Online communities offer brands a fantastic opportunity to get closer with their customers.  They offer you the chance to talk on a daily basis with customers, gaining valuable feedback from them, and of course providing the opportunity to influence customers before they make their purchase.

Research conducted recently aimed to fully understand how brand communities can influence consumer decision making, and what things go into influencing those decisions.

The research found that there are four key factors in effective communication via an online community.

4 ways to improve communication via your online community

1. Make sure your responses are timely– The first step in improving your communication is to ensure your messages are timely.  Obviously this presents a challenge for many organisations as consumers demand a 24/7 presence.  There are a number of ways to ensure your responses are timely.
   • Firstly you can encourage members to respond to queries as much as possible.  This will not only boost the sense of community but also provide you with a more round the clock presence.  If you add a gamification element to this so that members earn points both for providing a good response and for providing a timely response then it clearly communicates what you value in these interactions.
   • Secondly you can try and employ a globally diverse range of staff on your community.  These could be paid employees or they could be volunteers from the community.  You’ll need to train them so that they know the correct way to respond, but doing so will ensure that you are covered whatever the timezone of the consumer.
   • Another option is to define allocated appointment times.  These could see experts available at particular times of the day to answer queries in their field.  I think this is a great idea, but not one that should be used instead of the previous methods but on top of.
2. Make sure your responses are relevant – The next key to successful communication is to make sure your responses are relevant.  The following are good tips to ensure that your responses are always relevant to the query posed.
   • Firstly you need to be very strict with keeping discussion on topic.  If you gain a reputation for letting things drift then it will be very hard for consumers to trust the community to give them the responses they want.
   • You also want to provide suitable categorisation so that members know where to post their query to get the right response.
3. Make sure the responses are detailed – The research revealed that consumers were much happier when they had detailed replies to their queries.  Here are some tips to help you achieve that.
   • An obvious first step is to make the community very easy to use.  The easier the interface is to use, the more likely people are to contribute detailed responses.
   • Along with making responses easy to post, another important barrier to remove is that of response length limits.  This isn’t very common any more, but if you want good quality responses make sure you don’t cut them off half way through.
   • I mentioned gamification earlier, and allowing members to rate responses is a key tool to ensure that replies are good quality because they draw attention to the kind of responses you want (and of course don’t want).
4. Make sure responses are frequent – The research found a direct correlation between the frequency of posts and the quality of them.  With the previous three in mind therefore, the aim must be to increase the frequency of timely, relevant and detailed responses.  The following are some ways you can achieve this.
   • Gamification is another excellent tool in your armoury here.  Just as you want to reward members that post great quality responses, you also want to reward those that post the greatest number.
   • Don’t forget to say thank you.  Showing appreciation for your best members is one of the simplest, yet most effective, ways of making them feel appreciated and valued.
   • Finally if you want to encourage maximum repeat visits, another nice tactic is to make your community the first place you post announcements.  If members know that its the place to go for the scoop then they’re much more likely to visit regularly.

Online communities are one of the most powerful mechanisms brands have for bringing their various stakeholders together.  It’s not enough simply to build one and pray that it works however.  Provide your community with a purpose and employ the above tips and it will go a long way to ensuring you get maximum results.