • Notifications to members when a new post has been approved and has gone live
  • New event reminder emails sent to attendees 24 hours before an event is due to start
  • New event notifications for administrators, notifying them when a member books onto an event
  • Updated layout with platform banners now showing directly under the header links rather than behind them

This month, the Six Circles team will also begin working on introducing a host of additional features:

  • Events update allowing users to set different prices for events depending on the role or plan members are on
  • Events update allowing users to set an ‘early bird’ discount price
  • Events update allowing users to upload downloadable files to an event
  • Content update allowing users to use emojis within their content
  • Categorisation allowing users to categorise news, events and polls

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

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Posted by David in Company Updates

July Bulletin

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Are you wondering how you can boost user engagement on your forum? Look no further.

Here are 6 top tips on how to successfully spark forum community engagement, keeping users active and coming back for more:

  1. Be part of your community: spending time on your own forum and responding to messages is a key part of kick-starting and cultivating community engagement
  2. Start discussions: from handy tips to leading questions, make your forum the place to be when it comes to discussing hot, industry-centric topics
  3. Hold ‘ask me anything’ sessions: opening up the floor to questions is a highly effective way to gain community participation while also boosting brand trust
  4. Host forum events and contests: forum-hosted events and contests can incentivise online engagement, giving your community members something to look forward to
  5. Give member shout-outs: highlighting members who consistently contribute, or who are particularly knowledgeable within your community, will encourage them and others to continue embedding themselves in your community and participating in the conversation
  6. Promote your space: maintain community growth by cross-promoting your forum on your socials, email marketing and website at a minimum
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Future roadmap 

The Six Circles team have been hard at work getting the following features and developments live:

  • Email digest preview functions
  • Further customisation of the email digest 
  • Admin edit access for buttons and calls-to-action
  • Improved feature tile layouts

Throughout July and August, new work will also be commencing on the introduction of a suite of additional features:

  • Commenting, liking and tagging within the feeds
  • Ability to create private groups
  • Categorisation
  • A forum report button
  • Ability to filter explicit content on forums
  • Event feature updates

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Posted by David in Blog Posts

6 Lessons Learned From 2022’s Online Community Stats

people looking at a laptop

Here at Six Circles, we love all things online community related – and that includes juicy new stats from the world of online community building.

For us, it’s all about learning from the industry data – and sharing our findings with you, our valued community.

That’s why, today, we’re going to be taking a look at 6 lessons we can learn from some of this year’s online community statistics.

1. 76% of online users take part in online communities

With less than a quarter of online users not participating in some form of online community, this statistic highlights just how important online communities are today.

From public Reddit groups to brand-led forums, blogs and vlogs, it seems that internet users just can’t resist getting involved in the online world beyond traditional social media platforms.

From a learning point of view, this stat serves to reaffirm the growing relevance and influence of online communities with respect to their end users.

Whether it’s finding answers to pain points on a forum or simply identifying like-minded people and feeling part of something, nurturing an online community can go a long way towards putting your brand on the map.

But that’s not all – establishing an active and engaged community online can help you build brand authority, authenticity and trust among your customers.

2. 66% of brands credit their online community for helping to retain customers

Every business needs new revenue to promote growth, but there’s a lot to be said for servicing your existing customers, too.

Generating new customers is reported to cost up to five times more than retaining existing ones, yet many brands still put more time, effort and money into the former.

However, even with rising costs for customer retention and ever-changing consumer expectations, the takeaway here is that focusing on growing customer loyalty could pay off in the long run.

Obviously, there are different ways you can do this. As this online community statistic proves, though, cultivating an active and engaged group of online followers could be a highly effective strategy.

With consumers actively participating through brand-led groups, you can tap into their likes, dislikes and pain points. This can make it easier to continually service them and make them feel valued.

Valued customers will naturally feel more loyal to your brand, keeping them coming back time and time again.

3. 27% of customers say online communities influence their purchase decisions

Even in today’s largely online world, the power of recommendation has a strong part to play in consumer decision-making.

In fact, the above online community statistic shows that a third of customers use online communities to help them make decisions on whether to buy a particular product or service.

These user-generated reviews, advice and recommendations are considered to give a more genuine and honest assessment of products. As a result, they can have a big influence on how trustworthy a customer believes particular brands and their offerings to be.

With this in mind, take the time to be an active participant in your community so you can gain insight into what consumers think about your products or services.

Having an active role within your community can help you to respond to negative and positive feedback and learn more about what your customers actually want and expect from you.

4. Almost half of users say that the importance of their online communities grow over time 

With users reportedly spending an average of 415 minutes online everyday, it’s perhaps little surprise that online communities have become an integral way of communicating, on both a personal and commercial level.

As a result, many of the communities that people participate in form an important part of their daily social lives. Naturally, over time, they become more embedded and gain greater importance.

For brands, this long-term increased importance offers the perfect opportunity to engage consumers in an aim to increase customer retention and revenue.

5. 66% of users say their primary reason for online community engagement is connecting with like-minded people

As human beings, we like to feel a sense of belonging and seek to form genuine and meaningful relationships with our peers. In the real world, this can be challenging, but online we can pick and choose who we hang out with and where.

This creates the potential to seek out and connect with people with similar interests, giving consumers more control over who they interact with.

As a brand with an online community, this desire to connect with like-minded people can give you a clear indication of who your target audience is and what interests them.

You can then tailor and moderate the content within your online community to make sure it appeals to your members of your audience and others like them. In the long run, this will entice users to keep coming back and interacting within your online community platform.

6. 90% of brands have used suggestions from their community to improve products or services

Online communities aren’t just about providing a place for your users to congregate and socialise. They can also provide the perfect platform for members to express their views around products and services, which you can use to your advantage.

In fact, for 90% of communities, this has led to brands using community member suggestions to inform improvements to their services and products.

By tapping into consumer feedback via your online community, you can discover a goldmine of constructive and practical ideas for product and service refinement.

You can allow feedback to come through organically or, if you want to focus on a particular product improvement, open up the floor to your users via your online community. This could be an Ask Me Anything session, a customer survey or an open forum thread.

Whether you’re just starting your online community or looking to expand it further, there are lessons to be learned from these online community statistics. They can help you to attract, engage and nurture your audience members to create a thriving community that positively benefits them and your brand.

Do you need a little help getting your online community off the ground? No problem. Get in touch with Six Circles today and discover how our engagement platform can help you build a strong foundation for your online community.

Posted by David in Blog Posts

6 Brands That Have Perfected Community Building (& How)

Apple Store shop front

Community building works – and when you get it right, it really works. 

From improved customer retention to greater brand recognition, there’s a whole host of ways that successful community building can superpower your brand’s growth. 

Don’t believe us? Feast your eyes on these 6 examples of much-loved brands renowned for their top-class community building and super-invested customer communities.

Oh, and we’ll also spill the beans on how and why the approaches work to inspire ideas for your own community-building strategies.

Apple 

There’s no better example of the power of community building than Apple’s unprecedented success.

Over the years, the brand has strategically built a global community of devoted Apple lovers who proudly identify as owners of its latest and greatest products. 

In fact, Apple has been so successful in building a community identity around its brand and products that we no longer bat an eyelid at long overnight queues outside our local phone shop when the latest iPhone is released.

It’s these scenes that demonstrate just how valuable fostering this level of customer engagement and loyalty can be to a brand’s growth. But how did Apple do it?

Well, the core of Apple’s community-building strategy is its unwavering commitment to customer service and support.

You only have to walk into any Apple store to immediately experience it for yourself, with attentive ‘geniuses’ assisting customers with everything from purchasing decisions to product maintenance, repair and tutorials. This support extends online, too, with detailed support forums for individual products and customer problems that encourage customers to share solutions. 

This has been paired with a very conscious brand sensitivity that always remains culturally current and progressive. Not only does this project a forward-thinking brand image that asserts Apple as the leader of its space, but it also encourages an all-encompassing brand community the world over.

Lego 

In an age where children’s eyes are regularly glued to screens, Lego has effortlessly stood the test of time and remained at the forefront of its space. 

But Lego hasn’t only remained consistently appealing to its core child audience – it’s also managed to cultivate a loyal and passionate community of adult customers. 

While a global franchise of movies, video games, theme parks and more has helped to ensure the longevity of Lego’s brand recognition and customer interest, it’s the introduction of Lego Ideas in 2008 that elevated the brand’s community building to the next level. 

Lego Ideas encourages community collaboration by enabling followers to submit ‘construction ideas’, with the most popular build themes and ideas ending up in production.

By empowering customers with the chance for their voices and creative inputs to be heard, Lego has created a product ideation community that removes the gap between customer and brand. This heightens customers’ sense of value, improving engagement and retention as a result.

Gymshark

No matter whether you’re a fitness freak or couch potato, you no doubt know of Gymshark.

Far and away one of the fastest-scaling fitness brands on the planet, Gym Shark has adopted a customer-first approach to its content creation that has seen its community building scale at a rapid pace.

The brand’s blog, Gymshark Central, acts as a knowledge hub packed full of tips, tutorials and more to position the Gymshark brand as the number one source of health and fitness information. As a result, brand authority and trust signals are significantly strengthened, incentivising customers to keep coming back for more.

All the while, this best-in-space content strategy was paired with an influencer campaign that saw a team of trusted, well-known and respected athletes act as brand ambassadors. 

This amounted to the Gymshark community becoming all but synonymous with the wider fitness community, helping the brand grow significantly as a result.

Starbucks

Nowadays, community is all but embedded into the DNA of Starbucks’ brand image. 

To reach the resounding community building success the coffee giant has achieved (most notably across the pond), Starbucks focused on two key assets: user-generated content and loyalty schemes.

Let’s start with the former.

If you’re in the right demographic, there’s more than likely a picture of a Starbucks cup on one of your social media feeds today. Filtered Instagram snaps of Starbucks orders (featuring customers’ names written on the cups by baristas) have become something of a trend with millennials and beyond – a genius user-generated content trend that strikes up FOMO by projecting the community as socially desirable.

Combined with the Starbucks Rewards program (a customer loyalty initiative that offers members personalised rewards for making purchases and engaging with the Starbucks app), customers have a whole host of incentives to join this ever-growing brand community.

Red Bull

Red Bull’s unique community building strategy is centred around reinforcing its brand image and values.

This is the reason you’ll see the market-leading energy drink’s name featured at a wide range of sporting events – usually ones with a particular focus on high energy and endurance. In other cases, it’ll be an event that’s just downright insane – like this, for example. 

The idea is that, by sponsoring events that relect the high intensity of the brand’s ethos, the brand will more effectively communicate its image and values and better resonate with its target audience.

The result? A community of like-minded customers actively invested not only in the product but in the dynamic brand and what it represents.

Harley Davidson 

Harley Davidson is so invested in its brand community that it has its own name: the Harley Owners Club.

The club started as a way to bring customers and fans together through meetups and events organised all over the world. Since then, the Harley Owners Club has become one of the most popular motoring communities on the web – all with the Harley Davidson brand at its heart.

Recognising the advantages of encouraging community connection, Harley Davidson’s community building strategy centres around the social instinct to connect with likeminded people who share the same passions and interests.

Oh, and not to forget a range of hugely popular perks, including exclusive events, insurance and roadside assistance. All of this drives customer loyalty by demonstrating value to the customer, providing endless incentives to stay engaged and invested.

As these brands have masterfully demonstrated, there are countless ways you can approach your brand’s community building strategy. It’s all about getting to know your customers – their wants, needs and expectations – and leveraging this to incentivise your audience to return time and time again.

To begin implementing your brand’s community building strategy, get in touch with the experts at Six Circles today and discover how our community engagement platform can help to superpower your brand’s growth.

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Posted by David in Company Updates

June Bulletin 

Here’s your monthly roundup on everything at Six Circles, from what’s happening behind the scenes to what’s new on our ever-evolving community engagement platform… 

Top tips of the month 

Wondering how to incentivise your audience to keep coming back to your community engagement platform? We’ve got you covered. 

Here are 6 ways you can keep community members engaged and hungry for more. 

  1. Create customer-first content: value is the most effective incentive to keep users coming back to your platform – provide this value in the form of content that meets the needs, wants and expectations of your audience
  2. Be responsive: delivering great customer service is a tried and tested way to build an engaged community based on trust 
  3. Offer exclusive perks: from exclusive previews to special promotions, make your community engagement platform the place to be with a range of unmissable benefits
  4. Promote your platform: how do you expect users to flock to your platform if they don’t know it exists? Promote your community space at every opportunity
  5. Shout on socials: you’ll likely have an existing following on social media, presenting an opportunity to promote your platform to potential community members already invested in your brand 
  6. Stay consistent: consistent engagement is the most organic way of keeping your community coming back for more. If your members know you’re posting, they won’t be able to resist checking in regularly
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Future roadmap 

Keep an eye out for the following updates going live on the Six Circles platform very soon:

  • Email digest preview functions
  • Further customisation of the email digest 
  • Admin edit access for buttons and calls-to-action

The Six Circles team is also hard at work finishing the following updates:

  • Private grouping (this will become available in the Forum and Resource areas
  • Categorisation of events, news, polls and packages (similar to what’s currently available in Resources and Member Promotions)

New work will also commence this month focusing on improvements to our Events feature:

  • Event reminder email notifications
  • Multiple pricing options for tickets
  • Early bird and discount options
  • Pricing alternatives based on membership and role type
  • Ability to add custom attributes to capture additional data from attendees 
  • Ability to add files or additional content for visitors and attendees to view
  • Event page calendar view
  • Recurring events

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions around what you’d like to see on the Six Circles platform. Send any ideas to support@sixcircles.co.uk – we can’t wait to hear them.

If you’d like to see a short demonstration on how to make most of your platform, contact support@sixcircles.co.uk and your dedicated account manager will be in touch.

Posted by David in Blog Posts

6 Ways Events Can Strengthen Your Brand’s Community Building

Here at Six Circles, helping brands build communities online is our bread and butter. 

But we also know that successful community building doesn’t just take place digitally. 

After all, your customers are living breathing people who embrace your brand not just online, but in their real day-to-day.

This is why our online community platform boasts a dedicated event area where brands can promote their upcoming in-person events and exhibitions.

It’s also why we’re exploring 6 ways hosting events can help you grow your tribe and strengthen your brand’s community building strategy in today’s post. Let’s explore.

Your brand can be experienced first-hand

Community building is all about reducing the distance between brand and customer. Enabling the customer to experience your brand first-hand is one of the most effective ways to do this.

Why? Because it establishes authenticity.

Anyone can say anything online. Brands can claim to be driven by certain values or to operate in a certain way – but to actually prove this to an audience online takes time, effort and consistency.

At events, on the other hand, you can quickly establish trust by demonstrating authenticity to your audience.

Allowing customers to experience how you interact and engage with your audience first-hand (as well as overcoming conversion hurdles by previewing your products, services and offerings ‘in the flesh’) will make it far easier for your brand to resonate in a real way. 

This turns potential customers into budding community members willing to align themselves with your brand.

You become more memorable 

You’ve probably noticed, but there’s quite a lot of information online, which means standing out from the crowd and sticking in consumers’ minds is easier said than done.

In-person events and exhibitions, on the other hand, allow brands to appeal to the senses of their potential customers – they can be seen, heard and experienced.

As a result, it becomes an awful lot easier to build brand recognition through this marketing method. Consumers are far more likely to, at the very least, recognise your brand name and, ideally, know exactly who you are and what you do.

Plus, in-person events are an ideal opportunity to offer up some free branded merch that spreads the word about your brand that little bit further.

Greater opportunities to experiment and engage

Hosting events and exhibitions opens up plenty of possibilities to explore more experimental marketing campaigns.

Experimenting with fresh and innovative ways to engage your audience can start to become a real challenge online. In person, though, the world is your oyster.

As this post proves, there are endless ways to engage, entertain and capture the attention of in-person audiences to the benefit of your brand recognition and your customers’ enthusiasm for your brand.

Best of all, you can even document these experimental events and experiences to create engaging online campaigns, too – expanding your audience even further!

Community members connect with each other

Community building isn’t about building a following – it’s about growing a tribe. 

As a result, your engagement and growth strategy should place your brand at the heart of the community, not the head.

One of the most effective ways to do this is to encourage conversation and interaction among your community members.

This is significantly easier to promote organically in person, where opportunities for interaction are more natural and your audience feels more incentivised to connect.

Of course, this has a natural positive impact on your community building efforts. Members who are connecting with one another feel a greater sense of belonging, meaning they’ll form a greater connection – not only with their fellow community members, but also with your brand.

You gain a deeper understanding of your audience

In today’s digital world, data reigns supreme. 

Data enables brands to form a better understanding of who exactly their customers are – it gives welcome insight into their habits, behaviours, interests, pain points and more.

Off the back of these insights, brands often build buyer personas and audience profiles to better visualise and get to grips with who their average customers are.

The key word here is ‘insight’. Data is simply a snapshot into a customer’s background – a sneak peek behind the curtain to see what makes them tick.

While there’s undeniable value in these insights, the personas and profiles they inspire are estimations – there’s still an element of assumption around the audience.

When hosting events, on the other hand, you get to meet your real customers. You see faces and learn personalities, and can judge sentiment and observe expectations and reactions.

In short? You gain a deeper understanding of who exactly makes up your brand’s audience, helping you to refine your community engagement strategy in the long term. 

Generate a greater buzz 

Providing you pull it off, your brand event is likely to generate buzz – this is great news for your community engagement efforts.

What exactly this buzz looks like will ultimately depend on the type of event you host – it might be going viral online, bolstering your brand recognition through word of mouth, or recruiting an enthusiastic army of brand ambassadors.

Whatever buzz your event generates, the hope is that it captures attention and ramps up the FOMO (fear of missing out) to attract a wider audience of people who can be nurtured into dedicated community members.

Event marketing is a powerful way of ensuring a robust community engagement strategy. That’s why, at Six Circles, we make it easy for you to promote your events on our first-class community building platform. And better yet, our event area will be undergoing further developments in the coming weeks!

Want to find out more? Get in touch with us today to learn how Six Circles can help your brand community grow.

Testimonials

“Since incorporating the Six Circles software to further grow our network, we have seen a vast increase in new members and interaction and we are attributing both to the ease of the site’s functionality.

For us, our marketing is now tailored more specifically and effectively due to the inclusion of useful analytics which allow us to form a better understanding of what our members really want.

We would wholly recommend Six Circles to organisations wanting to offer their consumers a platform to meet others, voice their opinions, publish industry news and receive an inclusive and enjoyable customer experience.”

The Mussel Club