Embracing Openness: The Power of Public Community in Digital Spaces
Brands that stand out today do more than selling products or services. They build meaningful and lasting relationships with their target audience turning them into loyal customers and brand advocates.
The best way to do so is through community building and that's why creating public communities is much more than a marketing tactic. It's a strategic move to increase your reach, maximize your impact and build trust while promoting deeper connections with your audience.
Of course, it also helps you turn your audience into paid customers over time by creating a sense of belonging and loyalty that drives engagement.
In this article, you'll learn how to create and grow a thriving public community that will support your business growth.
What is public community?
Public communities are open groups where people with shared interests, goals or other characteristics come together to connect, interact, collaborate and help each other.
There are different types of public communities, but they often form around specific topics such as hobbies, social causes or professional industries. They can also be created by brands and organizations to engage their audience and build brand loyalty.
As public spaces, they're open for everyone and everyone is welcome to join, which means they have a broader reach and can grow faster compared to a private or internal community.
However, they require strong moderation and community management to prevent misuse, spam or inappropriate content and create a space where all users feel safe and welcomed.
Some examples of public communities include public forums such as Reddit or other niche-based forums or open groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and Discord.
However, if you want to create your own community it's a much better idea to use a dedicated community website builder because it provides you with more flexibility and customization options. Also, it's safer as it gives you full control over your users' data.
If after reading this you're not sure whether you need a public or a private community, maybe the solution for you is to create a hybrid community so you can get the best of both worlds.
Before we proceed, let us remind you of the difference between audience vs community. Check out this article to learn how to transform your audience into a thriving community based on common ground.
Tips to maintain a thriving public community
Once you have created a public community, the key to its success is to maintain its vibrancy and engagement. In the following section, we'll discuss tips to maintain a thriving public community which will also help with your business development.
Keep the community engaged and motivated
The best way to boost online community engagement is by providing valuable content, recognizing their contributions, and offering opportunities for growth and development.
Engagement shouldn't be something you do sporadically when you have extra time. It requires a thoughtful and consistent approach that starts with creating a customer engagement plan.
The plan should outline your goals, content ideas, strategies for boosting interaction and a schedule of community activities to keep your members involved. Regularly hosting events, webinars, or Q&A sessions can help members stay engaged and provide value.
However, you don't have to post something every day just for the sake of posting. It's more important to stay consistent and find the right balance between content quality and quantity. Ask yourself what would be a realistic schedule that you can stick to.
For example, it may be posting three times a week and organizing community events once a month. It's important to stick to it and keep the promises you've given to your community as that's the best way to build public trust.
For more inspiration, check out these community engagement tactics.
Regularly communicate and provide updates
Regular communication with your members is critical to maintain a thriving public community. Provide updates on the community's progress, upcoming events or activities, and seek feedback and suggestions from members.
Keep in mind that some users aren't used to checking your community daily, because they may be members of other communities as well. That's why it can be a good idea to send them the most updates about your community on other channels they might be using, if you want to increase engagement rate.
Apart from in-app notifications, Bettermode allows you to send real-time notifications through email or Slack.
Celebrate achievements and milestones
Recognizing and celebrating the community's achievements and milestones is essential to maintaining morale and motivation. It's an opportunity to recognize the contributions of its members, share success stories, and encourage members to continue to engage.
One of the simplest ways to celebrate the achievements of your community members is by using community badges and awards. You can award the most active members or those who reach a particular milestone, such as posting a particular number of posts or participating in a certain challenge.
With Bettermode, you can either use some of our pre-made badges or you can create your own badges from scratch, by choosing their name, style and color.
Address conflicts and concerns promptly
Conflicts and concerns can quickly arise in a public community. As the number of your community members grows, so do the possibilities for misunderstandings and differing opinions that can lead to conflicts.
Addressing them promptly, transparently, and fairly is essential to maintaining the community's health and vibrancy. Ensure that there are clear guidelines for handling conflicts and that the community understands the process.
If you're interested in this topic, check out our community moderation guidelines and different member roles you can give to the members of your community.
Continuously seek feedback and suggestions
The best way to improve your community is to seek feedback and suggestions from your members regularly. This can be done through surveys, polls, or regular discussions. Use this information to identify areas for improvement, implement changes, and meet the evolving needs of your members.
Looking for more ideas? Check out this community platform checklist to find the things that shouldn't miss in your community and choose the right tool to host it.
Examples of successful public communities
Here are some public communities created using the Bettermode community engagement platform. From professional communities to e-learning platforms and local organizations, everyone can use Bettermode templates for community development.
Schoolhouse
Schoolhouse, a platform for free peer-to-peer tutoring, used Bettermode to build a public e-learning community where their users can connect with each other. The platform was created in only a few days using our community website builder and it quickly attracted a lot of users.
The platform provides learners with a centralized space where they can ask questions, get support, share content and chat with other members in real-time through live chat. It quickly replaced multiple tools that learners were using to juggle between sharing content and communicating.
Its modern design with plenty of emojis resembles social media, transforming the learning process into something fun and enjoyable.
💡Click here to learn more about the LMS customer community or how to integrate learning management systems into your community platform.
Herbal Entrepreneur
Herbal Entrepreneur community is an example of a community for professionals that serves as an open forum and a knowledge base where herbalists share tips on starting and growing a herbal-based business.
It's built using Bettermode's customizable template and it comes with its own branding, logo and color palette.
It consists of forums and discussion boards that are divided based on the topics. It also has 1:1 private messaging and other interactive features such as comments, polls and upvotes.
What's interesting about this community is that although it's public and available to everyone, it also has a space for gated content and monetization. In only a few months, over 100 members have opted for a monthly paid membership.
The community owner said that the Bettermode platform made it easier for her to offer premium content and monetize her online community.
💡 If you want to create a similar professional community, you can use one of our templates, for example, the Devapp template for developer community. Of course, all our templates are customizable according to your industry, the features you need and the design you want.
DeineTierwelt
DeineTierwelt is one of the largest pet-lover communities and marketplaces based in Germany. They used Bettermode to replace their old forum with a thriving community that also acts as a niche social media for pet lovers.
People use it to create and post content, ask questions, solve problems and provide support to other pet owners. It's available as a mobile app as well, thanks to our integrations.
Have you ever thought of creating your own social media, but it sounded like a costly and almost impossible quest, especially if you don't have any coding knowledge?
Well, with Bettermode community website templates it's actually possible to do it. And it doesn't even take a lot of time – you can create your own communities in less than one hour and without any coding skills or prior experience.
Our templates are very flexible and fully customizable and you can add the elements you want such as Q&A platforms, direct messaging, knowledge bases and more. Everything is based on the drag-and-drop principle and you can fully customize your online communities by adding your logo, color palettes and themes.
Here are some of our most popular templates you can use to create your own social community:
Basebook
Basebook is a great option if you're looking for a public platform similar to Facebook, just more customizable and flexible. This template lets users create their own profiles, post on their social feed, interact with the posts of others and send private messages. You can use it to create both public or private communities.
Bettergram
If you're into sharing visual content, you can use Bettergram, our template that lets you create a public platform similar to Instagram. You can keep members engaged by letting them post their pictures and videos and organizing photo contests.
Reddify
According to many marketing professionals, Reddit is one of the best platforms for community building but it comes at a price. The platform doesn't have advanced moderation features and you can't customize it with your branding.
That's why we've created Reddify – an open forum template whose interface looks similar to Reddit's familiar interface. You can do everything you can do with Reddit, but the main difference is that you have full data ownership, a branded interface, more advanced moderation tools and an opportunity to monetize your community.
Customer service community
If you want to provide support at scale, the best way to do so is to build a public platform that serves as a help center and knowledge base. Bettermode has plenty of templates so you can find the one that fits the needs of your business or online group.
Check out our interactive customer service community platform with interactive features like user forums, feedback collection and an article-rating system.
Also, check out our help center platform where you can share useful resources and create a public forum for community members to ask questions and engage.
All our templates come with plenty of integrations that facilitate engagement with other tools you might be using. Here are some of them:
- Slack and Discord for communication
- HotJar and Mixpanel for strategic insights
- Project management tools like Jira
- Cookie consent manager
Conclusion
Whether you want to create a public or private community or other types of online groups, we've got you covered. There's no need to build a community platform from scratch when you can use our customizable templates and build a professionally-looking community without any coding knowledge.
Bettermode provides templates for all kinds of community organizations, whether you want to build a community for your brand or you work in the non-profit sector. Just choose the one you like, add your brand and custom elements and you're all set.
Get started for free and see why so many companies choose Bettermode for community building.
This article was originally published on December 14th, 2021, and was updated on December 3rd, 2024.
FAQ
What is a public community?
Public communities are open groups where people with shared interests or goals gather to connect, interact and collaborate with each other. They often form around topics like hobbies, causes or industries but they can also be founded by some company or brand. It's a public space that's accessible to everyone and that's why it's essential to moderate it effectively to maintain a safe and productive environment.
What are the 4 types of community?
When it comes to online communities, these are the most popular types:
- Interest-based communities: They revolve around hobbies, passions or any shared interest, for example, gaming forums, art communities, social justice or Facebook groups on travel.
- Identity-based communities: They are formed around shared characteristics or identities, such as cultural, religious, ethnic, or simply based on a shared life stage such as teen-focused forums or online communities for new parents.
- Professional communities: They bring together people working in the same field or industry to share knowledge, network and collaborate. A good example would be LinkedIn groups for marketers, developers or other professionals.
- Brand communities: Finally, there are also communities created by businesses or organizations to facilitate two-way communication with their customers, promote brand advocacy and provide a feedback channel.
What are examples of community public spaces?
The original community public spaces include parks, town squares, libraries, community centers and similar facilities. They include local organizations, for example, the New York City Department of Parks. Online equivalents of these public spaces include open forums such as Reddit and Quora, social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, with a special focus on public social media groups that are open to everyone, for example, Facebook and LinkedIn groups or public channels on Discord.
What is the difference between community and general public?
While the general public refers to the broader population without specific ties or shared characteristics, a community is all about individuals who are connected by shared interests and goals. Communities are more focused and interactive and their members feel a sense of belonging and engagement. Many communities also have a shared purpose and want to drive positive change, for example, promote civic engagement, support economic development or fight against climate change.
