{"id":8923,"date":"2022-01-27T12:50:01","date_gmt":"1970-01-01T00:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yawave.com\/post\/the-potential-of-company-owned-online-communities\/"},"modified":"2022-12-05T09:32:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T08:32:36","slug":"the-potential-of-company-owned-online-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yawave.com\/en\/blog\/the-potential-of-company-owned-online-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"The Potential of Company-Owned Online Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What is an online community?<\/span> <\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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According to Wikipedia, an online community is “an organized group of people who communicate with each other on the Internet (…)”. The important thing is that it shares a common interest that unites them. As a platform, Wikipedia mentions social media channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I would like to add to this view. Community is much more than social media; communities can be built very successfully on a company’s own website as a My area. This setup may not be as fast as on existing social media channels, but it offers the advantage that the platform belongs to the company (“owned media”) and it can maintain the community there more individually and interact with its customers in a more targeted way. However, you can learn a lot about how communities work by closely following the groups of companies and organizations on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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For whom are communities relevant? <\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Short answer: for anyone who has an interest that they cannot pursue alone, but for which they need comrades-in-arms. This applies to political parties, companies, sports clubs, NGOs, and media companies. They all cannot exist without their members, customers, fans, readers and followers. An active, loyal community acts as a catalyst for their goals, creates predictability in the form of a fixed membership base, and helps to retain their own customers in the long term.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hasn’t that always been there? <\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Sure, repeat customers have been around for as long as there have been companies to convince their customers of what they have to offer. What is new are the digital possibilities and tools that are available today for community management. Modern customer portals offer their users the opportunity to build completely different communities for different target groups, be they customers, suppliers, association members or fans, to name a small selection. In this way, organizations can take up input from their stakeholders, exchange ideas with them, and generate valuable interactions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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And the potential? <\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Modern marketing puts the customer at the center of entrepreneurial action. The marketing department is the first advocate for the customer in any organization. Marketing strategies are thus the interface and starting point for strategies from other areas of the company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Community building, as a new marketing discipline, now puts the customer’s digital community at the center. This enables the contact data of members to be better enriched, which forms the basis for personalized addressing, individual products and services. This creates new cross-selling and upselling potential.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The community formula <\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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You should ask yourself these five questions to find out whether your own community has potential for your organization:<\/span><\/p>\n