Beyond Transactions: How Hosting an Online Community Saves You Hours Each Week
Are you tired of spending hours manually managing your clients, delivering content, and answering their questions? An online community or membership site could be the solution you've been looking for. Not only can they help you generate recurring revenue, but they can also save you a significant amount of time.
In this post, we'll explore some of the key ways that having a paid online community or membership solution can help you streamline your business operations and save you hours of work every week.
Automating Client Management
Managing clients can be a time-consuming task, especially as your client roster grows.
However, with a paid online community, you can automate much of the process. This includes everything from setting up membership levels and pricing to handling payments and renewals. By automating these processes, you can save time and reduce the risk of errors or missed payments.
For example, let's say you run an online community for pet owners. You have several different membership tiers, ranging from a free membership to a premium membership that includes access to exclusive content and discounts on products. By using a paid online community platform, you can set up automated workflows to handle everything from payment processing to renewal reminders. This frees up your time to focus on creating valuable content and engaging with your members.
Our favorite online community platform is Circle. And one of the reasons we sing its praises is its ability to help us automate client management processes. For example, users can utilize the program’s analytics to track engagement and identify areas where they can improve their community. The platform’s workflow automation feature helps by automating manual tasks, such as adding members to certain areas of the community, sending a welcome email, and applying tags to members based on predefined parameters.
Some platforms and integrations also allow for the use of tools like chatbots to help answer common questions or direct members to relevant resources.
2. Automating Content Delivery
Another way that having a paid online community can help you save time is by automating content delivery. This could include things like courses, ebooks, or other digital resources. By setting up automated workflows, you can ensure that new members receive access to the content they've paid for and that existing members continue to receive new content as it becomes available.
For instance, let's say you run a fitness community. You may offer a variety of resources, including workout plans, nutritional guides, and video tutorials. By using a paid online community platform, you can set up automated workflows to deliver this content to your members. When someone signs up, they can automatically receive access to all of your resources, without you having to manually send out emails or links. As a membership solution, this can save you countless hours (and avoid countless headaches!).
3. Data Collection and Analysis
By using a paid online community platform, you can automatically collect data on your members, such as their interests, engagement levels, and feedback. You can use this data to analyze member behavior and identify opportunities for improvement. This can help you optimize your content and engagement strategies, which can lead to higher retention rates and more revenue.
It also ushers in more opportunities to personalize the member experience. To illustrate, within Circle you can tag members based on a variety of qualifiers. In my own community, we use tags to identify members based on their niche, goals, participation, and self-described areas of weakness. This allows our community managers and other members to reach out for specific questions, encouragement, accountability, and networking. All of which adds up to greater membership retention -- a huge plus within the membership business model!
4. Facilitating Market Research
With a paid online community, you can track things like which topics are most popular, which members are most engaged, and which resources are most valuable. This can help you tailor your content marketing efforts and outreach based on the information gleaned within your community.
It also facilitates the ability for you to meet the specific needs of your community, which can lead to higher engagement and more revenue.
To illustrate this, we can look to my client Alexandra Howard. She set up a community for teens and young adults. This included a chat area for all members to interact.
As new members trickled in and conversations were ignited, she gained a whole new understanding of what her audience needed. She was able to observe conversations, ask questions, and gain invaluable information about her ideal avatar – all without having to join countless online groups, pay expensive market research companies or throw spaghetti at the wall trying to guess what clients wanted.
This insight allowed her to produce new, popular content not only for her current members (which increased membership retention) but also as part of her ongoing marketing efforts.
5. Easy Client Communication
A paid online community or membership site can also help you save time by providing an easy way to communicate with your clients. You can set up a private forum or messaging system where members can ask questions, share ideas, and connect with one another. This reduces the number of customer support requests you receive via email, phone, or social media.
For example, let's say you run a membership site for food bloggers. You have a private forum where members can discuss topics like recipe development, food photography, and SEO. By providing this forum, you give your members a space to connect with one another and share their experiences, thereby freeing up your time to focus on creating more valuable content.
Conclusion
As you can see, having a paid online community or membership site can be an incredibly effective way to save time in your business. By automating membership management, content delivery, market research, data collection, and client communication, you can focus on what really matters: creating valuable content and engaging with your clients.
Ready to start streamlining your operations and generating recurring revenue? Take our favorite community platform for a spin. Circle is now offering free 14-day trials (no credit card needed!) so you can dip your toes in before making a commitment. Give it a try today.
