As we approach the 2024 Olympics, it’s clear that live blogging will be a critical tool for engaging audiences and providing real-time updates on the games. With advancements in digital technology and increased demand for instant information, news publishers and media outlets must prepare to deliver comprehensive, engaging, and up-to-the-minute coverage of this global event.
Why Live Blog the Sporting Events Like the Paris 2024 Olympics?
Comprehensive Coverage: Live blogging multiple sports events simultaneously can be challenging. Live blogs offer a streamlined way to manage and deliver diverse content, from breaking news and scores to personal stories and highlights.
Real-Time Engagement: Live blogging allows you to provide real-time updates, ensuring your audience is always in the loop. This keeps readers on your site longer, boosting engagement and driving traffic.
Interactive Features: Use polls, Q&A sessions, and comment sections to interact with your audience, making them feel part of the event. This two-way communication is crucial for building a loyal community.
Building Community: Live blogs create a sense of community among your readers. By enabling comments and discussions, you allow your audience to share their thoughts and emotions in real-time, fostering a stronger connection with your brand.
Best Practices for Live Blogging
1. Prepare to handle the unexpected
Before the event, outline your live blog strategy. Prepare templates, set up multimedia resources, and ensure your technical setup is robust enough to handle high traffic.
2. Timely and Accurate Updates
Consistency is crucial. Ensure your updates are timely and accurate to maintain credibility and keep your audience informed.
3. Engage with Your Audience
Encourage comments and feedback. Make sure you designate a knowledgeable team member to monitor and respond with posts and comments to your readers to build a rapport and make them feel valued.
4. Use Multimedia Effectively
Visual content can significantly enhance the reader’s experience. Use high-quality images, videos, and infographics to complement your text updates. Bring in perspectives from high-value sources like industry leaders and expert commentary.
5. Optimize for SEO
To take advantage of what’s on screen, prepare to incorporate relevant keywords and trending topics to improve your search engine ranking. Use clear and concise headlines to capture attention.
The pinnacle of athletic competition, the Paris Olympics will feature new sports like surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing, alongside traditional favorites. Highlighting these events can attract a diverse audience.
With football being one of the most popular sports worldwide, covering the UEFA Euro 2024 can draw significant attention. Live blogging key matches and providing in-depth analysis can keep football fans engaged.
Cricket enthusiasts will be eagerly following the World Cup. Live blogging matches, player stats, and expert commentary can cater to this dedicated audience.
Politics deeply influence global dynamics. Covering the U.S. Presidential Election with live updates, expert opinions, and real-time results can attract a broad spectrum of readers.
Rugby fans are passionate and loyal. Providing live updates, match insights, and fan interactions can enhance engagement during this event.
Conclusion
The Paris 2024 Olympics present an incredible opportunity to build a Live Blog to engage and grow your audience. By providing real-time updates, interactive content, and fostering a sense of community, you can enhance the viewer experience and boost your digital presence. Prepare now, and get ready to capture the world’s attention in 2024 and beyond.
Learn more about some of Arena’s solutions for sports publishers and discover how you can elevate fan experience this Olympic season.
Whether you’re a marketer, media brand, or digital publisher, there’s a paradigm shift occurring in the way we think about audience engagement. With growing concerns around data privacy and the inevitable algorithm changes that impact organic reach, the old cadence of relying solely on social media is being supplanted by a more robust, sustainable strategy: cultivating vibrant online communities outside the uncertain walls of social platforms. This in-depth discourse is a strategic roadmap for you to understand the intricate nuances and compelling benefits of online communities.
Jump aboard as we analyze the intentions behind this seismic shunt of digital strategy, and expose the first steps you need to take to achieve long-term engagement, fortify customer loyalty, and enhance your brand’s online presence in an era where connection and trust are the ultimate currency.
What is an online community?
An online community is a specific digital space that brings together people who share interests, goals, problems, or other concerns. The desire to build an online community is one of the key drivers for the growth of the Internet and related technologies.
A (Very) Short History of Online Communities
Online communities have existed for decades, long before social media and smartphones. The following examples show how different communities have gathered together using digital technologies.
Early Scientific Online Communities
The earliest online communities brought together scientists, engineers, and researchers to share ideas. ARPANET (active from 1969 to 1989) brought together scientific researchers in the United States. In Europe, Tim Berners-Lee invented the modern web while working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1989 to support a global community of scientific researchers. These early types of community (and the technologies they created) paved the way for later technologies.
Bulletin Board System (BBS)
The arrival of BBS technology opened the door for many more people to participate in online communities. The first BBS was launched in 1978, and these communities grew in popularity until the early 1990s. These communities typically relied on dial-up modem technology and telephone lines.
Usenet
Launched in 1980, Usenet had millions of users interacting across thousands of discussion groups at its height. Usenet remains active for discussions, and it has some filesharing capabilities.
Internet Service Provider Online Communities
Compuserve and America Online (AOL) offered community chat rooms and other spaces for online engagement. At its height, Compuserve had thousands of moderated discussion groups.
Publisher Based Communities
A variety of publishers have created online communities. For example, Salon purchased The WELL (an early online community) 1999. Other publishers took a different approach to online communities by allowing comments on their articles and other media.
Blogs
In the 2000s, new technologies like WordPress and Blogger made creating and running blogs easier. Blogs included social and community features like comments, blog rolls (i.e., links to related blogs and websites), and guest posts (i.e., contributions from others besides the blog owner).
Social Media
Online communities are a key driver for the success of today’s social media platforms. For example, Facebook found early success by focusing on specific communities at US colleges. Other social platforms, like Discord, have succeeded by making it easier for people to connect through shared interests.
What Do Successful Online Communities Have In Common?
Every online community has different dynamics, levels of participation, and goals. Despite those variations, a few common characteristics underpin most successful online communities. We’ll expand on each of these concepts throughout this ebook.
A Specific Focus
To attract an audience, an online community usually does best when it is focused. Generally, a focus (i.e., NCAA basketball) is better than a broad focus (i.e., sports).
Content
In many cases, content provides the spark for discussion and interaction in a community. The content may be contributed by professionals (i.e., journalists) or engaged community members. High-quality content, especially when publicly available, attracts new community members and starts new discussions.
Community Leaders
Online communities, like any community, face threats and challenges. It is easier to respond to these challenges when a community has strong leadership. There are various types of community leaders, such as the founder(s) of an online community, volunteer moderators (often called “mods”), and professional community moderators. Community leaders are essential in starting discussions, responding to inappropriate actions, and guiding the community.
Online Community Technology
An online community, such as a technology platform, needs a specific place to operate. Social media websites are popular since they are designed to be easy to use, but creating a thriving online community right on your website is also possible. By bringing online communities to your website, you gain a much deeper understanding of your audience.
Arena Community represents a significant leap forward in audience engagement and interaction. With its comprehensive feature set, such as Arena’s Live Blog and Live Chat, and user-centric design, it offers an unparalleled experience for both users and brands alike.
Engaging audiences and keeping them on your website has become increasingly challenging. Social media platforms, however, have mastered the art of user engagement by creating immersive, social media-like experiences that captivate their audience. The good news? You can leverage these same strategies to boost user engagement on your site.
In an increasingly noisy and competitive digital marketplace, quickly converting conversations into sales is crucial for brands and online retailers. To do this, brands must provide a superior customer experience, tailoring each interaction to the unique tastes and preferences of every customer. Arena’s Commerce AI is the answer to this challenge. It goes beyond mere engagement, driving them to make their desired purchase swiftly.
This serves both consumers and brands by accelerating the buyer’s journey for consumers and allowing brands to precisely meet individual consumer needs.
Finally, a chat-to-cart solution based on conversations
Taking user engagement to the next level, Arena’s Commerce AI delivers a personalized, concierge-like experience for every website visitor. Arena’s solution does this by marrying the power of AI with existing content on websites, files, and text and creating hyper-personalized product recommendations that take into account each user’s distinct needs and preferences.
This seamless transition from chat to cart ensures that users don’t just research products, but end up buying them.
A product expert trained by your content
Arena’s Commerce AI is an AI chat assistant that can be added to any commerce webpage. It is trained directly using website content and databases defined by the website owner, so it can have intelligent conversations with every visitor. With Commerce AI, you can help customers find exactly what they need and even suggest great recommendations to boost sales.
Commerce AI was designed for publishers and e-commerce brands to capitalize on every customer conversation. Whether it’s increasing revenue through product recommendations or affiliate links, Arena’s new AI chat helps each individual web visitor with their own unique needs.
Check out some examples.
Commerce AI for publishers
Digital news publishers sought to diversify their revenue streams. One relevant source of new revenue is the creation of product recommendation pages, through which publishers can leverage their credibility to monetize affiliate links.
With Commerce AI, the publisher can guide the reader in a conversational shopping experience, understanding the needs and wants and multiplying their product recommendations, increasing the chance to monetize affiliate links.
Commerce AI for e-commerce
Online retailers can also trust Commerce AI to be their conversational guides to offering a better shopping experience. It goes beyond being just an inventory expander: Commerce AI understands and talks back to the shopper as a subject expert, giving out relevant recommendations in the context of the shopping occasion.
Commerce AI already offers Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, and fast-tracking implementation for these platforms’ retailers. Other platforms can also add Commerce AI to their online stores by adding the embed code to their HTML code.
Drive the conversation into transactions
Today, with the release of Commerce AI, Arena is not just facilitating dialogues; it is revolutionizing the way brands monetize them. The future of e-commerce isn’t just cart additions – it’s in the unique conversations leading up to them.
This innovation will empower brands to connect deeply with their audiences, establishing a level of trust that transforms casual visitors into loyal customers.
Add Commerce AI to your webstore in seconds
Try Commerce AI directly from Arena’s Dashboard. New accounts have a 14-day free trial period, and no credit card is needed.
Just follow the onboarding instructions, which will request URLs from your website so that your Commerce AI chat is trained with your content.
Then, all you have to do is personalize some of the information you’d want it to display, like greetings and a chat name, generate the embed code, and add it to your page code.
Offering an online chat service to your audience is a powerful way to increase engagement. Chat protocols play a crucial role in enabling real-time communication by providing a safe space that allows messages to be transmitted instantly between users. These protocols also define the specific rules and formats for these exhanges, ensuring that messages are sent and received efficiently and securely.
Staying updated with the most popular chat protocols is essential for both developers and businesses to ensure compatibility, security, and optimal performance. By keeping up with these advancements, businesses can provide more reliable and efficient communication tools, meet the growing demands of users, and stay competitive in the market.
Learn more about different instant messaging systems and find out which one suits your needs best.
Three Ready-to-Use Chat Apps
There are significant disadvantages to using an open messaging protocol (i.e., an open standard for messaging). This kind of technology often requires significant development effort and testing, and that’s fine if you’re interested in developing your software, but isn’t very practical when you have a tight deadline.
What if you need to offer a real-time chat experience by tomorrow? That’s where these three chat apps come to play.
Advantages: robust message interface for groups, Chat API, and moderation features. Arena is one of the first chat services to offer AI functionality!
Disadvantages: in July 2023, there is no iOS or Android app for Arena’s Dashboard. Fortunately, Arena is lightweight and fast, so it works beautifully in a mobile browsers.
Arena Live Chat is a chat client designed for groups and events. It is designed to be lightweight and easy to install and configure. If you are running hybrid events or online events to engage your employees or customers, Arena Live Chat is a great choice.
With features such as polls, Q&As, GIF reactions and moderation capabilities, Arena Live Chat is a powerful community chat software for brands and publishers looking to grow their audiences.
2. Facebook Messenger
Advantages: integrated with Facebook, so there is no need to set up additional accounts, supports video chats and payments between users.
Disadvantages: some features, such as payments, are only available in certain countries, some users are skeptical about Facebook’s privacy track record, and may drain mobile device batteries fast. It is not an open messaging protocol, so it has development limitations.
Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular live chat platforms in the world. According to one estimate, there are over one billion Facebook Messenger users today. Since it offers so many features, it is no surprise that Messenger is a relatively large app – it takes over 100 MB in storage in most cases.
From a marketing perspective, Facebook Messenger is interesting because there are third-party services that make it easy to create chatbots. This business approach to Facebook Messenger can boost your lead generation and improve basic customer service. For brands with a large Facebook following, Facebook Messenger has much to offer.
3. Google Messages
Advantages: the chat client supports private messages, group chats, payments, and searching for information on businesses (e.g., restaurants)
Disadvantages: some users have complained about a poor search experience and glitches with video calls.
Initially launched in 2014, Google Messages has gradually become one of the most popular messaging apps. Also known as Messages by Google, the app has an estimated 1 billion installs. In 2021, instant messenger added support for an end to end encryption.
Google Messages added support for rich communication services (RCS) in 2019. This enhancement means that the app no longer relies on the cellular network. Google Messages does not require a mobile app – the chat client is available through a browser. Adding support for RCS makes Google Messages more competitive with Apple iMessage.
What if you want to use an open standard for messaging? The following real time chat protocol section introduces you to some of the best options on the market.
Popular Instant Messaging and Chat Protocols
These protocols and services offer different capabilities and require different levels of effort to implement. Some, like IRC, are relatively easy to set up. Most of the other protocols take more effort.
1. WebRTC – Web Real-Time Communication
Advantages: WebRTC is open source (initially developed by Google), the protocol has relatively sophisticated sound capabilities, and third-party apps can be developed using the protocol.
Disadvantages: it is a relatively new protocol, and there are relatively few online services based on it.
Launched in 2011 by Google, WebRTC is a communication protocol built for web browsers. The protocol supports video calls, but this functionality requires a separate server. The protocol has significant appeal for software companies looking to build their online services.
2. WebSocket
Advantages: allows two-way communication faster than the HTTP protocol. It is a lightweight protocol with a 2-byte cost (much less than HTTP), so it is an excellent choice for users concerned about speed and performance.
Disadvantages: the reliability of WebSocket is limited by the user’s Internet connection.
Among today’s communication protocols, WebSocket is relatively well established. It was launched in 2008 and started to attain widespread adoption in 2010. WebSocket relies on a TCP connection.
3. IRC – Internet Relay Chat
Advantages: long considered one of the oldest and most reliable messaging services in the market, some support for file sharing.
Disadvantages: no support for video calls, voice calls, or other advanced features, a declining number of active users.
IRC is often considered the chat platform that made the rise of messaging platforms platform. Established in 1988, IRC is one of the oldest Internet services. According to one estimate, IRC once had over a million users in the early 2000s. While IRC still has some niche uses and specialized communities, it is much closer to email in spirit than a true chat platform.
IRC’s long-term success as a real-time text messaging platform is nonetheless remarkable. If you are building a chat app (or online community) from scratch, studying the longevity of Internet Relay Chat may be worth the time. Remember that the platform was initially developed before broadband Internet access was widely available, so it is not an excellent match for today’s network capabilities.
4. XMPP: Extensible Messaging and Present Protocol
Advantages: XMPP is an open, flexible protocol and offers a decentralized architecture. Setting up XMPP on corporate networks (instead of the Internet) is also possible for added security.
Disadvantages: it lacks QoS (quality of service) support, so voice and video call performance is not the same as top-of-the-line VoIP services. In addition, there is no single official client you can use to access the protocol.
XMPP is a modern instant messaging protocol that supports popular chat functionalities like voice calls, video calls, and file transfers. You can build a chat application or instant messengers based on XMPP. Depending on your goals, you could build consumer software or a corporate chat app based on this protocol.
As a form of communication, XMPP can support various uses and optional features. Since it is much less well-known than apps like Google Talk or Facebook Chat, you may have to plan for additional training time to help your users adopt the platform.
5. MQTT – Message Queuing Telemetry Transport
Advantages: this messaging protocol is excellent for battery-powered mobile devices. MQTT also has high reliability in delivering messages. The lightweight protocol requires minimal CPU resources, best suited for small, low-power applications.
Disadvantages: no support for video calls, minimal security support, and relatively low speed and latency.
Unlike the other messaging protocols covered above, MQTT is best suited for a specific type of device. MQTT is best used for Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications. For example, an industrial device at a factory might need the ability to send messages about the temperature or pressure of a specific piece of equipment. MQTT is an excellent choice for that use case. MQTT is not a good choice for consumers.
The relatively weak out-of-box security features are another drawback. Fortunately, this problem can be mitigated by working with security providers. If this drawback is neglected in your implementation, you may introduce more risk into your environment.
6. SIP/SIMPLE
Advantages: SIP is an open standard compatible with several vendors, it is relatively flexible with the option to support text and video messages, professional oversight by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Disadvantages: it is a basic protocol rather than an instant messaging app, so users cannot download it and immediately start using it.
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a well-established messaging protocol that has been around for several decades. SIMPLE is a specific implementation of SIP called “Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions.”
The SIMPLE protocol approach to instant messaging offers both session mode and non-session (i.e., page mode) approaches to messaging. In addition, the SIP SIMPLE protocol also supports presence which means you can detect when users are online. The protocol doesn’t offer built-in support for features like buddy lists (also known as contact lists) or message histories. Therefore, it might be a good option for consumers.
7. AMQP – Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
Advantages: supports secured connections with SSL, supports QoS for message delivery, and simple peer-to-peer delivery.
Disadvantages: higher bandwidth requirements than other protocols; it is also not backward compatible with older protocol versions.
Announced in 2003, AMQP has an unusual origin: a developer at JPMorgan Chase created it. Other companies, including Microsoft, Progress Software, and Bank of America, became involved in the protocol. Like the MQTT protocol, AMQP runs on the TCP layer of the network.
AMQP’s corporate background means it offers a good foundation for sophisticated applications. AMQP may be a good choice for communication between machines in business communications. The AMQP approach to instant message delivery emphasizes delivery and reliability. As a result, it is a good choice for enterprise instant messaging where accuracy is paramount, like financial use cases.
8. RCS – Rich Communication Services
Offering an online chat service to your audience is a powerful way to increase engagement. Chat protocols play a crucial role in enabling real-time communication by providing a safe space that allows messages to be transmitted instantly between users. These protocols also define the specific rules and formats for these exchanges, ensuring that messages are sent and received efficiently and securely.
Staying updated with the most popular chat protocols is essential for both developers and businesses to ensure compatibility, security, and optimal performance. By keeping up with these advancements, businesses can provide more reliable and efficient communication tools, meet the growing demands of users, and stay competitive in the market.
Learn more about different instant messaging systems and find out which one suits your needs best.
Choosing the Right Chat Service: Factors to Consider
Choosing the right instant messaging system for your business is an important decision. No single chat protocol or app is suitable for every purpose.
Use the assessment criteria below to help you discover the best choice for your needs. For additional insights on deciding whether to buy or build a chat service, see Arena’s article Chat Protocols and Apps: Should You Build or Buy? for additional insights.
Does the Chat Service Have AI Capabilities?
Since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, AI has become a revolutionary capability. In a chat service, AI can be used in several ways. You can use it to develop questions and encourage discussions. You can also train AI using chat content if permitted by your policies. We’re still in the early days of the generative AI revolution, so make sure your chat service supports this exciting new technology!
Chat Emphasis: Private Messaging or Group Events?
When you compare different chat programs, a key difference quickly becomes apparent. Many chat apps emphasize private conversations between two users. Like Arena Live Chat, other chat services focus more on chat windows for events. That’s not all. Arena Live Chat also offers one on one messages between users.
How Easy Is Installation And Setup?
Few users (or companies!) have the patience to learn a complex chat protocol. Given your other technology projects, asking an IT department to spend weeks or even months learning how to use WebRTC or MQTT may not be realistic.
Instead, choosing an easy chat solution for companies and end-users to access is best. Arena Live Chat is explicitly designed for fast installation. Most companies install it on their website in less than 10 minutes.
What Is The User Experience Like?
The user experience is vital in chat services. Your customers will spend a lot of time interacting with friends (and your employees) through chat. Therefore, investing time upfront in testing the chat app is crucial.
Specifically, we recommend asking non-technical employees to test the chat app. If they have significant difficulties using the chat app, try something else! If your customers have problems using your chat app, they will simply give up and use a different method – like email or phone – to contact your business.
How Does The App Ensure Security?
Security risks are ever-present in the online world, including chat apps. When you give your users a chat window, some people may view that option as an effective attack opportunity. There are a few ways to mitigate this threat to avoid endless security investigations.
A common way to enhance security and privacy concerns is to rely on end-to-end encryption. In addition, you can apply controls to your user IDs. By requiring users to register before joining a chat experience. Finally, don’t rely on the chat window to do all the work. It is also essential to provide security training to your employees to provide a security-conscious experience to end-users.
How To Add a Live Chat To Your Website Today
Now that you know about the most popular chat protocols and chat clients on the market, you have a choice. The first option is to choose a messaging protocol, select a client and spend time customizing the chat app. This option is a good choice if your company has significant technology development resources and the desire to create highly customized solutions.
Gen Z’s passion for social media is well documented, so much so they’re often referred to as “Social Natives,” but a recent development is challenging our understanding of this generation.
Gen Z (born 1997 to 2012) is increasingly moving away from traditional feed-based social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. According to Impero research, 65% of Gen Z users feel more confident using community-focused social media apps like Twitch and Discord. This shift in focus is a return to the pre-social media Internet communities like bulletin boards.
What We Know About Gen Z’s Online Habits
To put the shift in Gen Z online behavior into context, it’s helpful to look at a few numbers.
Facebook: 49% of Gen Z use Facebook according to a 2022 survey, making it the 4th most popular social platform. In contrast, 69% of Millennials prefer Facebook over other social media platforms.
Twitter. 47% of Gen Z say they use the micro-blogging platform in 2022. Once again, Millennials are a larger share of the Twitter user base. One estimate pegged Millennials at 80% of Twitter (source).
Discord. While much smaller in absolute terms, Discord has attracted significant Gen Z engagement. Insider Intelligence estimates that 35% of all Gen Z are on Discord. Gen Z is an influential audience for a platform with approximately 140 million monthly active users in 2021.
Of course, there are exceptions to this pattern, like TikTok, which has a similar feed-based experience. Nonetheless, the increasing popularity of smaller online communities tells us something important about the evolution of Gen Z in the digital age.
The Problem With Big Platform Feeds
Imperso’s research Gen Z’s top concerns in the online world includes seeing themselves as unique, a sense of community, voice, and privacy considerations. The Pew Research Center also points out that “Gen Zers are progressive and pro-government, most see the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity as a good thing.”
Large social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are not well-positioned to meet Gen Z expectations.
Gen Z’s concerns over the big social platforms are unlikely to be fully satisfied soon. Take privacy as an example. Facebook’s history of privacy scandals is well documented, of large fines, legal problems, and more. Under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter has reduced its safeguards that discouraged misinformation, a move that alarmed many and caused advertising spend to plunge 89% since before his takeover in October.
Curated Communities Are Winning
Discord offers an interesting case study showing how to create more focused communities. While Twitter primarily operates as a fully public platform, Discord offers more curated experiences. To understand Discord’s appeal, briefly covering a few critical details about the platform is helpful.
Established in 2015, Discord first rose to prominence in gamer communities. The text and audio-based platform offered an easy way for gaming enthusiasts to gather and enjoy games together. Each Discord server comprises multiple channels, some open to all (e.g., general chat) while others are restricted (e.g., announcements or rules).
While video game-related interests remain the most popular on Discord, the platform is evolving. There are Discord servers for book enthusiasts, education (e.g., communities focused on learning a language and science), cars, and sports.
In contrast to other platforms, Discord servers have a few points in common. They are focused on a specific topic. These communities also offer the kinds of social functions that Gen Z has come to expect, like social reactions, private messaging, friend requests, emojis, and more.
In contrast to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other larger platforms, Discord does not have advertising in the traditional sense. The lack of powerful advertising tools may discourage some brands from pursuing platforms like Discord, but building a focused online community revolving around your online brand is worth the effort, even if that specific platform is not for you.
Why Relying On Social Media Platforms To Engage Gen Z Is Risky
Maintaining an active presence on social media platforms is still essential. Gen Z is still very active on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. At the same time, those platforms are noisy, with many different kinds of content. It can be tough to build an engaged community when there are so many distractions one click away.
Putting all your community-building efforts into social media also comes at a significant cost. It means you are depending on another company to access your community. They can change the rules (and pricing) suddenly. Apart from that concern, you’re very limited in how much data you can gather. Building your online community on your website is vital, with third-party cookies set to disappear soon.
3 Ways To Make Your Website More Engaging For Gen Z
Attracting and keeping Gen Z audiences engaged on your website is easier when you use the following best practices.
Mobile Optimized
Smartphone ownership and use in Gen Z is very high. Approximately 85% of the US population owns a smartphone, while 98% of Gen Z has a smartphone. Therefore, your website must look great and respond fast to mobile devices. Gen Z also loves video content – as shown by their heavy use of TikTok – so make sure your videos look great on mobile.
Social Media Style Functionality
Gen Z will not spend all their time browsing product pages or other forms of static content. They expect to have a social experience. Fortunately, Arena Live Chat offers an easy way to offer this experience on any digital platform you manage.
Brand-safe Community Experiences
Deloitte research found that diversity is crucial to Gen Z. Also, Deloitte found that Gen Z judges companies based on their “ethics, practices and social impact” along with the quality of their products. Running your online community in a socially responsible manner is one way to show you understand Gen Z needs.
Offering a brand-safe experience through moderation is also important given the age of Gen Z. Many in Gen Z are not yet adults, so a reasonable level of moderation is essential.
Customer engagement is the new way to think about building trusting relationships with customers. It’s broader than related concepts like customer loyalty. Encouraging customer engagement makes your company more valuable for the long term.
What Is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is how your customers interact with your brand over time. A high level of engagement means customers are interested in new products, online events, and content that you release. Highly engaged customers likely spend significant time visiting your website and interacting with you online.
At its highest level, customer engagement means you have fans who eagerly introduce other people to your brand. This level of passionate engagement makes marketing more efficient because word-of-mouth efforts enhance your campaigns.
Customer engagement is also closely related to other ways of relating to your customers: customer experience and customer satisfaction. Let’s explore how these concepts connect further below.
Comparing Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Satisfaction
Customer engagement and customer satisfaction partly overlap. It’s unlikely that a brand can achieve high customer engagement levels if satisfaction falls. The scope is a crucial point of difference between engagement and satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction often focuses on rating a purchase experience or customer service interaction. For instance, a customer satisfaction survey may ask buyers if their concern was thoroughly addressed when they asked for help.
In contrast, customer engagement goes beyond purchases and interactions with company staff. Customer engagement also considers if a person is acting as a brand ambassador. In addition, customer engagement examines how a person interacts with your online content and experiences.
Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Experience
Customer experience and customer engagement are also related. Both can reinforce each other to increase revenue, reduce service expenses and lift a brand’s long-term prospects. Perspective and emphasis are key differences between these two concepts.
Customer engagement assumes that the customer is an active participant. Moment by moment, the customer decides how much time and money they want to spend with your brand.
Customer experience, in comparison, brings together the company’s departments and capabilities to design a consistent, integrated experience. For instance, robust customer experience ensures offline and online interactions are aligned in copy, offers, and strategy.
A robust customer experience journey makes it far more likely that customer engagement will stay high. The opposite is also true. A dysfunctional customer experience will likely cripple efforts to foster ongoing customer engagement.
3 Ways Customer Engagement Boosts The Bottom Line
Building and sustaining a customer engagement program takes effort and resources. So, it’s reasonable to ask what return you should expect. The return on investment from strong customer engagement takes a few different forms.
1.Improves Marketing Effectiveness
A highly engaged customer base makes it easier to boost the effectiveness of your marketing in a few ways. Engaged customers are more likely to refer other customers – a growth channel that is free for you. In addition, highly engaged customers are more likely to share a steady stream of data about themselves and their preferences. This stream of first-party data makes it far easier to create personalized marketing campaigns which are proven to deliver excellent results.
2. Improves Product Development
Changing or launching an existing product takes time and effort. Fortunately, customer engagement can reduce the risk of product development missteps.
For example, you can ask your best customers for feedback on features and prototypes before launching them in large campaigns. In addition, early customer feedback can yield reviews, feedback, and other forms of social proof, which make it far easier to launch something new to the market.
3. Reduces Customer Service Costs
Highly engaged customers are often willing to provide help to other customers. For example, take a look at the forums dedicated to software.
It’s common to see experienced users provide tips and advice to other users on social websites like Stack Overflow. One should not expect customers to take on all customer service responsibilities, but every bit helps to ease the burden of customer service.
Customer engagement has the potential to boost profitability. It’s important to know whether or not your program is trending in the right direction.
7 Signs Of Healthy Customer Engagement
How do you know if your customer engagement efforts are working? The best way is to build a strategy and develop custom measures associated with that strategy. As a starting point, the following indicators will tell you if your customer engagement program is on the right track.
1. Your Loyalty Program Is Thriving And Growing
High levels of participation in loyalty programs are an excellent sign of customer engagement. If customers take the extra step to register in your program, activate offers, and so forth, they are engaged with your offers.
However, relying too heavily on a customer loyalty program can be misleading. A brand offering unusually lucrative rewards may see a short-term increase in loyalty program engagement. To provide a more balanced view, look at some of the other signs below.
2. Your Online Events Pull In Excited Participants
Look at the attendance numbers and quality of engagement in your digital events and experiences. It’s a good sign if you have a cadre of loyal customers who consistently join your events month in and month out.
You might measure the number of people who take action during live events (e.g., the number of clicks on your conversion cards using Arena Live Chat).
3. You Receive Positive Reviews
Positive reviews written directly by customers indicate that your customers like your product. In addition, a steady stream of positive reviews is an even better sign of a highly engaged customer base.
4. Customers Submit Feature Requests, Ideas & More
When customers reach out to ask for changes, such as feature requests in software or different colors in apparel, that is an excellent sign. Your brand can also encourage this type of engagement by seeking feedback in surveys, live chat sessions, and other venues.
5. You Recover Effectively From Most Complaints
This signal of effective customer engagement is associated with customer service. Simply put, it’s challenging to eliminate all customer complaints. However, a company that effectively responds to complaints promptly is more likely to retain content customers.
6. You Have An Active And Growing Referral Program
While this measure of engagement has drawbacks, it is an excellent sign of engagement. If you see consistent referral volume, that is an excellent sign of engagement.
7. Customers Are Interacting With Your Online Content
This sign of customer engagement is essential for publishers. A paying subscriber who never visits your website, downloads a podcast, or views a video is at a heightened risk of disengaging and leaving your community.
For non-publishers, interacting with your online content is also essential to track. A high level of engagement tells you that your content program is on the right track. In addition, interactions with your content are an excellent opportunity to generate first-party data.
Customer Engagement In Practice: The Customer Engagement Lifecycle
Lasting customer engagement is a lifecycle process leading to continuous improvement. Every time you go through the process, you can deepen customer relationships and trust.
1. Gather Data From Your Customers
Data gathered directly from your customers, also known as first-party data, is the foundation of customer engagement. When designing programs and initiatives for your customers, measuring your efforts and collecting feedback are vital.
The way you gather data from your customers also matters. Email and website analytics can automate some of this to see which pages and content drive opens, clicks, and user attention. In other cases, using surveys and other direct approaches to solicit feedback is wise.
2. Analyze Your Customer Data
Arena Personas (Beta) makes it easier to get a clear picture of your customer engagement across multiple channels like email, website, and chat interactions. Gathering all of that data in one place is the starting point. Your next step is to analyze the customer data. Use the following questions to get started:
What customer engagement patterns are we seeing (e.g., the highest-value customers tend to attend webinars and other live experiences)?
Are there any gaps or quality issues in the customer data (for example, do you need data from your customer relationship management app)?
Does this data help us make better predictions about purchases, referrals, and other valuable actions?
3. Develop Customer Engagement Tests
Reviewing customer engagement data is interesting. However, the data on its own will not drive growth. It’s crucial to take some well-thought-out risks using customer engagement data.
The tests could be small in scope, like creating a test around marketing copy that succeeded with your website audience and rolling it out on display ads. Or it might be more involved, like adjusting incentives to encourage past customers to return and make more purchases.
4. Observe The Results And Iterate
Once you have a few marketing tests in mind, allow some time to pass to gather meaningful data. Unless you have an extensive customer base, thirty days are usually enough time to pass.
Once you have the new customer engagement data in, review your test. Ask yourself whether your assumptions are correct or need to be changed. Once you have gleaned whatever insights you can, iterate on the process and start the lifecycle process again.
Customer Engagement Strategies
There are several proven strategies that drive higher customer engagement. To boost (or launch) your customer engagement program, pick some strategies to delight your customers.
1. Launch (Or Enhance) Your Loyalty Program
A loyalty program is among the best ways to encourage ongoing customer engagement. Retailers, airlines, and other companies have proven the value of these programs for years. Yet, you don’t have to build a complex program to get started.
Your initial program could start by offering premium content or products to members first. Another approach is to offer a discount or another incentive to registered members.
2. Encourage The Right Behavior In Your Online Community
Customer engagement is ultimately built up through individuals interacting with your brand positively over time. When your online community starts, setting expectations with your audience is essential.
Executing this strategy will generally have two elements: positive and negative. The positive element is to look for highly engaged customers and praise their actions (e.g., like their comments, send thank you messages, and so forth). This praise will help to encourage your customers to keep up the excellent work.
The negative element is to have a set of ground rules and live up to them on your standard. For example, a brand may have a strict policy against hate speech, profanity, and other “not safe for work” content. If a community participant runs afoul of these rules, take appropriate action, such as sending them a private message to stop the behavior or potentially banning the person from your community if the negative behavior continues.
3. Invite Engagement Through Online Experiences
Creating the right environment is another way to boost customer engagement. Your website can potentially be the center of your brand’s online community. With Arena Live Chat, you can run live events from your website efficiently.
Offering a live chat experience to your customers is one of the best ways to grow relationships at scale and, what’s more, this kind of experience tends to be very popular with Gen Z… You might already have a chat in place for customer service. While helpful in solving problems, one-on-one customer service chat interactions do little to grow your community.
Instead, looking for ways to boost your community through live events where like-minded people can come together is more powerful. For example, you might invite your customers to join an “Ask me anything” online event with your CEO to bring a more human touch to your brand.
The Easiest Way To Lift Customer Engagement On Your Website
Customer engagement is good for the bottom line, makes marketing easier, and gives your customers a social experience. To bring your customer engagement strategy to life, it’s crucial to have the right technology.
The age of treating every customer the same is coming to an end. Thanks to Amazon, Netflix, and other digital community platforms, customers expect a personalized experience that reflects their interests. Without that, customers will start to view your brand as out of touch.
The good news? New strategies and technologies are making it easier than ever to connect with your customers. Before jumping into the specifics, stepping back and clarifying customer engagement is essential.
What is Customer Engagement?
A brand with strong customer engagement is one where customers have a deep, ongoing relationship. Instead of passing website visitors who forget about your content, highly engaged and loyal customers are different. They look forward to coming back to your website repeatedly. Many of them will even become ambassadors by sharing your content and reports on their social media profiles.
In other words, customer engagement is like having a group of trusted friends who would miss you if you were gone. Customer engagement helps brands develop customer loyalty, which will sustain your brand through disruption and downturns.
Why is Customer Engagement Important?
Customer engagement strategies are critically important for several reasons. Let’s dive right into them.
Reason 1: Customers Value Experiences, Not Just Products
Recent research from Salesforce found that 80% of customers value the experience of interacting with a brand. Your customers might use your products differently, according to their own interests, expectations and preferences. That means that offering a personalized experience is essential.
If the customer experience is boring or disappointing, achieving significant growth will likely be very difficult.
Reason 2: Governments Are Changing The Rules
Many people around the world are upset about how their personal information has been handled by digital companies. As a result, governments have imposed significant controls, fines, and laws that penalize companies that fail to protect companies. For instance, California and the European Union have imposed significant consumer rights and company obligations relating to personal data.
When your company focuses on customer engagement, the entire process tends to be transparent. Your customers will see that you’re gathering information from them and using it to provide a rich experience. In contrast, other strategies, such as relying on third-party cookies, are perceived as being less transparent.
Reason 3: The Decline and Fall of Third-Party Cookies
Engaging customers is all about developing a direct relationship with your audience. It’s a significant change from marketers’ strategies for over a decade: third-party cookies.
For years, marketers have relied on this data to track customer activity across the Internet quietly. While powerful for brands, this type of individual behavioral tracking has prompted significant privacy concerns. As a result, Apple has removed support for cookies from their browser. By 2024, Google Chrome – the world’s most popular browser – will also remove support for third-party cookies.
The end of third-party cookies means that your brand has to find other ways to achieve growth, like customer engagement,
Reason 4: ROI Personalized Experience
We saved the best for last: customer engagement and retention strategies deliver far greater ROI. How? Personalization can lift ROI on marketing significantly – McKinsey found it can drive a 10% increase in sales. First-party data, provided directly by the customer or audience member, is one of the most reliable ways to gather accurate data to fuel personalization.
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Want to explore first-party data further and use it to increase revenue? Our explainer post has you covered: What Is First-Party Data?
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Fortunately, there are some barriers to entry to delivering these kinds of experiences. That’s good news for you. Investing in customer engagement now gives you an edge over the competition.
Your marketing, content, and offers will be seen as much more relevant. That means more clicks, shares, and revenue without relying on third parties like social media platforms.
Customer engagement is robust and has a lot to offer. Yet, these benefits might seem a bit abstract. That’s why we’re breaking down the concept and looking at it in three primary use cases: publishing, marketing, and sales.
Effective Customer Engagement Strategies
Customer Engagement for Publishers
Most publishers earn most of their revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions. To achieve both goals, converting anonymous website visitors into registered users is vital.
There are several ways to apply customer engagement to your publishing business. For simplicity, assume you are focusing on boosting engagement with paid subscribers because you want to lift recurring revenue. The following strategies can help you to lift engagement.
Offer Small Group Experiences
Loneliness had already become a major social problem before the pandemic arrived – today, 1 in 3 Americans are lonely, according to Harvard. Publishers can lift engagement and offer chances to connect through small group experiences.
The concept is simple: invite subscribers to a “fireside chat” style event and limit attendance to 20-30 people. Running a smaller group experience makes it far easier to focus your content and allows your audience to meet like-minded people.
Offer Multiple Incentives For User Data
Maintaining high customer engagement means staying relevant to your audience even as their needs change. That means the standard approach of gathering audience preference and interest data at registration isn’t enough.
The solution is to give your audience more incentives to share data with you regularly. For instance, you might offer to extend your paid subscriber’s subscription by three months if they agree to participate in 3 short online surveys over 90 days. Beyond free access, some in your audience might be interested in sharing their insights with you if there is a prospect of being quoted or included in your coverage. Experiment with multiple incentives to see what connects best with your audience.
If you’re not in the publishing business, don’t worry. We’ve got your needs covered in the following two sections.
Customer Engagement for Marketing
Some, perhaps most, of your website visitors will not be ready to buy the first time they land on your website. Your website will likely be forgotten if you fail to offer an appealing experience. Here are some ways you can make your website more engaging for customers.
Use engagement technology on your website
Social experiences for your audience – like asking questions and reacting to others’ comments – can happen right on your website. There’s no need to rely on social media platforms as your only way of building an online community.
Installing Arena Live Chat on your website is a great way to make your website more engaging. You can install the software and launch a chat session in just a few minutes. The best part? You keep the audience’s attention focused on your website, which means more chances to earn conversions.
Create real-time experiences for your audience on your website
Live experiences like live shopping, live streaming, and even watching other people play games on Twitch are powerful ways to drive attention. There are multiple ways to draw significant attention. You can publish long-form content, including articles, videos, and podcasts. Engaging content is often the spark that draws the audience’s attention to your website.
You can also deliver interactive experiences for your audience. These experiences give people a reason to return to your website repeatedly. For example, you can use Arena Live Blog to provide coverage of a major industry event like CES if you are in the electronics field.
Customer Engagement for Sales
Customer engagement for sales is critical for any business focusing on long-term customer relationships. Use these strategies to keep your buyers coming back for more and more.
Enrich your loyalty program
Points, discounts, and other traditional incentives are all proven ways to keep customers buying. Unfortunately, standing out in the loyalty space is getting more difficult.
The average American had 7.6 active loyalty membership memberships in 2022, according to Statista, while the average number of total memberships was 16.6. That means that nearly half of loyalty program members are inactive!
One solution is to offer memorable experiences for your loyal members, like online events. For instance, you might invite your “VIP customers” to have early access to products in development or place custom requests. Going the extra mile to give your best customers something special can help to lift engagement.
Invite customers to share their experiences
You’re probably already encouraging reviews, recording customer interviews, and publishing case studies. Another way to invite your customers into your growth efforts is to shine a spotlight on your customers in digital events. For example, invite a few of your top customers to a panel discussion and leverage Live Chat to encourage discussion.
Using Arena For Customer Engagement
Highly engaging content and a deep understanding of your audience are crucial to customer engagement. Empowering your team with the right tools to create digital experiences for customers is crucial. Arena Live Chat makes building a digital community on your website easy. Learn more about using Arena to grow an online community for customer engagement.
An online community is an important way to drive leads, engagement, and sales. While powerful, it can be challenging to design a thriving community without examples. To help you broaden your horizons and see all the possibilities around, we’ve reviewed a combined B2C and B2B online communities. These communities have been active for years and show sustained engagement.
Thriving Online Communities: 3 B2C Examples
A growing number of consumer-focused brands have created thriving communities. These efforts usually involve a combination of community building on social media and the brand’s website. There are lessons to model in each case, even if you don’t have the same product. For example, a cosmetics brand might share the audience profile as your clothing brand. Let’s examine how three different consumer companies have created digital communities hubs.
Founded in 2014, Glow Recipe is a skincare beauty brand. The business started by importing Korean beauty products into the United States. After a few years, the business launched its own products. By 2021, CNBC reports that the company has an “estimated $100 million in sales.”
The Glow Recipe approach to forming a digital community involves content and a rewards program.
Glow Recipe’s Content
The skincare company has a significant amount of video content and blog content to attract customers. With over 85,000 subscribers, the Glow Recipe YouTube channel includes tutorials, product videos, and media appearances. The brand’s blog is notable for its themed interview series “Boss Babes,” featuring successful women entrepreneurs and creative professionals.
Loyalty Program
The company’s content helps to attract customers, but what about inspiring repeat business? That’s where the company’s loyalty program, “Glow Rewards,” comes in. For each dollar spent with the brand, customers earn points that can be redeemed for products.
In addition, Glow Recipe’s founders had a fresh idea to bring Korean skincare products to the US market. The Glow Recipe approach is largely focused on the online world exclusively. Let’s see how Lululemon integrates digital and offline experiences to build its community.
Based in Canada, Lululemon is best known for its yoga apparel and related products. The premium brand has attracted a significant following. The company’s focus on community building is a key driver for its success.
Events
Many stores sell athletic and leisure apparel, but few have created event experiences like Lululemon. The company’s Flatiron store in New York alone has hosted over 30 events, including fitness instruction (e.g., kettlebell basics) and offline and virtual community events with guests (e.g., the mindful creative series and book release events).
Customer Stories
Lululemon has a significant selection of inspiring customer stories called the Sweat Collection. This content includes interviews and instructional content on desk stretches and yoga routines from coaches, personal trainers, athletes and other fitness professionals. The company’s stories are brilliantly illustrated with high-quality photos and videos.
Premium Content
Ever thought about starting your own streaming service? Take inspiration from Lululemon Studio. The service includes more than 10,000 workouts. In addition, Lululemon Studio app users get a discount at Studio Partners’ locations. The paid version of the plan is currently priced at $39 per month with a twelve-month commitment
Lululemon’s success with community building shows that brands can build events, group experiences, and more around physical products.
Sony’s Playstation has transformed into a thriving digital community. According to Statista, there are over 100 million monthly active users on the Playstation network as of September 2022, up from 50 million in 2014.
Designing A Shared Experience Into The Product
A key reason for Sony’s success is the shared gaming experience. By building a networked experience, players can find other people to play with worldwide. Social features and experiences are quickly becoming an everyday experience.
The Rise and Fall of The PS4 Community
While successful in many respects, Playstation offers a cautionary tale. In 2021, Sony announced it was shutting down the Playstation 4 communities. Accessible via the Playstation and a mobile app, this community feature gave players an interactive message board. ArsTechnica points out that unmoderated communities became a problem. At the same time, it’s clear that many Playstation enthusiasts are disappointed by the company’s decision.
Learn from Sony’s experience as you build brand communities. Moderation and oversight are important to maintaining the quality of community experiences. The continuing rise of online hate speech and other inappropriate content means that brand communities must remain vigilant.
Successful Online Communities: 3 B2B Examples
Building a community around a B2B audience is often considered more difficult than building a consumer community. It’s typically easy to find consumers who fit a broad profile, like men under 30 who love fitness. With B2B audiences, it can be more difficult to tap into.
Salesforce has grown into one of the most successful business software companies. The business started by tightly focused on software for sales teams. The company has recently developed products for marketing, field service, and other teams. Throughout that growth, the Salesforce focus on community has been a constant.
Salesforce Events
The Salesforce annual conference, known as Dreamforce, has become one of the largest technology conferences in the world. In 2022, the event attracted over 40,000 attendees to San Francisco. To extend the conference experience, Salesforce has made recordings of many sessions available online via Salesforce+.
The company doesn’t put all of its event eggs in the Dreamforce basket either. The business has also run a series of regional events through its Trailhead program, with gatherings planned in Phoenix, Austin, Portland, Minneapolis, and beyond in 2023. This regional approach is a smart way to reach more people unable or unwilling to travel to the Dreamforce event.
Salesforce Ecosystem of Partners and Certifications
Salesforce software is complex, with many different settings and customization options. This is a common challenge facing many business software companies. Salesforce solved this issue by leveraging its community in two ways. Rather than building up an extensive professional services division, the business has focused on developing a network of consultants. To demonstrate their expertise to clients, consultants also have the option to earn Salesforce certifications.
As of late 2022, Salesforce offers certifications for several career roles, including administrators, developers, architects, marketers, and consultants. These programs have become so popular that an industry of authors, trainers, and other experts has emerged to help people earn their certifications.
Salesforce Content Marketing
Salesforce is no stranger to content marketing either. The company currently has podcasts dedicated to marketing trends, trends in the professional world, and IT. Further, the Salesforce YouTube channel has more than 240,000 YouTube subscribers. The company’s videos include interviews, how-to content, and company news.
The Salesforce approach to content includes significant training resources for its users. The company’s Trailhead website offers in-demand videos, networking opportunities, and social media-style experiences.
The Salesforce approach to creating a highly engaged community has paid dividends. In 2022, it is estimated that nearly 100,000 people have earned Salesforce certifications. Whether you look at the company’s events or digital experiences, Salesforce has achieved tremendous engagement with its online community platforms.
Where should you go if you have a passion for analytics and engineering? The DBT Community has used several strategies to build community engagement for their technical users.
DBT Website
The centerpiece of the DBT community, which is organized around several themes: help, show and tell, and in-depth discussions. The B2B community provides immediate value by allowing users to post code and questions.
Slack
In addition to the discussion board on the DBT website, the company also offers community Slack. To keep discussions focused, the Slack has multiple channels like #leading-data-teams, #jobs (to post job postings or job hunt for people knowledgeable in dbt), and #analytics-craft.
Open Source Participation
The technology business also participates in the open source movement. The DBT-labs GitHub page has plugins, scripts, and other documentation. Choosing to offer open-source participation may not fit with every company’s goals. However, it’s wise to look for opportunities to collaborate with technical users to make your product more valuable.
3) Stripe and Indie Hackers
Stripe, a major payment software provider, has taken a different path to online community building. In 2017, Indie Hackers was acquired by Stripe. The Indie Hackers brand includes a very active discussion forum, interview-style podcasts, and rich data. Cortland Allen, the founder of Indie Hackers, explained his decision to sell the company by discussing the burden of running the business:
“However, filling ad inventory every month has come at a cost. It was starting to occupy a large chunk of my time, and I found myself spending less and less time producing great content for the interviews, the podcast, and the forum — the very reasons I created the site in the first place.” – Acquired by Stripe.
The Stripe approach to buying an online community is significant in two ways. First, it shows that organizations don’t always have to create digital communities from scratch. Second, it shows the power of thinking more broadly about your customer base and community. Indie Hackers isn’t focused on payments – the core business of Stripe. That said, Stripe realized that online entrepreneurs need to get paid and can use Stripe to meet that goal.
Create Your Online Community Today
Whether you are selling to consumers or large businesses, an online community is a powerful strategy to generate leads, increase sales and sustain growth. These examples show different ways of using content, events, and other tactics to foster community growth. It’s also important to have the right technology for your online community. Learn more about building your digital community with Arena.
Building a virtual community is a powerful way to have a positive impact. Online communities have tremendous flexibility in terms of time and participation. Yet many organizations miss opportunities to enrich their live events with an online community platform.
What Is A Virtual Community?
There are various ways to define a virtual community. Some researchers focus on questions of social identity, but our definition is more straightforward: a virtual community is a group of people who communicate digitally around a shared interest.
For example, there is a thriving virtual community in many parts of the technology industry. If you want to ask questions and get advice about Microsoft, Salesforce, and other platforms, there is an online community for those interests. Many virtual communities are also dedicated to sports, movies, TV shows and hobbies.
For publishers and companies, starting or growing a virtual community or even a series of online communities has significant attractions.
The Pros and Cons of A Virtual Community
Starting and growing a virtual community has multiple benefits for your community members and the event organizer. Here are some of the essential benefits to keep in mind.
Pros of Having a Virtual Community
Establishing a virtual community for your audience offers significant benefits, including making it easy to find warm leads.
Get More Leads
Thriving online communities related to your company are a ready source of potential leads. With the right approach, your community may act as a sounding board for new product ideas and as early adopters. While that is an exciting benefit, your virtual community has to offer your community members appealing benefits, or you will lose people over time.
Increase Engagement
For some organizations, like online media companies, growing audience engagement is their top goal. For publishers seeking to maintain or grow their paid subscriber base, offering a virtual community goes a long way toward achieving those goals. Online community growth becomes more manageable when your audience responds to new posts, announcements, and more. A more engaged audience is more likely to purchase and engage with advertising.
Differentiate Your Brand
You’ve probably spent considerable time and effort creating a distinct and memorable brand. Yet few people outside the company likely understand your brand promise as profoundly as you might hope. Most potential customers are thinking about their families, needs, and problems – your brand probably doesn’t come to mind too often.
That’s where offering a compelling virtual community makes a positive impact. When people associate your brand with a community of friends who share their interests, your brand will become more appealing. Over time, a strong community can translate into significant brand loyalty and a greater willingness to accept premium prices.
Improve Mental Health
Seeing mental health on this list might surprise you because it may not be one of your goals. However, giving people access to a solid online community where they can connect with others who share their interests matters. Developing a positive and inclusive virtual community may help people reduce anxiety and the impact of other problems like loneliness.
That said, a thriving online community hub is not the same thing as treatment. But every bit of positive human connection your community offers can help people get through a rough time.
Cons of Having an Online Community
While there is much to be said about running a virtual community, there are some disadvantages to keep in mind.
Virtual Community Is A Long-Term Strategy
Developing a thriving virtual community will yield results, but these results often take years to yield fruit. In that sense, a running virtual community tends to produce better results when running alongside other marketing strategies. That said, there is a shortcut to building a virtual community faster, which we will reveal in the next section.
A Virtual Community Requires Leadership and Content
Most thriving online communities revolve around leaders and content. For many small businesses, the founder may act as the leader, content creator, and community facilitator. In a larger organization, these roles can be shared among several people. In the long term, it is sometimes possible to recruit members of your community as well.
In the beginning, expect to invest considerable sweat equity in your virtual community. A successful content strategy is vital to making the community attractive. Without an appealing content strategy, it will be hard to see the value of your community. When the community is small, take the time to interact with each new member who signs up.
A Virtual Community Requires The Right Technology
Setting up the technology needed to launch a digital community may feel daunting. At a minimum, a virtual community needs message board capabilities so that people can post messages and receive a community response. While useful, a message board is probably not enough to make your virtual community appealing. Instead, take inspiration from thriving online communities (e.g., the gaming community), which include video chat, live chat, and virtual events.
One Shortcut To Jump Start Your Virtual Community
Developing a thriving virtual community takes time, but there is one way to accelerate the process: events. Specifically, running a virtual or hybrid event can help ignite your community’s growth. Unlike a simple online message board, events are different.
In contrast to an always-available online group, an event is a limited and scarce experience. Since the event occurs at a specific time and place, there is a real sense of scarcity. That scarcity helps to make the event more valuable. Furthermore, a virtual event that uses a proven process, like our virtual event checklist, is well organized and tends to offer relevant content to participants.
How To Bridge The Gap Between Virtual And Real Communities
The value of connecting a virtual community and a traditional community is all about finding the best of both worlds. Let’s look at a few examples in both the corporate and educational settings that illustrate the power of these events.
Specifically, adding live chat to your online events makes a tremendous difference in bringing your community together. With live chat, you can get feedback from your peers, answer questions and build connections.
Bringing Together In Persona And Virtual Communities For Companies
The booming popularity of remote and hybrid work arrangements has delivered considerable benefits. Flexible schedules and greater work-life balance are precious. Yet the lack of real-time interaction over coffee or lunch can make it more difficult to form strong relationships. The critical technology to enable these virtual communities is implementing a live chat, because it makes it easy and simple to share comments, questions and more.
To enrich your community, start with these virtual community and virtual event ideas.
Annual Company Conference
Many companies run annual conferences to connect with their customers, recognize top performers and announce important events. Adding a virtual community to this type of corporate event helps in several ways. First, you can accommodate more participants, including those who might be unable to travel to the event in person. Second, you can extend the conference experience before and after the official conference date. For example, you might launch “teaser videos” about the conference keynote speakers in advance to spark greater excitement.
Sales Kick Off
Supporting the company sales team is a critical leadership responsibility. Success in sales requires perseverance in the face of pressure, disappointment, and stress. Offering encouragement, relevant training, and other resources in a sales kick-off event can help the sales team to thrive.
Enriching your sales kick-off event with a virtual community helps deepen the event’s value. For example, you might invite a sales expert like Jeb Blount about one of his books, “Fanatical Prospecting” or “Selling The Price Increase.” To support your team in applying the lessons of the book covered in the keynote, set up a virtual community where people can come together to share their wins, questions, and other comments weekly.
Recruitment Events
Attracting high-quality graduates and employees to work for your organization is becoming more difficult in many countries. As of July 2022, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that US unemployment has fallen to 3.5%. In other words, many workers have choices. New methods like recruitment strategies are needed for employers seeking to compete for the best talent.
Enhancing recruitment with a virtual community starts with taking a long-term view of talent. Instead of engaging students when they are a few months away from graduation, start earlier. This might take the form of establishing a virtual community for your summer internship program. Give your current and prospective employees a chance to interact with your current staff, ask questions and find out why they should consider working with you.
By the way, you don’t have to restrict yourself to cultivating graduates and younger professionals only. For inspiration, look at the virtual communities that the world’s leading consulting firms have long cultivated. PwC, a global leader in accounting and consulting, runs a US alumni program that offers on-demand learning to help alumni succeed, networking opportunities, and career opportunities for former employees.
Fostering Higher Education Using Virtual Communities
For colleges and universities, virtual communities can make an even greater impact. The following introduces a few opportunities. For a comprehensive guide to virtual event ideas in higher education, see our post: 60 Awesome University Virtual Events Ideas. Organizing a virtual event series is a powerful way to grow your virtual community.
Just make sure that you include live chat so that your students, alumni and other community members can easily participate – not everybody likes to appear on video after all.
College Orientation
Many colleges and universities have reported lower enrollment numbers over the past few years. The pandemic, high costs and the growth of alternative online learning opportunities have some questioning the value of traditional post-secondary education.
Offering a robust college orientation experience is one way that campus leaders reach out to their students. In addition to traditional orientation activities and parties, look for ways to build a virtual community that starts before students arrive on campus.
The assigned reading of new books includes memoirs, novels, essays and other works. For example, the University of Delaware assigned “While the Earth Sleeps We Travel: Stories, Poetry, and Art from Young Refugees Around the World” by Ahmed M. Badr. Meanwhile, Siena College has assigned the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Nickel Boys” to new students. Giving students a book to read before they arrive on campus gives them a tangible connection to campus long before they show up in person.
These reading recommendations help to give students common ground with their peers and to start their learning journey. Why not invite students to join a virtual community where they can discuss the book and raise other questions before they arrive on campus?
College Career Fair
After paying thousands of dollars in fees, many students are hungry to discover their career opportunities. Traditional career fair events offer invaluable networking opportunities. These events are not accessible to all students, especially those with significant family or work commitments. Asking a student to give up a paying shift to attend an event may not be realistic in some cases.
Offering a virtual community to support college career events makes a big difference. For instance, you can invite students to join sub-groups focused on exploring certain professions like accounting, nursing, nonprofits, or engineering. By giving students more time and space to come up with questions and seek support, students are more likely to discover various career paths.
Alumni Organization
Once students leave campus, that doesn’t mean they have left the college community. Many colleges have long-established alumni associations that organize events, networking databases, and other resources. Keeping alumni engaged with valuable insights and opportunities means your alumni are more likely to be open to making donations and volunteering. Just think about the opposite case – what if you only heard from your college alumni association when they had a donation campaign? It might feel like a one-way relationship, and such relationships tend not to last long.
What if you’re not sure what to offer your alumni? Take inspiration from the McMaster University Alumni Association. In 2020, they solicited feedback from their alumni and received dozens of suggestions, including requests for online events. Many of these suggestions could be integrated into a virtual community format. For instance, one alumnus requested computer skill training for older people curious about digital technology.
Get Started Building Your Virtual Community
Starting a virtual community is an exciting journey, but it’s not one you should take alone. Find out about Arena’s Social & Communities page for more information on how we can help you grow faster.
