How to Build a Community on Your Website

Alright, this will be a tough topic, especially if your site is a business website. However, it does not mean that it is impossible. Although, my first advice is to focus on building your ‘community’ on your social media accounts, particularly Facebook.

Nonetheless, having a community is one of the best ways for you to improve your web presence. Instead of hoping for random visitors or searchers seeing your site, it will be best if you have a consistent audience that will periodically and consistently check your website. Aside from that, they are a great source of free content, which is purely organic.

Anyway, here are the things you can do to build your community.

Prioritize Content

You do not need to establish a forum or any community related platform in your website. At first, the key method to gain a following on your website is to provide the best and interesting content — whether it is in form of video, audio, or text.

Generate content that will appeal to people or your target audience. Make them feel compelled to leave a comment after they check your post. Also, make sure that your comment snippets/areas are easy to use. It might be best to use a familiar platform or plugin, too, like Disqus.

Consistency

You do not need to post twice or once a day. However, you must make sure to follow a schedule. For example, once a week, every Monday, you will post something. Create a pattern and be sure that your audience knows.

Aside from consistently posting, you must also consistently deliver the same quality of content. Pessimistically speaking, you do not need to create better content than your previous ones. However, you must make sure that you set a bar for quality. Strive for greatness, but do not drain yourself in the process.

Engage

Most people leave comments or provide content and expect that whatever they post will be noticed or acknowledged. Engaging your audience makes them feel ‘at home.’ Replying to them encourages them to comeback. If they started a conversation, make sure to reply fast and be pleasant.

And of course, during the process, you will generic organic content yourself. However, make sure that every reply you create counts. Do not just post, “Thanks”, “Okay”, or “You’re welcome.”

Promote

At the latter stages of your building a community, be sure to promote yourself, your business, or website. However, be sure to gauge how much loyalty your followers or small community have towards you. You must make sure that once you promote, your followers will be comfortable at hearing or seeing you talk about you.

Also, once you already got their hearts (kinda objective, I know), you can ask them to promote you. This can be tricky, and might backfire. If you think that the outcome will be negative if you do this, then do not do it. But if you pull it off, be thankful.