7 Types of Updates to Give your Online Community

As a business owner, it's important to keep your online community engaged.

This means sending timely updates and communication through the right channels. But what type of updates should you be sending? Here are 7 types of updates to give your online community:

1. Product or service announcements

2. Industry news and developments

3. Company news, such as new hires or milestones

4. Roundup of discussions in the community

5. Customer spotlights

6. Success stories

7. Announcements about updates to your website or blog

By sharing the right information with people, you’ll engage them. And they’ll also remember your brand and will be more likely to convert into paying customers in the future.

Happy and engaged people also do word-of-mouth referrals which can help you business grow and build a strong reputation.

Product or service announcements

Announcing a new product or service can be exciting for you and your online community.

To help make sure your announcement is a hit with your followers, try sending different formats of communication - experiment with everything from engaging video clips to witty GIFs.

That way you're sure to keep your community engaged while having some fun along the way.

You also want to inform your audience whenever you add new features to your products. This will help them use your product better to achieve their goals. And it also means that you’ll avoid churn and retain your customers.

Industry news and developments

Staying informed with the latest industry news and developments is essential for all everyone.

Whenever there’s a major change to your industry, it must affect your products and services. And it will also affect your customers and audience too.

You want to listen, read and follow the changes in your category and also look out for reports, analytics and other content.

And then share the most relevant information with your audience. What this does is build your authority as a thought leader in your field. It also gets your audience to trust you and actively look for your posts and updates.

It also shows that you’re on top of what’s happening in the industry and that your audience can rely on your to update your offerings.

For example, we created blog posts and YouTube content when WordPress launched it’s new Gutenberg block feature.

We also updated our products to work with these new changes. Doing so ensured that our audience and customers didn’t have to skip a beat when the new version of WordPress rolled in.

And this was critical to ensure that our audience continued to benefit from our services and products.

Company news

Business owners have the unique opportunity to keep their online community engaged with relevant company news.

Even if you have a small business, sharing news about a new hire or hitting a milestone still matters.

It shows that you’re growing and that you’re transparent too.

Sharing company news is a great way to build customer loyalty and create positive associations between customers and your brand.

And it brings focus to what makes your business so special. Take advantage of these moments to shine a light on your company in a respectful yet interesting way.

Roundup of discussions in the community

If you run an online community, then it’s very likely that people are having interesting discussions often.

People often use community spaces like Facebook groups to ask questions and share interesting finds.

It’s important to look at what kinds of conversations are going on within the community already and making sure that you're part of the discussion.

Also, take the time to do regular roundups of discussion threads to gain insight into your customer base.

You can also share a collection or roundup of these discussions with your audience in an email newsletter format.

What this does is keep more unengaged members updated with what’s happening.

A roundup also provides value by curating important information that everyone can learn more.

So, use community discussions as an important type of update to share with people.

Customer spotlights

Highlighting existing customers can be a great way to inspire potential customers to engage more and even use your services.

By creating customer spotlights, you are creating an opportunity for your online community to feel connected with your company.

They’ll also appreciate the knowledge that you are paying attention to your customers and listening.

Showcase individual customers through interviews or stories. Or share social media posts that your audience made on their profiles with your product or servie.

Shining a spotlight on your customer helps build loyalty by emphasizing your business’s commitment and connection to your customers. This strategy will create content that is interesting and personal, while simultaneously increasing brand awareness.

Success stories

People love to hear positive stories of successes.

It’s important that you proactively find and curate stories of your customers and clientele who have been positively impacted by your services or products.

You can use this content to further engage your online community in an organic and meaningful way.

Building a robust library of these successes can give you an ongoing source of positive impetus to pull from. And of course, you need to share these success stories too.

Here are a few ways you can go about it:

• Create case studies and feature them on your blog
• Share them via email newsletters
• Add success stories to your landing pages
• Ask your successful customers to share their stories on the community platform

And so on. Success stories give people hope and when shared with detail, they can help your audience learn how to fix their pain points and achieve their goals.

Website or blog updates

Keeping your online community up-to-date about new website updates is key to helping them use your site better.

If you’re changing the appearance, navigation, or any other feature, be sure to inform your community. Especially in advance.

This ensures that they don’t feel confused or unhappy if they land on your site and can’t find what they’re used to seeing before.

You may also have to give your community instructions on how to navigate your site or blog if you’ve made radical changes.

Whatever the case may be, it’s always critical to let your community know what’s happening so that they don’t feel blindsided with changes.

Over to you

In conclusion, there is no one size fits all solution when it comes to engaging your online community.

Taking the time to understand how to best communicate with your audience through different formats is a necessary step for success. Your goal should be to make important product or service announcements, keep the public up-to-date on industry news and developments, highlight major company news such as new hires or milestones hit, and more.

You can combine all the tips here or choose the ones that make the most sense in your community and business.

By being consistent and taking customer feedback into consideration, you’ll not only effectively engage your community but also help strengthen relationships and build trust within that community.