Online Community Management For Dummies by Deborah Ng

Author:Deborah Ng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Listening to Your Community

In This Chapter

Finding out what your community wants

Responding to negativity

Controlling damage

Your community is your most important asset, as it’s made up of customers or people who use your product or service on a regular basis. The opportunities here go far beyond selling because now you can receive in-depth information about their habits, including why they like your brand, where you need a little work, and where you’re falling short.

Customer feedback takes on many different forms. It’s not all gathered in letters to the customer service department or calls to your 800 hotline. People are talking about your brand online; sometimes they reach out to you directly, and sometimes it’s in the form of a rant on a blog post or a tweet sharing how happy they are with a user experience.

Gathering and receiving feedback is one of your top tasks. You’re expected to respond to each individual complaint or compliment (even if it’s not your department) — and even fight for your community if you feel they’re being slighted — while still remembering your number one loyalty is to your brand.

Gauging the Wants and Needs of Your Community

You may assume that your community’s members are there to find out more about the product or service, interact with others, or receive discounts, but how can you know for sure?

You can discover what your community wants by being vigilant.

It’s not enough to set up a community and have a nice chit-chat every day. Your community wants more, and it’s up to you to find out what this “more” is. The most successful communities evolve and grow as their numbers grow. They do well because management is open to new ideas and takes all feedback into consideration.

Listening to Your Community

Learning about your community requires more than some survey questions or a poll. Sometimes, the best way to know what your community is thinking is to not seem so obvious about your intentions. Here’s how to determine what your community really wants:

Observe. Having an ear to the ground enables you to pick up on things you wouldn’t otherwise catch. Members talk among themselves on your forum or community pages or on the other social networks. In a forum comment, for example, a member might mention how nice it would be to have a Thumbs Up button so that he can show his approval for other comments or links. Soon, other members add their thoughts about a Thumbs Up button in the same discussion thread. You wouldn’t have known that so many people wanted this feature until it was mentioned as part of a community discussion.

Listen. It’s one thing to watch and a whole other thing to listen. During your rounds on the social networks, blogs, and community pages, pay attention to what people are saying. How many members are saying the same things? Members won’t come to you with every concern or request, but they may share ideas with one another. Pay attention to what they’re saying and take notes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.