Membership programmes live or die by their perceived value. Recruiting new members can be very time consuming. Keeping them aware and actively engaged with your mission is essential, otherwise you risk losing their hard-won support. One of the best solutions for proving value is to build an online community. Here members can combine their voices, share ideas and build relationships.
This can be done through traditional social media platforms, but these platforms have limitations and can dilute your organisation’s unique brand. As such many organisations are now considering implementing their own community platforms which they can have complete ownership over.
So if you are thinking of doing the same, what are the benefits of this approach and what do you need to consider as you explore community platforms? Read on to find out!
What’s Wrong with Traditional Social Media?
Many organisations currently manage their communities on traditional social media. The real issue with this is that you have limited control over the features, branding, and usage information. You will get limited analytics and be unable to make data driven decisions. Your members might also have feelings about specific social platforms beyond your control which could influence their perception of your brand. Though still important channels, they’re not suitable for scaling your own community.
Why a Community Portal is Necessary
A community platform lets you tackle some of the biggest challenges your organisation might face. With it, you can target retention rates, highlight valuable content, and ensure you truly understand your members through detailed usage analytics.
There is significant value in providing your members with a discussion space online. With proper encouragement and support, you can build a vibrant community where your members enjoy spending time and get real value from discussing topical issues. By engaging your members this way, you build loyalty and deepen their membership benefits.
The portal can act as a channel to empower, educate and create awareness. Not only is this important for your own initiatives, but it also lets members take a more active role in advancing your goals.
Such portals are also exceptionally useful for taking the pulse of your community. With polls, quizzes or events you have opportunities to test ideas and gain deep insights into your community’s thoughts. This can lead you to identify key membership gaps and launch campaigns more successfully.
What’s the right type of platform?
There are many types of platforms with different licencing models. Examples include pricing by user, member, or mailing quantity. There are also “open source” platforms such as Open Social that can be used free of charge, where the only costs are hosting and maintenance.
But what option should you pick?
Starting with open source, the biggest benefit is likely around costs. Pricing will scale more affordably as your community grows with no additional costs per user per month. Complete access to the source code affords more flexibility to you for modifications. The large community of developers also means you are not tied into working with a single supplier.
Proprietary platforms, on the other hand, are sometimes a bit more mature with more comprehensive feature sets. Though increasingly open source platforms are catching up. In the end it’s important to understand your organisation’s specific requirements and to match those to find the right platform for you.
Top Tip – Integrate Your Community!
A community portal is made substantially more valuable by integrating it with a CRM. This allows your team to associate community engagement data with other information held in the CRM to tailor future communications and develop engagement strategies. You can even manage group access from within your CRM interface itself!
Best Practice Example – MemberWise Connect
The MemberWise Network has long been an advocate of online community. The network really does ‘walk the talk’ here as it has been in operation for 7 years, has over 6000 members and enables year-round member engagement. MemberWise Network members can join here… (https://connect.memberwise.org.uk)
Compuco exists to empower socially responsible organisations with the digital tools they need to build a better world. If you’re interested in setting up your own community platform, we’d love to hear from you. You can email us at [email protected] or find us at compuco.io. We’d be happy to arrange a chat with one of our experts about how you can drive stronger member engagement.
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