10 Types of Online Communities and Their Impact on Engagement
Humans naturally desire to connect; we are social creatures, after all. This desire for comradery extends into our purchasing choices, the pursuit of knowledge and even acts of generosity, all of which can exist in virtual environments. In today's world, brands (even B2B online communities) have started looking at social media platforms and different types of online communities as investments for growing their customer base.
If you desire a long-lasting relationship with like-minded people or your customers, you need to invest in an online community. The power of shared experiences can set your business apart and increase the value of what you offer to your community members.
As you begin your social community development journey, know that no two communities are alike. Some communities originate around a brand (brand communities); some focus on the common interest, exchange of knowledge or the greater good.
They can begin organically, but sometimes, they need to be built from the ground up and community building takes time. As you learn more about which internet community is right for you, you'll be better prepared to support and connect with your online community members.
In this article, we'll list seven popular types of online communities and what makes each unique. Whether you're looking to make your own online community of friends or professionals, understanding how different communities operate and boost online community engagement should encourage you to create your own community space.
Let's dive in and discover how people connect online.
What is an online community?
An online community is a virtual place where people connect over shared interests, goals, or experiences.
Imagine it as a cozy meeting spot or a digital campfire where people chat, learn from and support each other.
Great online communities can be full of hobbyists, professionals, or just people looking to make friends. They are spaces to share ideas, ask questions and have fun. From social media groups to forums and niche networks, most online communities bring people together no matter where they are, creating meaningful relationships and a sense of belonging and connection.
As a community builder (or manager), your role is to foster engagement, create meaningful interactions and provide guidelines to ensure it’s a positive and valuable space for everyone involved. Your job is to shape a community where members feel safe, informed and connected.
Ten types of online communities
Now, let's get into the top characteristics of the ten different online communities.
A support online community
The first type of community we'll cover is a support online community.
A support community is unique because it's designed to help customers and get indexed well on Google and other search engines.
Users join these types of support communities for advice on purchasing decisions or how to use a product. Just think of an online Apple or Windows community where customers go to ask questions about the products they purchased. Moderators usually run it and it is a very structured type of community.
These support communities index well because they provide searchable public information. The way it works is that users ask questions that then become popular searches on Google and other search engines. A support online community can be a jumping-off point for more customer success, education and engagement.
An online brand community
An online brand community, also known as a customer community, is centered around a group of people dedicating their time and energy to a beloved brand or product.
These types of online communities can be initiated either by a brand's super fans and most dedicated customers or the brand itself. Sometimes, brands can take a hands-off approach or moderate more closely. But overall, brands should employ this growth strategy to foster an emotional connection with their customers, increasing brand awareness and customer success and generating brand advocacy and customer loyalty.
Bettermode spoke with the knowledge-management software company, Notion, about their branded online community.
Their customer communities originated on social media platforms like Facebook (a Facebook group), LinkedIn and Reddit. Their brand communities were built by passionate customers eager to share their views and ideas about the Notion product.
Notion then started an online customer community engagement strategy, employing influencers and other community tools to grow their branded online communities. Notion takes a hands-off, community-led approach, letting its customers moderate online community engagement and take on leading community roles. Notion offers guidance and instructions, but they do not own these social media communities.
If you're planning to build a branded online community (a customer community), do not shy away from brand criticism but encourage and accept it openly instead. Also, do not micromanage your super fans; but welcome their ideas and leadership initiative.
If you need inspiration, here's how Bettermode's customer community looks:
A mastermind online community
Unlike branded online communities, a mastermind group, a type of learning community, is composed of like-minded individuals interested in attaining success. This space feeds off members' experiences and offers valuable advice while exchanging ideas.
Usually, mastermind online communities are user groups of entrepreneurs or people interested in gaining higher knowledge. Many mastermind group members are eager to study personal development or advance their careers. The members help each other grow and bounce ideas off one another.
According to Forbes, mastermind groups prioritize the essence of community, ensuring proper contributions to their members.
The name for this type of community originated from Napoleon Hill, who studied entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford. Hill realized these entrepreneurs were not solely self-reliant and could trace their success to their social network and networks of like-minded individuals.
There is generally a lot of trust within mastermind groups due to free exchange of information and advice. However, sometimes, these great online communities lack clear direction, judgment and misunderstandings between fellow members. Mastermind group members require a strong leader who can facilitate community engagement through expert conversations without disrupting the natural flow of information and connection.
A group coaching online community
If you would like to facilitate customer education, teach a business webinar or an online course, or provide some sort of teaching experience to a group, then you should consider creating a group coaching community.
In this type of community, one designated leader usually guides a group on a learning journey. These types of communities also encourage their members to support and lift each other up. To build this type of successful online community, you, the coach, need to facilitate conversations and encourage its members to take the initiative and practice community leadership.
Ultimately, accountability is paramount within this type of community. Accountability towards success is usually the reason users join them.
They appreciate the journey of a shared experience and group accountability. However, everyone learns differently, so some members may struggle in a group learning setting or feel slighted if they don't get one-on-one attention. In these learning communities, coaches need to provide a valuable educational experience while still encouraging group networking and connection.
A community of practice
A community of practice (CoP), or community portal, is common among professionals with specialized skills.
A community of practice is a group of people within a niche industry or specialized field exchanging information, solving problems and building relationships with one another (like on a developer portal). They're also known as professional and pretty successful online communities.
It's a common community among healthcare practitioners, graphic designers, or other industries with specialized skills. These community members share best practices and other valuable knowledge to help their fellow members grow and solve problems within their shared field.
These communities are high on mutual respect but tend to have a generalized focus, leading to unhelpful and unproductive side conversations. Great online communities of practice need community managers and moderators who enforce community management and the community's general rules surrounding professionalism and fairness.
Read more: Here's how to create a sustainable community portal that will support the growth and development of your online brand community.
An event online community
Nowadays, events can take place virtually (online events), which provides an opportunity for virtual networking and attendee conversations. Think of how much networking takes place at the coffee stations during event conferences.
Online event communities are designed to replace the networking and side conversations from in-person events. Attendees can freely engage with other community members, event community leaders and speakers in an online event community.
Event online communities strategically build on top of conversational momentum, so attendees can organically connect with one another. These great online communities depend on organized leaders to facilitate community management, breakout rooms and opportunities for connection. Event organizers should create follow-up discussions and other networking opportunities, so attendees find this community worthwhile.
An online micro-community
Similar to a mastermind or group coaching community, a micro-community is led by an expert creator offering in-depth instruction on a subject matter.
A micro-community is—you guessed it—a small, online community of members, tied by a common interest of looking to attain a skill or take a course. It usually holds no more than 30 members who make a significant investment to join the micro-community.
In these types of online communities, members go through shared learning experiences together and quickly become a close-knit group. As Forbes states, micro communities can drive macro value.
It's common for these micro communities to be more exclusive as they should remain relatively small. There is more at stake in micro communities, so financial accountability helps its members stay engaged and active.
There are more opportunities within a micro-community for members to get one-on-one time with the creator or build strong connections within the group. Community members are highly dedicated and enjoy the in-depth learning experience. However, group tension or a lack of clear focus can threaten this tight-knit community.
An online community of circumstance
Online communities of circumstance, online other online communities, originate around health circumstances, like cancer support groups, postpartum mothers, or hidden disabilities. People join a virtual community platform of circumstance when they go through an intense shared experience. Such members usually seek advice and emotional support within a known safe place.
Their community members seek a bonding experience because of their circumstances and may require expert opinions and advice. These online communities may put on events, provide valuable information, or simply offer a place of comfort and support.
An online community of action
A virtual community of action is a group of people who collaborate to accomplish a charitable goal or something of importance. Action communities are commonly run by neighborhoods and schools. These communities can exist for any length of time, even if the goal has been achieved.
These communities are dedicated, passionate members who share a common vision. However, there can be a lack of organization or community members who fail to engage. Communities of action need clear leadership and organization to help the members accomplish their mutual goal.
Types of online communities: honorable mentions
Other types of online communities extend far beyond the ten mentioned above. We've rounded up some honorable mentions that can be successful online communities but are not commonly seen online.
Alt text: A person from an online fan community
- Local communities. These great online communities are centered around a shared geographical location.
- Membership online communities. These online spaces are similar to micro online communities or group coaching communities. In membership communities, members have access to exclusive information and support. Members usually have to pay a fee and be invited to join.
- Fan online communities. Fan communities are formed around a shared interest, usually a topic from popular media, like actors, book series, or TV shows.
- Insight online communities. Insight communities are like focus groups usually consisting of the most important stakeholders—your customer base.
How to choose the best online community for your needs?
Choosing the best online community, from all the previously mentioned online communities, for your needs requires evaluating four crucial factors. Here are the factors.
Your online community members and their goals
Identify what you want to achieve (networking, learning, support). Think about the purpose and ask whether your community is for personal growth, professional connections, or entertainment (like shared interest).
Here are two crucial sub-factors you should take into account when building online communities:
- Your audience. Consider who you want to attract and engage. Are you targeting a small group of people or a broad audience? Knowing how your ideal member looks can help shape the community’s design, tone, topics and engagement strategies.
- Content and value members get by consuming that content. Think about the types of content and resources your great online community should offer. Are you aiming to provide educational materials, build support forums, or simply an online place for conversation? No matter the answer, the community's content should be valuable and relevant to keep members engaged.
Relevance and your expertise with online communities
Before starting an online community, consider its focus and whether it aligns with your interests or profession. If it does, it will be much easier for you to produce useful content; if it doesn’t you might struggle to keep the community engaged and find it challenging to create content that resonates with members.
Creating a community that aligns with your expertise allows you to share valuable insights and build trust, creating a stronger foundation for members to participate and for you to grow. So, before diving in, ensure the community’s focus truly excites you—you'll be more motivated and your members will feel that passion, too.
A community’s activity level
How much time and energy are you willing to put into online community building? At most, two hours per day? The time and energy you give will get back to you, so you need to build a great online community that will, hopefully, have the right level of interaction for your needs.
Highly active, great online communities encourage more interaction, offer quick responses and lively discussion boards, which means you should be more active as a community manager or leader.
Smaller online communities are great for fostering deeper connections and may require less of your time to manage them (although it depends on the type of community).
Read more: Check out eight engagement strategies to cultivate customer loyalty, brand loyalty and meaningful connections.
Features you want to introduce to your own online community
Bettermode is one of the best community engagement platforms. It's the right choice for community building because it offers a highly customizable platform with dozens of features, making creating a reliable, engaging and great online community effortless.
With Bettermode, you can integrate robust discussion forums and live chat, allowing members to interact and connect effortlessly. Here’s why Bettermode is such a popular choice:
- Bettermode is a versatile online community platform with a user-friendly interface and extensive customization options, from forums and Q&A sections to live chats, groups and events. With dozens of responsive templates (optimized for mobile devices) like EduMark and Saasplex, you can choose the right one for your community that allows you to organize the space based on your needs.
- Our tool allows you to develop discussion forums, polls and private messaging, video hosting, all to create an engaging community environment where members can easily interact, collaborate and contribute to discussions. Users can tag other community members, react to posts and receive real-time updates to stay engaged (similar to a social media platform).
- Bettermode also includes gamification features, like badges and leaderboards, which boost member motivation and participation.
- Bettermode integrates with a number of tools, including CRM systems, analytics software, all to improve your community marketing efforts. This makes it easy to connect your community with other business aspects and enhance the overall user experience.
- Our analytics tools provide insights into member engagement and activity, helping you monitor your community’s health, identify trends and make decisions (based on accurate and relevant data) to develop a community engagement plan.
- The platform is built with SEO-friendly tools to help your community's content rank on search engines and attract more organic traffic.
- With our online community platform, you can personalize your space to match your brand’s look and feel, from logo and color schemes to custom URLs, creating an environment that aligns with your brand’s identity.
- Bettermode offers moderation tools to ensure you build a safe and respectful online community. You, as an Admin, can set rules for user access, flag inappropriate content and grant different levels of access to users to maintain online communities' standards.
As you can see, using online community platforms like Bettermode to build your own space provides a mix of flexibility, user-centric design, integrations and engagement tools makes it an excellent choice for building a scalable and sustainable community. Your job is to spark connections in online communities; our job is to spark engagement, growth and lasting impact in your great online community.
Conclusion
Investing in the right online community platform is crucial to building lasting connections, building brand loyalty and delivering value to members.
With Bettermode, as one of the best online community platforms, you have the tools to create a customized, interactive community that aligns perfectly with your brand and engages your audience. From flexible design options to numerous engagement features, Bettermode empowers you to develop a sustainable online community where your members enjoy participating.
Try Bettermode for free and start building your online community today!
This article was originally published on July 4th, 2022, and was updated on November 5th, 2024.
FAQs
What are the 4 types of community?
The four types of community are geographic, cultural, interest-based and professional communities.
What is the most popular online community?
The most popular online community is currently Facebook, with billions of active users worldwide.
What are examples of virtual communities?
Examples of virtual communities include Reddit, Facebook Groups, online forums like StackOverflow and gaming platforms like Discord.
What is the most active online community?
Reddit is often considered one of the most active online communities, with millions of daily users and thousands of highly engaged discussions.
