#5 Types of Communities | HelioHype | 💜💛

Hello, my dear HeliosYou want your community to be active and engaged as much as possible.(Without spending a fortune on different giveaways and stuff like this)That's why you need to get creative with your engagement strategies and "attack" your members from different sides. It sounds cruel, I knowBut before you do try to be creative, I want you to consider what type of a community you want to have.I'm here to present to you a model, which first appeared on one CMX event.It's proved that it can be used in different kinds of situationsand in different communities.It's called SPACES

Support

Customer support and success are easy things to handle and target - create a discussion forum, a FAQ section, or a community portal.Clients (well, in this case those are clients, not just members) will get the chance to get self-service support, help others, connect with team members, find any materials they need, and give feedback.This form of community is great for businesses with an extensive set of products — similar to a technology or software firm — so that users may connect and learn best practices and discuss problems that they encounter when using the products.

Product Feedback

Ideation of solutions, creating novel products, getting feedback is a foresighted and a responsible form of community management.You can form a focus group of actual clients to understand how they think - so that you can provide the best experience for them.This form of community management is perfect for most businesses — asking actual clients and audiences to get inputs on where their business is lacking and how they can create novel solutions.

Acquisition and Advocacy

This form of community implies that you directly engage with the most active folks - brand evangelists, company team, your representatives.With help of word-of-mouth, affiliate programs, and social media you increase people's awareness about your community. Then you put your most valuable members first and center all the engagement around them.This style works the best if you want to boost customer's loyalty, grow brand recognition, and create long-term connections with your fans.

Content creation

You'd largely focus on making sure more user-generated content gets produced more and more. You'd need to develop a content program which would include different member segments.Usually, in this case companies create a huge team to make sure that all user-generated content is relevant and it adheres to company's standards.

External engagement

In this case, it's more about outward-facing community management - social media management. Though it's more about attracting new members, instead of nurturing those you already have. And it's more about creating an audience, not retaining it, remember that.In any case, this form of social interaction is perfect for businesses who want to boost brand recognition while building one-to-many interactions with all types of fans, consumers, and followers.

Internal engagement

Internal will mean connecting staff, team members and partners to nurture their relationships. This provides deep sense of connection, which results in an increased productivity.For example, businesses build social intranets where employees can have casual conversations and bond socially. This is all the more important for companies that are remote-first.

As you can see, there are different types of communities and all of them require specific approach that leads to an infinite growth.In the next issues I'll talk more about communities for businesses and marketing.Stay tuned!Yours,Valeria