Building a Great Online Community
Establishing credit can be difficult at times without the proper knowledge, but with guidance from an expert it can manageable. As a successful credit educator, entrepreneur and business coach, Shonda Martin is the person for the job. Martin is the proud founder and CEO of Road to 750 LLC, whose company targets millennials to learn the importance of achieving and maintaining a credit score in good range. The way she has impacted many millennials’ lives is by leveraging social media. One of the many platforms she is on is Facebook, where she runs the largest credit education group with 380,000 members and counting. Martin is a true example of how to lead an impactful and positive online community.
If you don’t know already, an online community is a group of users who interact through a shared goal, challenge, or interest. Each community has different rules and regulations and can be administered by individuals or brands who want to build engagement around a specific subject matter. Online communities can be chosen to either be open or closed networks. An open network allows any user to view their discussions and tends to have simple rules to sign up and join. Closed communities can only be viewed by members and require stricter qualifications to join. However, closed communities usually provide exclusive content to its members than open communities cannot.
There are many online community platforms, but the one that stands out for me the most is Facebook. My reasoning for this is because of the many neat tools and features they have created to make connecting with users in a community feel like you’re interacting with other physically rather than virtually.
Here are just some of the many features Facebook Groups can do:
· Members have the ability to share multimedia posts within the group
· Administrators can go live and discuss things with members
· Administrators can pin keyword hashtags to help members find specific topics
· Administrators can host question-and-answer sessions in the group
· A customized greeting message from admins to new members when they join
In order to build a great community, you have to make sure you give your members positive and welcoming atmosphere to want to engage and build trust within the community. The first tip would be to think of unique call to action to get users to want to sign up and become a member. Another tip would be to create conversation starts to get members to want to talk with you and other members.
As you can see, building an online community comes with great benefits for not only the creator, but also the members. In an online community, every member has a voice and has equal opportunity to contribute it. You can receive or give advice on things you may have experienced or are about to experience to get prepared for it. A great online community should exude loyalty and support to each and every member that joins. I am proud to say I am apart of many great online communities and cannot wait to create my own in the near future.
References:
Elder, D. (2021, November 26). What is an online community? (and how you can grow one). Tribe Blog. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://tribe.so/blog/what-is-online-community/#what-makes-a-great-online-community
MakeUseOf. (2021, October 26). Shonda Martin: The Credit Controller Leveraging Social Media to Impact lives. MUO. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.makeuseof.com/shonda-martin-the-credit-controller-leveraging-social-media-to-impact-lives/
Williams, V. (2020, December 7). The power of facebook groups: Tips for Strengthening Your Business. Ignite Social Media. Retrieved January 11, 2022, from https://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/facebook-marketing/the-power-of-facebook-groups-tips-for-strengthening-your-business/
