- [Megan] Building your own online community
is not always easy but it really is rewarding.
Luckily, there are so many online tools
for managing and building an online community.
Here are some of my favorite.
First is Feverbee.
This is a community of experts
who are all about online community building.
They have tons of free resources and articles
on things like how to measure return on investment and more.
Next is facebook.com/community.
Here's our resources for building a thriving community
and I think that Facebook
would know a little bit about that.
Again, you're going to find tips and tools for starting,
managing and growing your own community
both on and off of Facebook.
grytics.com is actually a suite
of tools that help you analyze your Facebook group.
This isn't always readily available on Facebook
so this is a great alternative.
senseofcommunity.com is really interesting.
It's an international community for people with a scientific
or professional interests in all things community
and they have some really valuable insight on their website.
hootsuite.com is a really helpful social media
management tool.
It also has a social listening component.
You can monitor multiple channels, keywords, events
and it will also help you create a content calendar
and you can schedule your content to be posted
from there as well.
HubSpot is really robust CRM software.
It is not necessarily for everyone.
You might not have the budget for it
but you visit them for great resources
and support articles on growing your business.
mailchimp.com. I talk a lot
about sending out email newsletters.
This is one of the most intuitive
and user-friendly email marketing platforms out there
and they have a really great free version
so you can get started sending
out newsletters to your members.
Google Alerts, it's free.
What you do is you set up
a Google alert for specific keywords
or phrases that relate to your brand online.
Using two trees, olive oil, as an example
they'll set up a Google alert for their brand name.
Every time that brand name is mentioned on the internet,
be it a blog, a news article,
they're going to get a notification to their email
so they can protect their reputation
and monitor their brand online.
Don't be afraid to start trying out different tools.
They're not one size fits all
and there will be a little bit of figuring out what works
for you, whether it's budget, platform, user interface.
So it can be a little bit frustrating
at first to figure out which tools are going to
support your community the best.
But when you find the right tool
it's like the shoe in Cinderella.
When it fits
it can really help you grow your online community.