In this blog, we will learn how to launch an online community and understand its benefits.
Sell online courses in 2022
Today learn how to launch an online community as 90% of businesses have shifted online due to the pandemic. Understand today’s online market and position yourself accordingly. Establish your presence in the online world as your target audiences are here. If you want to launch a meaningful online community, first you need to build a strong connection. To have a strong community keep sharing valuable content related to your business and brand. Touch the pain point area of your audience and give them a solution.
However, engagement is one of the factors in growing your online community.
Whether you’re an online course creator or a multinational company, having an online community is remarkable. Your community is your strength, and you can turn your followers into customers, drive traffic to your website, retain customers, and increase revenue.
Let’s dive in and understand how to launch an online community for online course creators.
An online community is a group of individuals with whom you can directly interact on an online platform. These communities can range from 10 people to 1 billion people in the group. When you have your community, people can give you suggestions and feedback related to your business or brand.
Whatever platform you decide to start, online communities are a great way to encourage meaningful connections between your followers. An online community is the first step in building your brand.
Related: Create your online Course Step by Step Guide
Table of Contents
Why launch an online community?
Online communities are a great way to connect with your followers and engage with them regularly. An online community brings customers together in one place to share ideas and discuss ideas and plans. It also gets your students together in one place where everyone can discuss the course curriculum, ask questions, or exchange knowledge. It helps to check on what your audience wants to learn from you.
If you’re launching a new community, take your time and prepare a plan. It is essential for your success. When you are aiming for success, first understand why you are building the community and its purpose.
Two questions you should answer when creating an online community:
- Why should I need to engage with my customers online?
- What’s the best platform?
When you get your answers, you are good to go.
4 Benefits of an online community
Online communities are growing in huge numbers. Same time, there are multiple benefits to staying online and building an online community. From brand to online course creators are present online and have their online community. Having an online community helps to showcase you as a leader in your space. Grow your network and audience in this space.
Here we will discuss the benefits of having an online community.
Let’s get started.
Get feedback from your audience: Having regular interaction with your community helps you improve your services to serve them better. Your audiences and followers are the best people who can tell you about improvements or can provide you with positive inputs.
Get to know your audience: Understand their mindset what they have to say about your course, also take their feedback positively. Notice patterns to express their problems that can help you improve your course copy. Your copy should describe that your product is more relevant to them than your competitors and grab their attention.
Increase engagement: Regular conversations and nurturing your online community can increase the engagement of your website, landing page, and sales page. It helps in multiple factors like improving your sales, new followers, helps in brand awareness. An online platform like Instagram and Facebook helps to boost your engagement. All of these actions are going to increase your account’s engagement and put you in front of new users.
Helps to improve ROI: Your online community can improve your ROI when you have given them valuable information which has impacted their life. Sharing good and helpful content is more valuable than money. When you have strongly built your position and stood as an authority in your field, no one can stop you from increasing your sales. Your engagement with your audiences will help you construct a powerful and impactful online course.
Online communities are the space for digital entrepreneurs. Therefore, whether you’re a course creator, an influencer, or a company looking to support its customers, these tips and strategies will help you get your community started.
However, let’s understand the types of online communities and which one best suits you.
Related: How to choose your online course niche
Types of online communities
1) Free Community Platforms:
Today multiple free online communities are available. Free community platforms like Facebook, and Twitter also have community features and pros and cons. One key pro factor is that it’s free for users. Therefore, it is easy to gain followers, but still, you should share valuable content. And, the con is that you cannot own your community on that platform.
2) Owned Community Platforms:
Inside an owned community forum, you get all the benefits of a social media platform, and have much more control and flexibility over how you communicate with your members.
Moreover, when you launch your online course using Graphy Community Platform, you can easily manage yourself, having conversations, and discussions, as this is your personally owned community space.
As with free communities, this is not possible. Owned communities give you more freedom and help in growing and promoting your brand.
Graphy Community Platform also allow you to go beyond the boundaries of social networks. Features such as analytics, access to your members, and custom design help you to create a better experience for your audiences.
Now you are aware of how to launch an online community, apply the above benefits to grow your brand. Let’s now understand the parameters and how to build your community.
Related: 7 ways to validate your online course idea
How to build an online community
After knowing its benefits, now choose a platform like Graphy for your community where you can share content related to your service and have a conversation. But before starting interaction, know how to build your online community step by step.
First understand your business needs, goals, and the importance of your online community.
1) Create a launch framework
When you know what business problem you want to resolve in your community, start creating and planning your content accordingly. Also, create a launch framework.
2) Set your goals and measure community success
Before you launch your online community, one would want to set goals and key performance indicators to measure success. Define your goals and measure your results. You can measure engagement metrics within the community platform. Engagement metrics help to measure how active your community is and how the community is getting benefited.
3) Set up your community
First, decide which platform you wish to host for your community. When you are launching the community on a new platform, make sure you or your team are familiar with the platform. Knowing the platform is essential.
4) Promote your community
Once you have your date set, let your audience know about the launch before. The best way is to promote your launch is to do it inside your website and by sending emails to your existing customers.
Related: How to market your online courses
Hence, there’s no better time to launch an online community.
So start it today.
Final thoughts on online community
However, building an online community may be hard but not impossible. There are many free options available you can use to start your community. But if you want ownership and control, then Graphy is here. The bottom line is to build authentic connections, improve your community keep adding real value, and show appreciation to people who support your brand.
With Graphy Community Platform, you can stay connected with your audience and have a meaningful community.
