As an Internet marketer it’s important that you work at building a community of people around both you and your website in order to be successful. Attracting people who are interested in the topic you cover, as well as your particular style of writing is a crucial step to building your network.
There are many ways that you can go about building this community, and in today’s day and age with the advent of technology, tools, and resources, it is even easier than ever. What took companies several years before can now be done in several months.
When building your community it is important to focus on relationships rather than numbers. While having a huge number of followers, fans, or even subscribers, can be a great boost to the ego, and will certainly lend itself to the social proof aspect of your business, at the end of the day it is the relationships that you build with your community and its individual members that will determine whether or not you are successful.
The best way to build a relationship with your community is to interact with them. Set aside a certain amount of time each and every day to update your community with information and updates related to the topics that you cover. Also, ensure that you are responding to questions, comments, and feedback from your members in a timely manner in order to engage them while they’re still interested.
Some methods that you can use to build your online community include blogs, forums, social networks, and e-mail marketing. Let’s discuss each one individually.
The articles themselves are a great place for you to get a message across; it’s where you get to showcase your knowledge, and communication skills, as well as the fact that you’re willing to impart this knowledge to them for free. In order to stand out from the hundreds of thousands of blogs that are online, you should write in-depth full-length articles that answer questions your potential readers might have.
Blogs
Your blog is the the first point of contact between yourself and potential leads, or clients, therefore it’s important to present yourself as professional, as well as knowledgeable. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Your blog offers a couple of points with which to interact with community members, most notably the comments section below each post. Typically the sooner you respond to comments left on your blog, the more likely you are to receive feedback on that comment either from the person who originally left it, or perhaps someone new was also reading the article and comments.
It is also important to make sure your contact information is readily available to those who go looking for it.
Typically when someone visits a website they are anonymous, and after they leave that website the site owner has no way to reach out and contact them, therefore it’s extremely important that you capture their information as soon as possible.
The common practice among blog owners is to offer their readers something of value in exchange for their e-mail address, e-books, e-courses, and other information packages typically do quite well. A well-designed set up will be able to convert approximately 10% of the visitors each day.
Forums
No matter what niche you happen to be in, there’s most likely an online forum where people get together and discuss ideas and concepts related to that topic. This is a great opportunity for you to meet like-minded individuals as well as people who are interested in your topic and who could very well be interested in what you have to say. Most forums allow a signature file that displays at the bottom of each post you make, include a quick sentence about your site or blog, as well as the address to get there. If you get into the habit of posting informative posts, and contributing both to the forum, and therefor to its members, people will soon start to notice and start to look to you as an expert, from there; it shouldn’t be too hard to convert them into first readers of your own blog, and later on possibly even clients, or customers.
Social Networks
Social networks are another great place you can focus your attention in order to build your online community of both potential clients as well as peers. It is important to note however, that your time spent on these sites should be allocated to developing your business rather than chatting with old friends. There are many who build their entire list of leads from social media sites like Facebook or twitter, and who do quite well at it.
E-mail marketing
Now that your website is set up properly, tweaked and tuned to convert 10% of your visitors into subscribers it’s important to start building a relationship with them. Make sure that you connect with them on a regular basis, now that isn’t to say that it has to be done manually. Typically most Internet marketers will set up a follow-up sequence of e-mails to go out at predetermined intervals after each subscriber signs up. We call this the sales funnel process, and this is where we turn our leads into our customers.
By knowing the end result you wish your customers to take, it’s a simple matter to set up a series of e-mails leading up to that step, for example; if you’re offering a course on how to make money blogging, your series of e-mail’s would outline of the steps needed for them to set up and start running their own blog. By helping them, and making their life easier showing them quick tips, tricks, and methods for making this whole process run more smoothly, you’ll be leading them down the path that leads directly to your door.
It’s important to note that rather than try to sell those people it is always more effective to simply suggest sell to them. If they’ve followed you this far, they obviously see you as an expert in your niche, and they won’t think twice about taking your advice on which hosting company to go with or other similar areas of the business.
Another thing you gain by helping them rather than trying to sell to them the entire time is that by giving them time and resources of yours, you’ll be building reciprocity into the equation. It is human nature that when someone gives us something, we feel like we should give something back.
Incoming search terms for the article:
- building a community (5)
- build a community (4)
- inurl:internet marketingblog comments (2)
- community buidling (2)
- Building a community around your blog (2)
- building a community on the internet (2)
- attracting people (1)
- internet marketing build community (1)
- building a network (1)
- building a community within your business (1)
- building a community around your company (1)
- build a community around your business (1)
- best internet marketing community (1)
- attracting people to your website (1)
- website to build a business community (1)
About Warren
Great post! We decided to include a blog on our business website for many reasons. One of the main ones was that we want to be able to show our clients and potential clients who we are through articles on the topic and give them a way to interact with us. I also think it will force us to keep our website updated and might help with SEO in the long run because of the topic-related content.
I like the fact that 3 of you joined forces together to accomplish a common goal. I think that will go a long way toward your success, as you can each bring your unique skills to the table, and play to your strengths.