Things to keep in mind while choosing a community management platform
Think of the last time you had a problem with one of your electronic devices, and you visited an offline store to fix that problem.
Chances are more that you hopped on to Google and it led you straight to an online customer community, where other customers just like you were already discussing the issue and helping each other out.
This is the harsh reality of today that every two out of three customers are looking for online support instead of making it to your offline store.
As you can predict from the above example these online communities are powered by customers, product users, enthusiasts, and brand advocates who are playing a huge role in how we find and gather information on the internet. And, starting up with a dedicated space for your online users can be a great thing for your business in 2020.
How to choose the right platform?
If you’ve already come to the conclusion that implementing an online community will make sense for your business.
But before you dive in and lose your foot, it’s first needed to understand what makes a good community thrive. How should you approach building your first community? What do you expect to bring to your business? There are a whole lot of options for online community management platforms out there, each offering different features, functionality, and integrations.
Choosing the right one for your company can be a real challenge.
But before making your mind for any platform, you can consider following recommendations on functionalities and features given by some of the community experts & professionals from our own community of community managers i.e. Community Folks.
1. Community Hygiene: For keeping environment healthy
Basically, community hygiene is a set of practices that are implemented to maintain the overall health of any community.
By developing these practices, you can prevent the transmission of any kind of wrong or bad vibes inside the community.
Thoughts of community experts on this:
The majority of the people drop out of the community due to the uncontrolled direction of the conversation there.
The best example of this is: People use LinkedIn to get into a personal level conversation especially with females and this is an embarrassing situation.
There should be a committee to maintain hygiene on such platforms. [By- Milan Singh Thakur]
Giving timely appreciation to community members is a must thing. Sometimes, people leave a community just because they feel a lack of connection/appreciation from peers in the community.
And yes, timely appreciation also leads to good community hygiene. [By- Mrinal Jain]
2. More Analytics: To fill the in-between gap
Most of the platforms don’t have some of the best features enabled for community management & engagement activities and this gap leaves an opportunity for optimization on the table.
Thoughts of community experts on this:
There can be a metric for engagement data apart from the usual content analytics. This feature can be integrated with every community management platform as a dashboard (which can also be customized as per requirement).
[By — Asha Chaudhry]
An in-depth data analytics to measure the activities and interests of members in the community. With this, there can be an inbuilt intelligent reactivation system to identify if user participation has dipped.[By- Priya Sood]
There can be a feature to see analytics on users/content/engagements. This may be of great support for both admins and members on whom to ask, and what to ask in the community. [By- Venkat Jay]
A set of analytics where we are able to find out the level of frustration on user behavior. Suppose, if there is a member who is annoyed by the moderator’s behavior then the AI system puts a flag on the moderator because there is a possibility that rebellious guy can create chaos in the community.
On the other hand, we can have a leash on the moderator so that their power keeps on checking. [By- Arbab Usmani]
3. Add Gamification: It gives a sense of appreciation
Gamification taps into basic human psychology to motivate users to contribute, share, and be active. When users come to the community, they need the motivation to participate.
Additionally, gamification satisfies the “what’s in for me” urge by rewarding participation, boosting user visibility, and driving conversations with rewards/freebies/badges/status upgrades and more.
Community experts came up with some great ways on how gamification can be done in any community management platform.
If a member helps others in the community he/she will get karma points but at the same time, any spam or misbehavior would take away his/her earned points.
Below a certain karma point level, he/she is not allowed for any engagement activity or is thrown off the group (if needed). [By- Suhas Motwani]
Communities provide a lot of intangible values but what if there is a way to reward intangible contributions such as someone connected you to a lead/collaborator or someone offering their two cents or perspective on something.
This would be an awesome feature to have on the platform and by using this, we can incentivize more giving and sharing in a community.[By- Jaytirth Ahya]
There must be some kind of badges/score points or special rights/privileges for members who are contributing their values in a community.
For example, If someone consistently responds to questions from other members is obviously more active and he/she should get some reward as an appreciation. [By- Ashwin Hariharan]
A moderator can have the power to punish members of the community, only when the member is not engaging or not following important updates of the active thread.
For better engagement, there can be a feature where each member earns a reward point which they can redeem to buy some virtual gifts & can give it to other members. Or, they can use this as a bail amount of their friend (banned one) or can also reduce their own sentence time, just like the real-world. [By- Arbab Usmani]
4. Make Subgroups: For Better Coordination
Subgroups are ideal for involving all members, accomplishing specific tasks, and creating a better space for sharing.
There are a lot of communities around us but not all are blooming at the same rate. The main reason being the lack of identifying the correct way to support our buddies.
There can be a small team(subgroup feature) within a community that can function to help newbies(new members) & understand their pros/cons by collecting all details. Then, the team can guide them on how they can help the community in growing.
[By- Milan Singh Thakur]
There can be subgroups within a group where a member again has an option to decide if they want to opt-in(and hence receive notifications). This feature will help in having minimal notifications and maximum value.
For example Jobs section: Well, not everyone in the group wants to change their job and hence doesn’t want to receive job-related notifications. [By- Mahesh Chikane]
Newcomers generally don’t know where to begin or what to do once they join a community, so a sub-forum functionality especially meant for them with relevant information will be of great use. [By- Ashwin Hariharan]
There can be an ability on a platform itself to merge and demerge groups.[By- Suhas Motwani]
5. Quick Follow-Ups: For Future Reference
There should be a quick option to follow a particular post. Currently, the user has to explicitly comment on a post to receive future notifications. [By- Mahesh Chikane]
A feature to save a discussion in pdf format. Once the discussion gets concluded it will be available in pdf/doc format for offline reference as well. [By- Hamza Bhamla]
A feature to download/navigate only new messages & comments and it will let you know when it is over instead of wondering that we might miss something. [By- Puneet Aggarwal]
6. Filter on geography: Connecting Nearby Members
What if geography-wise analytics of members would be available to group admins. This feature really helps in connecting with relevant members for offline events happening in the region. [By- Mahesh Chikane]
A feature that helps you search for other people or skillsets based on geographical locations. Ashwin Hariharan
7. A Centralized Knowledgebase: To find anything
A function that lets you find and easily map the skillsets of all members of the community. [By- Ashish Rajput]
There can be a knowledge base where discussions about specific topics get neatly categorized. This will make easier for people to find and read information from the platform itself.[By- Ashwin Hariharan]
If there was a list of cool ways to get a community-engaged on WhatsApp groups and Google email group it would be an amazing feature.
Basically a list of ice breakers and thought starters. [By- Jaytirth Ahya]
A database from where we can get to know about strong connections. For example, if I have a good connection in Google but if you don’t know about it then it will be as useless as a cold email. [By- Ashish Rajput]
This is all were experienced by one or the other community builder while managing their communities. So these are things you can consider before choosing a platform to manage your community.
Are we missing any important point here? It’s a community-driven blog, if you have anything from your community-building experiences, do add your thoughts in the comment section and it will be updated here.
