What makes a digital community?

When Facebook went public in 2012, the question on everyone’s mind was: How will Facebook make any money? For years, the social network was working without earning a cent. They concentrated almost exclusively on online community building and online community management. Prior to the IPO (Initial public offering) Facebook strategists found a sea of opportunities to create these online communities, to enable business models. Facebook already had hundreds of millions of strong users, but the diversity of different cultures and subgroups made a new world possible.

A digital community is defined as a group of people with shared values and a common interest that connects them together. In this case, you want these people to come together to interact with your brand. 

Growing business in the digital world

Uber, Airbnb, Twitter - the same applies for all of these internet companies. None of which would exist without a strong digital community. In the digital and fast moving era, there is strong competition for the attention of users. Digital products are only successful with a corresponding digital community in place. 

What can you do with digital communities?

1. Use them as an extension of your department or team.

In this instance, a digital community can help to; Take your customer service and engagement online, create feedback groups for new products and services to be tested, help your sales force to find problems that your customers have, train your employees and gather the best ideas out of your organisation.

2. Use them when building digital products and services

_A digital community can help you to find new target groups, test new products, enable growth and revenues, gain access to new information or networks as well as find new partners and build up your own ecosystem. _

Coming up next in our series about Digital Communities - our best practice examples. What works and what doesn't?

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