audience conversion - Cultivating Community2024-03-29T08:43:15Zhttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/feed/tag/audience%2BconversionCultivating Communities From Your Audiencehttps://cultivate.ning.com/ning-blog/cultivating-communities-from-your-audience2013-05-13T17:40:22.000Z2013-05-13T17:40:22.000ZRichard Millingtonhttps://cultivate.ning.com/community/RichardMillington<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2208198?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=400"></div><div><p><span class="font-size-3">An audience is a group of people brought together by a common interest. </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The difference between an audience and a community is relationships. Community members have relationships with one another, audiences don't. </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">On social media channels you build audiences, the focus is on disseminating information. In communities the focus is on facilitating interactions between members. </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The benefits of building communities are high. You can increase spending from existing customers through up-selling, increase in repeat purchases, higher levels of retention. You can attract new customers and improve lead conversion %. You can reduce marketing/customer service costs. </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">For organizations that have built big audiences on social media platforms, the next step should be to turn this audience into a community. Yet, at the moment, this rarely happens. Too many stop at building a Facebook page or Twitter following and fail to gain any measurable benefit. </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">We put together the table below to show the key differences between developing an online community and creating a profile on a social network.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"> </span></p><table border="1" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><span class="font-size-3"><b>Online Communities</b></span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p style="text-align: left;" align="center"><span class="font-size-3"><b>Social Media Audience/Following</b></span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Long-term</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Short-term</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Slow growth</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Quick growth</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">About members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">About audience/followers</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Focus on engagement</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Focus on growth</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">High interactions between members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Low interactions between audience</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Develop products for the members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Develop audience for products</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Content about community</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Content about topic</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Share control with top members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Centralized control</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Members wants info about other members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Audience wants info about the products</span></p></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Commitment required by members</span></p></td><td valign="top" width="354"><p><span class="font-size-3">Less investment by audience/followers</span></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="font-size-3"> </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Regardless of your platform, building an audience should not be the end goal. Moving from communities to audiences is to move backwards. Push towards cultivating genuine communities on community platforms. It's far easier to build a community when you have an existing audience; make sure you're making the most of it.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"> </span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">(<i>Image: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/marfis75/3272079115/">Hands in the air - in concert (CC)</a>, a Creative Commons <a rel="nofollow" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en">Attribution Share-Alike (2.0)</a> image from marfis75's photostream</i>)</span></p></div>