A virtual community on the Internet is made up of a group of people who interact according to their centers of interest, demographic characteristics, or even their professional activities. Inevitably, these have grown thanks to the emergence of social networks including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few. In short, almost all of us know what a virtual community consists of since we are surely each part of one of them. For a new entrepreneur, or more generally a new business, the web is therefore no longer an option but a matter of course. A question then emerges: “How to create my own virtual community?”.
The benefits of having a virtual community
Obviously, being able to federate many people around the same center of interest mainly presents financial interests. Tribal marketing is a concept that has existed for a long time: the fact of studying the behavior of a group of consumers to better promote a product or service and thus increase the company's sales.
Make no mistake, maybe your favorite influencer really likes you. However, it is the fact that you follow him/her and interact with him/her daily that allows him/her to generate income. Often, they influence you by encouraging you to go to certain places, to do certain things, and therefore very often to buy certain brands. And that, the advertisers, of which the brands are a part, have understood it well. Indeed, some brands rely exclusively on these influencers to ensure their promotion. And yes, we surely have the same examples in mind. Influencer marketing has always existed, of course, but never so massively and virtually.
The interest of having a large community can be quite different. After all, it's not all about the money. Creating self-help communities aimed exclusively at improving the daily lives of the people who are part of it is just as cool: it is up to you to determine the purpose of your platform.
Grow your virtual community
To create a virtual community of 100, 1,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 people, start by following these few recommendations.
Respond to a specific need
Among the wave of the content found on the Internet, it is sometimes very difficult to find your niche. So, filling in the blank about a specific topic, on which you think you have acquired enough experience, is essential to bring people together around this same topic. You can also position yourself in a niche that is already occupied but by adding your touch to it in order to differentiate yourself.
To this end, remember to tag/title your content in the most appropriate way and/or to have a good SEO on the keywords that you have previously identified.
Ex: The Google Trends platform can help you compare and thus identify the most searched terms to help you title your YouTube video in the most appropriate way.
Frequently post content
It is difficult to federate a community around poor or even non-existent content. One of the characteristics of digital is that everything goes very quickly: you can quickly make a name for yourself, or quickly be replaced! Frequently posting content allows you to maintain a privileged link with your community. It is therefore an element on which it is necessary to insist.
Create content that can easily be shared
Making your YouTube video easily shareable on Twitter, for example, will give you access to an even larger pool of people and therefore increase your views.
Create engagement with your community
Interacting with your community allows you to create a relationship of trust over the long term. Especially since taking their recommendations into account makes it possible to have content that really meets their expectations.
