Community engagement

Why should I implement a community engagement strategy?

Getting your end users—whether prospects or current customers—to your community platform can be an arduous task for some companies. A visit to a company's traditional community forum often sends customers away more frustrated than enlightened. On the other hand, a community platform strategy that integrates Expert Touchpoints provides customers with access to your authoritative help documentation and allows them to find the exact answers they are looking for. A well-integrated community platform provides the following benefits for your business:

• Validate product use cases
• Increase customer retention
• Increase brand loyalty

Supporting statistics

Customers want accurate and up-to-date content upon first contact with your company. Lack of content or lack of access to content may lead to a customer disconnect. Statistics show that 53% of online adults are likely to abandon their purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to their query, and 73% of them state that the most important thing a company can do is provide flourishing online customer service.

Engage your internal and external users

It is vital for your business to drive both internal and external users to your site as this will drive more prospects to research and understand your product before making a purchase decision. Community platforms also allow existing customers to collaborate with you on product improvements, thus becoming personally invested in your product and your success. Driving internal users to engage with your product documentation allows them to become experts of the product. Community engagement increases brand loyalty and customer retention.
 

Increasing audience reach

Building awareness throughout your Marketing channels is key for substantial engagement. Providing customers with the freedom to choose how to engage is key to capturing a wide target audience. For example, having a blend of social media will augment the community engagement. Your community needs to be the center of customer communication that involves multiple departments within your organization.
 

Steps to implement your engagement strategy

Implementing your community engagement strategy is the final key component to getting your platform off the ground and in the air, and can be accomplished in six easy steps. With the help of your community engagement team, start creating and supporting product experts and brand promoters:

1. If you do not have a central place to house your customer-facing documentation, leverage a customer engagement platform such as Expert to handle that for you.
2. Allow your community platform to be visible to your customers. Link to your other web properties or applications with Expert Touchpoints.
3. Connect with your community through your product documentation directly from within your community page. Members can search for authoritative content by leveraging the Expert search tool, keeping them engaged on your site.
4. Create compelling, up-to-date and relevant content for your community members. Knowing what documentation addresses the common issues is critical to your community as a whole.
5. Allow members of the community to engage with your documentation via contextual help tool inside the community page. Connect a Touchpoint directly to a feature to empower your members to become product experts as they delve into the specific feature that pertains to their pain.
6. Lastly, engage your brand promoters. Reward customers for their contributions. Thank them for conversing throughout the platform. Maybe send them a T-shirt or a branded item in the mail. Showing appreciation for community contributions is one of the best ways to reinforce the kind of behavior you seek and builds long-lasting relationships.