How to Build a Community of Practice (with Examples)

originally published by UUKI

An online community or internet community is a group of people Who share the same interest or purpose and use the internet to communicate with each other.
Communities can both humanize a brand and make customers feel valued through experiences or direct communication. They help you interact with each other interested in a particular product of a brand and share their personal experiences with the products.

Contents

1. What is a community of practice?
2. How to start a community of practice?
3. Benefits of online communities in building up your brand.

What is a community of practice?

A community of practice is a group of people who share a common interest in a specific product or brand and come together to fulfill individual and group goals.
Communities of practice often focus on sharing best practices and creating new knowledge to advance a domain of professional practice.
A good and successful online community should have a good set of rules and a community manager who decides the functioning.

Community management on social media assists brands to connect with followers deeper and develop a sense of belonging along with an avenue to connect with other people. There is no power for change greater than a community. The true sense of an online community takes social media to the next level and opens up a world known as a social business. Having an online community can help your brand grow its reach and sales in many ways.
How to start a community of practice

1.Establish a vision for your community
Your vision is a picture of the future of your community. Make sure that you have a clear vision of what you need from your online community. Vision without execution is a delusion. Since managing a community requires an extensive amount of thoughtful conversation with your members, listening to them is very important.

2.Set missions and goals
Goals also help align your focus and promote a sense of self-mastery. Once your vision is clear, it’s time for you to set goals. Goals provide clarity on your vision and ensure that vision aligns with your daily goal achievement activities. The benefits of goal setting give you a greater focus on your time and energy each day.

3. Keep your community engaged
Consistency is the key to success! The more you engage with your audiences the more you will see your brand grow. When you post consistently, the algorithms will favor your posts and more people will see them. You'll see increased engagement.
When you post regularly, and especially if you post about the same topics on certain days of the week, your audience will expect and look forward to your content. Posting regularly on social media is important because it helps your business stay top-of-mind to customers.

4.Build a team
Now that you know the Important community practices you need to make your community members feel safe and come together as a team.
Setting rules and guidelines for your community is also a key feature.
Some of the rules for a successful online community are listed below.
•Be kind to each other and avoid posting content that is offensive and may hurt someone’s feelings.
•Do not bully or make inflammatory remarks to other community members.
•Respect each other’s decisions and privacy. Do not post content that invades others’ privacy.
•Don’t upload or post inappropriate content that is nowhere related to the brand.
•No spam. Don’t repeatedly send the same messages or content over and over again.
•Do not promote other products/services without disclosing the relationship with the brand.
•Do not promote yourself or any other competitor brand.
•Treat everyone equally and with respect.
•Don’t impersonate other people or organizations or pretend to be someone else.
•Do not harass anyone member based on caste, religion, sex, age, nationality, or disability. This will not be tolerated.
•Don’t engage in name-calling, bullying, or attacking people.
•Comments that degrade any race, religion, gender, age, or abilities are not acceptable.

Benefits of online communities in building up your brand

The true sense of an online community takes social media to the next level and opens up a world known as a social business. Having an online community can help your brand grow its reach and sales in many ways.

5.Customer loyalty**
Customer loyalty describes an ongoing emotional relationship between you and your customer. The most powerful sales increases come from communities where customer retention is the goal and helping existing customers to succeed better is the focus.

6.Social collaboration
Social collaboration brings an increased understanding of projects throughout the organization, easier knowledge transfer, stronger teams, a better product, and improved culture.
Public communities can also be used for collaboration if they are properly designed for it and enable you to identify and involve the members in a mutually relevant way.

Get going! 💪