How I Built a Thriving Online Community from Scratch
When things went virtual in 2020, community became the social fabric that held the world together. Large and niche, communities help us build careers and socialize. Join us for a conversation with John Wayne Zimmerman, Head of Global Community at Splash to discuss ways to build thriving virtual communities. The co-author of the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook Marketing, John has successfully helped build communities for niche nonprofits and tech giants, including Facebook, YouTube, and Google.
We’ll talk about communities large and small, open and private, and when and whether communities should be scaled as the company grows. From staying on top of changing customer needs to facilitating meaningful connections, community is the next big thing in big tech. So, where do you start? Register below and find out!
In a riveting episode of Game Changers, the community manager Yulia warmly welcomes her ambitious guest, John Zimmerman, the Head of Community and Customer Marketing at Splash. Zimmerman, a stalwart in the realm of community building, sheds light on his proficient career journey. He accentuates the integral role of understanding people’s “pains and pleasures” in fashioning an engaged and dynamic community. According to him, the basic principle remains consistently the same – it is the strategies that need meticulous refinement.
Zimmerman emphasizes the necessity of setting clear community rules and expectations. The means of doing this can be both creative and engaging. A spicy suggestion he makes is the use of entertaining videos – a sure-shot way to catch and hold attention. Moreover, he stresses the importance of providing compelling conversation topics for community members and propelling volunteer leaders to mirror various audience segments. To Zimmerman, the primary yardstick of a community’s effectiveness lies in its positive influence on its audience.
In the insightful conversation about constructing a thriving online community for a company, Zimmerman brings to his listeners’ attention that it all commences with carrying out in-depth qualitative surveys with customers. The objective is to understand the values they hold dear in regard to the company and employ these metrics for gauging success. Examples of such elements could be the volume of lively members and the quantity of leads generated. Zimmerman insists that it is nothing short of paramount to prioritize engaging directly with the community and delivering valuable content. It is this engagement and value that compel customers to keep interacting with the brand.
To elevate and scale the community, Zimmerman asserts that data collection must be as automated as possible. Keeping this valuable data in a centralized location allows for seamless access and data utilization. Constant reassessment of the community’s pulse is critical in maintaining an effective and active community. Data can underpin these assessments and can be used to measure quantitative success factors, for instance, renewal rates.
The insightful session on Game Changers comes to a close with Zimmerman’s sagacious advice – begin by communicating with customers about their pain points. As a company, it is pragmatic to understand how you can painlessly become their go-to solution. These seeds of engaging conversation, he promises, will sprout into an enriched and engaged community.
