Still confused about online community engagement platform? Check out 15 powerful reasons for having a reliable community engagement platform.

Table of Contents

Overview
Benefits of community engagement platform

1. Direct communication with customers
2. Informed decision making
3. Lowered support costs
4. Improve social research
5. Encourages more community engagement
6. Maximises productivity
7. Valuable insights
8. Customer loyalty
9. Regular and real time updates
10. Stand out from others
11. Hybrid engagement
12. Connect to the underrepresented groups
13. Mutual understanding
14. Feedback
15. Resolving ethical questions

Conclusion

Overview

Once you have determined that community engagement is the right call for your organisation, then you may need to sell the idea of online community engagement. New methodologies, by definition, should benefit or add value, and the digital engagement toolkit helps very much in refreshing a given process while addressing concerns or issues associated with traditional forms of engagement. Online community engagement means moving your efforts to the digital space or mixing it up with some of your offline strategies. This is typically done through an online community engagement platform that manages your projects, participation tools, and reports. With the added challenges of COVID-19 making in-person engagement trickier, more people are wondering if it’s worth it to invest in an online platform for community engagement. Governments, councils, NGOs, and universities realise they can really enhance their community engagement practices with a digital platform, engage their communities better, and increase public participation.
Here are some of the benefits of online community engagement platform for your business.

1. Direct communication with customers
   The online communities help you get closer to your customers as they allow you to connect in a space which you have completely controlled. With personal connection, customising content to your needs, and providing on-time support, you’ll create a great vibe around the brand and get stronger customer loyalty. This makes the user experience even better, and you can serve them in a better way. Also, once you create a community for your brand, you are then able to foster your biggest fans and most enthusiastic users by involving them in the customer journey and giving them a place to share their valuable insights.
   
   
2. Informed decision making
   When you feel uncertain about a choice or cannot express clearly why you made it, perhaps you need to talk with your community on the internet. It pushes others to engage, helping you in gathering more community insights which ultimately helps in taking informed and valuable decisions.
   
   
3. Lowered support costs
   Traditional support usually involves a company assisting a customer, but brand communities flip that script by encouraging members to help each other out. In thriving customer communities, members engage with one another and tackle questions together. When customers are able to assist, educate, and motivate their peers, it lightens the load for your team. This means your products can be utilised more efficiently, often in innovative ways that customers might not have considered. The result? A leaner team and happier, more loyal customers.
   
   
4. Improve social research
   Being able to pinpoint the actual issues of your community is a huge hassle. You can get so many insights on the problems, complexity, and challenges that face them through online engagement with your community. And the moment you ask the right questions to your community members; you’re improving social research for the greater good.
   
   
5. Encourages more community engagement
   Both organisations and communities can really benefit from the perks of online engagement. Online communities give members many options to get involved and connect with one another. They can join in on challenges, activities, surveys, and polls, among other things. By providing these various avenues for participation, you are catering to what members like, which significantly boosts engagement levels, especially when stacked up against social media and other marketing efforts. Studies show that engagement rates on social media are around 5%, while online communities see rates closer to 40%-50%.
   
   
6. Maximises productivity
   Working with limited resources, organising in-person events can be really challenging. It requires much time, effort, and people power. Your team schedule may get hectic, and you have to focus on engagement activities due to tight budgets and staffing. But shifting your engagement efforts online can really help you maximise what you can do without needing as much.
   
   
7. Valuable insights
   There are various community engagement platforms for public participation and data reporting, making it easier to collect diversified and representative information. This allows you to really get connected with the community’s collective wisdom using such interactive tools. Moreover, it provides a safe and friendly environment in order to access local insights.
   
   
8. Customer loyalty
   Customer loyalty is key, and the best way to improve sales is by ensuring that current customers thrive. If businesses do not utilise community resources for essential functions like customer support, it hurts loyalty. If businesses don’t include communities within their support, they can lose customers 70% of the time. That is also an indication of why most of the community programs are not successful. Setting up peer-to-peer communities and leaving them to their own fate usually results in failure. While communities of peers can operate with very little control, there still must be some level of control to keep the community from going completely out of control.
   
   
9. Regular and real time updates
   Using an online community engagement platform lets you update everyone quickly on the latest project developments and keep everybody in the loop. There are some platforms that enable community members to subscribe for notifications of projects they would like to follow. These kinds of alerts can also provide reminders for key milestones and opportunities to get more deeply involved.
   
   
10. Stand out from others
    Online communities can do a lot for your organisation, from creating content to gathering marketing insights. But for your users, these communities are crucial for their satisfaction and overall experience. While you and your competitors might seem alike on paper, having an online community can really set you apart. With a community engagement platform, you can stand out by having quick answers to questions raised and by providing delightful surprises for their customers by working with a member of the community.
    
    
11. Hybrid engagement
    That would really bring the in-person interactions you already have to the online community engagement mix. It is a great way to connect with people who can’t make it to your events, keeping the conversation going even when you’re not there in person.
    
    
12. Connect to the underrepresented groups
    Building an online community helps create social bonds and ensures everyone gets a chance to share their thoughts. However, efforts to engage underrepresented groups are often overlooked. In the traditional face-to-face settings, a small group of regular participants can easily dominate the conversation, making it tough to hear different perspectives, or worse, leaving them completely unheard. This problem also arises in public meetings and offline discussions, where not everyone feels comfortable speaking out. Online engagement, however, provides a safe and welcoming space for people to join the discussion without the constraints of a public setting. It encourages diversity by bringing together various communities, including those that are often hard to reach or disadvantaged, allowing marginalised voices to be part of the decision-making process.
    
    
13. Mutual understanding
    Dealing with raw and uninformed public opinions is not easy. An online community engagement platform helps you foster transparency and openness in a safe space. With a dedicated online hub for engagement, you can also spread the word about your projects to a wider audience. This way, you can reach the whole community, not just the usual crowd.
    
    
14. Feedback
    Internet involvement allows more people to engage so that you can gather highly representative feedback that actually manifests what all residents want. With time, you may have a good database relating to the community and ensure that everything you undertake has been towards realising your history of inclusivity and representation.
    
    
15. Resolving ethical questions
    With more voices entering into the conversation online, you can combine forces and upgrade the collective wisdom of your community to work on complicated local problems. The size and composition of your online following will shift as you use your platform to discuss what matters to your community, and you will have ongoing opportunities to engage your audience on specific issues and collect directed feedback.

Conclusion

Engaging with your community increases collaboration, support, and trust. Taking your efforts through community engagement platform means you can enjoy these in-person interactions but cast a wider net for superior results for all involved parties. Your community engagement platform should help your team face challenges in a positive manner and discover exciting new opportunities.

Keeping this in mind, Community 360 Community 360 has brought you over 160+ community engagement features that you can use to build a thriving and positive community. From branding, surveys & polls, maps, chat, e-commerce, security, events, AI enhancement to multi-language options, we have it all. So, book a free demo today & let’s make a thriving community altogether.