Creating and growing your business community can offer a unique competitive advantage for your company. Dozens of multimillion dollar startups have leveraged the so-called network effect to secure long-term success. The advantages of building a strong community around your business are evident, but how exactly can you achieve this?
At Startup Club, we put our community at the forefront of business development. In just over a year, we have experienced an accelerated growth and have achieved a staggering number of 40,000 members across our online community. Apart from strong engagement in local social groups, our posts and communications reach over 16,000 people every month, showing that investment in growing and nurturing your community pays off.
We decided to share with you some tips on how to grow your online business community.
Engage with your members on a daily basis
Whether it is through social media, closed online groups, newsletter, or website forums, you need to engage with your members every single day. You want to update your members about what’s happening in your company, and you want them to always stay on alert for more news.
4-1-1 rule
This unspoken rule suggests that for every piece of content about your company, you need to share four pieces of unrelated, informative content and one repost from another source. In the nutshell, you need to make members interested in the content you post! As long as you diversify your content, you will make your community more engaged in what you are saying.
Endorse interactions
Now, you have created interesting content and you share daily updates with your members. Don’t forget that key to healthy community building is engagement! Try to increase interaction with members by responding actively to their questions, commenting on their posts and endorse them for their efforts. Congratulate your members and share their updates, whenever they have something interesting to say. Always keep the conversation going!
Where online meets offline
While active online community is crucial to growing your business and creating brand loyalty, you always need to keep in mind the importance of offline. Come up with creative ways to engage and reward your members for their loyalty through exclusive events, giveaways or merchandise. The more channels you activate to involve your members, the higher results you will see in the long run.
As a part of growing our The Startup Club community, we invite you to join our online Membership forums, where you can exclusively interact with other members, advertise and find startup jobs around the world.
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