10 Effective Ways To Build A Strong Community With Great Content

Inno­vate, evolve, and give the audi­ence what they love.

Michael Georgiou By Michael Georgiou from Imaginovation. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Con­tent dri­ves dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and for it to suc­ceed it needs to hit the right notes with the audi­ence. Web­sites with active audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion are the most suc­cess­ful. This is true, regard­less of your niche.


Com­mu­ni­ties are cru­cial to the suc­cess of a blog, busi­ness or oth­er­wise. These are the peo­ple for which your con­tent aims to help. These are the peo­ple who will, hope­ful­ly, turn into cus­tomers. Com­mu­ni­ties are also a uni­ver­sal seal of trust. When a busi­ness builds a strong and loy­al base, it con­tin­ues to ben­e­fit from it year after year.

Here are some ways in which you can build a strong com­mu­ni­ty with the help of tai­lored con­tent.

1. Start with in-depth market research

You need to pos­sess an in-depth under­stand­ing of the mar­ket you oper­ate in as well as the con­sumers it attracts. Don’t look at them as JUST con­sumers, or as belong­ing to a spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ic. These are human beings first and fore­most.

Gar­ner data through mar­ket research to under­stand what your tar­get audi­ence wants. Com­pile a list of com­pet­i­tive key­words for the pur­pose. The con­tent you pro­vide should match their expec­ta­tions and needs.

The con­tent should also appeal to the audi­ence emo­tion­al­ly. It could evoke laugh­ter, or sad­ness – it has to elic­it an emo­tion. Giv­en the explo­sion of con­tent over the past few years, only arti­cles that touch their read­ers will have an impact. This means that dry, over­ly-pro­fes­sion­al, or even a gim­micky tone will not work.

2. Research the kind of community you want to build

Every niche has its own unique audi­ence.

Peo­ple who are the most enthu­si­as­tic con­sumers of con­tent browse the Inter­net in search of answers. Not just any answers, but spe­cif­ic and detailed expla­na­tions that strike at the core of their prob­lems.

Because these peo­ple are unique, even though their prob­lems might not be so, bring­ing them togeth­er results in the cre­ation of a unique plat­form.

If there are any com­mu­ni­ties such as the one you have in mind, go there and study them.

3. Participate in these communities to learn what drives them

Be a part of the kind of com­mu­ni­ties that you want your blog to attract so you can learn what dri­ves them.

It’s one thing to be an observ­er, to stay on the out­side and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly observe those who par­tic­i­pate. The meat, how­ev­er, is in the mid­dle.

Unless you par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions that take place on such forums/blogs, you won’t real­ly under­stand the com­mu­ni­ty.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion will also bring you greater under­stand­ing that will elude you if you stay on the fringes. You will be privy to emo­tion­al out­bursts, rants, con­trite apolo­gies, trolling behav­iour, pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tions, as well as the mod­er­a­tion of this all.

4. Build authority via great content

So you now under­stand the tar­get audi­ence and know what they are look­ing for.
The next step then is to cre­ate con­tent that caters to them on all lev­els – as would relate to your busi­ness.

Writ­ten or visu­al, con­tent in order to be con­sid­ered qual­i­ty should:

● Be rel­e­vant for its audi­ence.
● Address spe­cif­ic top­ics.
● Pro­vide in-depth advice.
● Be prac­ti­cal in the kind of sug­ges­tions offered.
● Backed by exper­tise and expe­ri­ence.
● Puts the best inter­ests of its read­ers at heart.

Con­tent moves from good to great when it meets all the above-men­tioned cri­te­ria.

New busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, might want to guest post on estab­lished blogs or appear on pop­u­lar podcasts/shows to estab­lish cred­i­bil­i­ty. It takes time for an indi­vid­ual for a busi­ness to build author­i­ty. Do not expect rave reviews and crazy par­tic­i­pa­tion right at the begin­ning.

Keep cre­at­ing con­tent to the best of your abil­i­ty and you will even­tu­al­ly see peo­ple turn­ing to your blog for answers. Once you have posi­tioned your­self as a reli­able and author­i­ty fig­ure, you will attract more of the kind of peo­ple you actu­al­ly want to vis­it your web­site.

5. Create an intuitive website

You don’t want to lose an audi­ence because it was dif­fi­cult for them to find the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion.

You might have cov­ered the top­ic of ‘SEO blun­ders for new web­sites’ a hun­dred times, but if you haven’t laid this out on your blog in a man­ner that a new vis­i­tor is able to find all the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly, you might poten­tial­ly end up los­ing poten­tial read­ers.

You also wouldn’t be doing full jus­tice to the great con­tent you have so labo­ri­ous­ly and con­sci­en­tious­ly put togeth­er.

The eas­i­er it is for peo­ple to find rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, the greater the chances of them hang­ing around.

6. Market to the right people

Social is all the rage these days, but email mar­ket­ing is still a great way of reach­ing the right peo­ple.

When you have access to people’s inbox­es, you are able to talk to them at length, link them to all the great down­load­able resources you have put togeth­er and share with­out wor­ry­ing about char­ac­ter lim­its.

It gives your busi­ness a spot­light, so to speak. Also, every­one checks their email every day. Make the most of this won­der­ful medi­um to nur­ture leads and build rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple you would want to do busi­ness with. Lead them back to your blog/YouTube video where all the action is tak­ing place.

There is no right or wrong plat­form for mar­ket­ing. Find what works the best for you. Some peo­ple have been able to pro­cure and nur­ture leads from Quo­ra, Red­dit, even LinkedIn.

7. Make the readers feel heard

As a webmaster/business own­er, your par­tic­i­pa­tion will lead the way. If you don’t have the time, put some­one in charge of respond­ing to com­ments, answer­ing ques­tions, and in gen­er­al encour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion from read­ers.

8. Find your best platform

Some web­sites are able to gen­er­ate great con­ver­sa­tions right there on their blogs, oth­ers see detailed par­tic­i­pa­tion on social.

For some Face­book leads the way, for oth­ers Twit­ter is more excit­ing.

As you build a com­mu­ni­ty, you will have to exper­i­ment in order to find the plat­form that suits its par­tic­i­pants the best, or the one which encour­ages them to par­tic­i­pate more.

Don’t get too attached to any one plat­form – be pre­pared to move with your audi­ence. Per­haps they have become less active on Twit­ter, but are con­vers­ing and shar­ing more on Insta­gram or Snapchat.

9. Keep innovating and evolving

There is such a thing as too much of the same old, even if this same old was awe­some to begin with.

We have seen this with our favorite web­sites. We have seen this with our favorite Hol­ly­wood actors, too!

Your ideas might have sound­ed ground-break­ing in the begin­ning. But once they have been around for a cou­ple of years and you haven’t done much to build on them, they might lost the charm for the audi­ence.

Peo­ple need rea­sons to keep com­ing back to a blog with the same lev­el of enthu­si­asm as before. Google rewards fresh con­tent as well.

Inno­va­tion is key. But it is eas­i­er said than done. For con­tent to stay fresh its cre­ators need to evolve with the times, keep abreast of the chang­ing trends and be able to relate this to their tar­get audi­ence in a man­ner that might look famil­iar but nev­er stale. In the world of con­tent mar­ket­ing, you can nev­er rest on your lau­rels. Your audi­ence is smart, their needs evolve, and new play­ers enter the mar­ket all the time.

10. Give the audience more of what they love

If you have been pay­ing atten­tion to what your read­er­ship loves the most, this should be easy to fig­ure out.

If they love videos, make more of them. If they love lis­ti­cles, give them more of that. If they love moti­va­tion­al sto­ries, then that is where you should look. There is a right way and a wrong way of doing this though. One is to rehash old stuff and bore the audi­ence with each iter­a­tion. Even­tu­al­ly you end up los­ing them. This is the lazy and inef­fec­tive way.

The oth­er is to keep the essence alive but offer some­thing new incre­men­tal­ly. It will require you to rack your brains more and more as time pass­es. It is hard work but ulti­mate­ly a bet­ter and more sus­tain­able approach.

Build­ing a vibrant, knowl­edge­able, and loy­al com­mu­ni­ty is essen­tial­ly sim­ple. But it can­not be bro­ken down to an exact sci­ence.

Con­tent is a strong enabler of it, but you would still have to take care of oth­er fac­tors such as strong tech­ni­cal sup­port, con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion, and a pos­i­tive vibe that encour­ages peo­ple to open up.

Here are a few web­sites that have accom­plished this. These are most­ly estab­lished brands but there are a few instruc­tive lessons in it for ambi­tious busi­ness­es of any size. If you know of any excel­lent com­mu­ni­ties that you love to vis­it, please share in the com­ments.


What are you top tips for build­ing strong com­mu­ni­ties?

Michael Georgiou

Written by Michael Georgiou

Co-Founder & CMO, Imaginovation

Michael Georgiou is the CMO and Co-founder of Imaginovation, a full service, turn-key digital solutions company serving Raleigh, NC and Charlotte, NC. He's a dynamic business professional with proven success in creative strategy, online branding, project management and communication projects.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalized demo.