The modern Internet is a mixed bag. It can be a source of wonder, a provider of information, an entertainer, a time waster, and sadly sometimes a dangerous place—especially for the young or vulnerable.
The existence of the Dark Web is common knowledge. Even people who live on the right side of the law know there is a space used to buy and sell products and services that have no place in a healthy society. It is a part of the Web that is not indexed by traditional search engines.
But there are good places too. Magic places that encourage people to share, help, and learn.
I have devoted the last two decades of my career to building those kinds of places—the ones that support our businesses, our careers, our lifestyles, and our mental health. Where we build respectful, constructive, and supportive connections that keep us moving forward.
Those places are communities that encourage civil discourse and healthy, supportive online behavior—the Bright Web, if you will.
Here's how marketers can make the idea of the Bright Web a reality while benefiting their brands.
The Magic of Community
There are many great reasons to embrace online communities, which can be designed and nurtured to benefit both B2C and B2B use cases.
Brands have long recognized the importance of community for connecting with customers and advocates, and similar benefits can be recognized by businesses trying to create strong connections with commercial clients.
Let's look at some of the advantages that a thriving community can bring to your business.
Brand Awareness, Customer Satisfaction, and Loyalty
Communities provide a channel for customers to connect with your brand, accessing resources and providing feedback. That connection strengthens their relationship with your brand and boosts the value they get from your product. The resulting loyalty can lead to referrals, upsell opportunities, and brand advocacy. The benefits are magnified in a B2B context, where trust plays a critical role in big purchasing decisions.
Discoverability
Community sites are full of user-generated content, which is prioritized by search engines, helping to drive traffic to your site.
A recent study found that removing community content from search engines resulted in an 83% drop in website visitors.
Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Systems runs a tech community of 5,000 members, but his site gets 20-25K logged-in page views a month and a whopping 123-140K anonymous visits.
Customer Support, Retention, and Increased Lifetime Value
Communities are a well-recognized channel to help scale customer support.
It can be 72% cheaper to answer a question via the community than via other support channels, and a well-executed community forum can reduce up to 48% of customer support costs.
Customer Feedback, Buying Behavior, and Market Insights
Well-planned communities are invaluable for gathering feedback and insights and for quickly identifying issues before they blow up.
Companies with online communities are 3.5 times more likely to have the data to create models of buying behavior to map customer journeys. "Gathering feedback from our customers on our products and services through [a community] platform plays a crucial role in helping our company see the bigger picture," says community manager Mariana Rodrigues at financial services provider Revolut.
Security and Respect
The Bright Web prioritizes security, respect, and civility. Being intentional about culture from Day One is key.
Sarah Gran of ISRG says when they began planning their community, they knew "success would be defined more by how the people who like it take care of each other, and less by the business model, as Clay Shirky once said."
If you get that right, people will prioritize coming back and actively engaging with your community and by association, your brand.
To achieve that type of online utopia, a few important factors need to be considered:
- Platform selection is a vital piece of the puzzle. To take advantage of the known SEO benefits of a community, choose a forum-based platform rather than an ephemeral chat product like Slack. Building up a knowledge base to allow your customers to self-serve will happen organically and will allow you to leverage the benefit of reduced support costs.
- Data security and ownership has become an increasingly important factor for brands. Platforms like Reddit may be easy to set up, but your Subreddit does not belong to you and neither does your data. Similarly, Facebook doesn't provide you with any way to export your data should you decide to move to another platform.
- Moderation is another important factor to consider. Choosing a platform that has built-in tooling to support healthy behavior will reduce the cost to your team. Features like just-in-time messaging to guide users, crowdsourced moderation via flagging systems, and trust level frameworks all contribute to an environment where your members feel they have autonomy and control.
Where to Start
So you've taken the leap and decided to launch a community to support your brand or business and you've chosen your platform. What's next?
- Define your business goals and objectives. Having specific goals (e.g., lead generation, customer support, brand awareness) will help to not only you refine your community's value proposition but also define the key metrics that you'll need to track success.
- Understand your target audience. Understanding who your audience is and what value you can provide to it will shape the way you communicate and structure your community. Developing detailed buyer personas will support you in tailoring content and engagement strategies.
- Establish community guidelines and governance. Clearly documented guidelines are fundamental to the health of a community. As well as teaching your members how to behave, they act as a safety net for your moderation team when things go wrong. Most modern forum platforms ship with prebuilt templates that you can tailor to your needs.
- Start small with beta testers. You may have big dreams, but before you invest your blood, sweat, and tears, start small with an MVP to test the waters. Lean on your biggest advocates to get started. In addition to stress-testing your platform, they will create valuable seed content and act as mentors for the wider community when you open it up. Pitch the early access as a special thanks for all their support to date.
- Avoid social media. It can be an attractive proposition to use social media platforms because they are free and your audience is often already on them, but you end up with platform dependence (changes happen without your control or consent) and very limited customization options and analytics. You'll also have to forgo the SEO benefits, and you'll be hamstrung by the moderation framework.
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Whether you are championing a B2C brand or a B2B business, harnessing the power of people to amplify your business goals is a proven path to success. So, why don't we come together to make the concept of the Bright Web a reality?
More Resources on B2B Communities
Key Considerations When Building an Online Community
Three Online Community Management Challenges B2B Brands Face
Digital Communities vs. Social Media: Stop Building Brands on Leased Land
