Customer engagement platforms have been the talk of most business organizations, and rightly so! Customer engagement platforms help build greater, long-term relationships with customers and if executed correctly, can bring a lot of new customers to your brand. However, it is easy to get confused between the terms being used to describe a community engagement platform. For example, the term ‘online communities’ is often used to describe other similar platforms like forums, portals, or knowledge bases.
While online communities, portal, and forums each have their own merits and purposes, it is important to understand the difference between each of these platforms and check what works best for your organization. In this article, we will compare forums, portals, and knowledge bases with an online community, and also look at some of the advantages of each platform. But before that, let’s look at what online community means.
What is an online community?
An online community, also known as an internet community, is a community of people with shared or similar interests, where they can communicate with each other via the internet. Every online community has its own set of guidelines to be followed by the members which can be customized, moderated, and managed by the owner of the community. A successful online community keeps its members engaged at all times so that they use the more community more often.
Online communities offer various engagement tools such as blogs, discussion forums, Q&A sessions with the customers, quizzes, gamification tools, and much more. As a community grows, it can bring a lot of loyal customer support which will also be beneficial for the organization in the longer run.
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Here are some of the advantages of an online community:
- Increased social collaboration.
- Providing solutions one-stop-shop and being a trusted advisor for the customers.
- Saves cost.
- Improved customer loyalty.
- Easy customer feedback.
- Boosts search engine optimization.
Online Community vs Forum
Both online community platforms and forum software offer online discussion forums, where they provide a place for customers and members to come together and engage in discussions, Q7A sessions, voice their concerns, and get peer-to-peer support. However, this is the only similarity between the two platforms. While forum software only provides a discussion forum, online community platforms offer a ton of added features like blogs, libraries, quizzes, and many other ways to keep the customers engaged and offer them added value.
While online communities offer an all-in-one option for customer engagement, forum software often sticks to one form of engagement via discussion forums. This makes forum software much simpler than online communities, and also has a shorter implementation point. Due to budgetary restrictions and time constraints, many organizations that don’t necessarily need the additional features tend to choose forum software over a full-fledged online community.
Here are some of the advantages of a forum:
- Encourages discussion.
- Improves communication.
- Increases collaboration.
- Better engagement.
- Seek assistance and support.
- Helps drive the usage of online collaboration tool.
- Boost search rankings.
- Builds brand trust.
- Drives product ideation.
- Gather data-driven insights.
- Identify problems faster.
Online Community vs Portal
The term online community portal is often used to describe online communities in general. That is mainly because portals have usually taken on more of a catch-all role in the online interaction space. However, traditional portals are quite different from the online communities most organizations use in the modern era. Some would say that portals were just the earlier versions of the online communities, with some limitations. For example, a traditional business portal is generally one-size-fits-all, whereas an online community would provide the ability to create a more personalized experience for the customers or members.
Portals are also designed to have a top-down communication structure. Meaning, most of the knowledge exchange comes from the communication teams and format experts. On the other hand, online communities bring many different voices together which includes customers, experts, and advocates.
While these comparisons are based on traditional portals, it is also important to note that portals are still evolving. The newer community portals or community engagement portals have many of these limitations. They now include a peer-to-peer aspect and more tools and resources that one might find in a one-stop-shop have for customers. With these new functions, it sometimes becomes difficult to differentiate between portals and online communities. However, while comparing choices, it might be easier to focus on the capabilities of each platform and what you are looking for, instead of getting into the details of the technology they use.
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Here are some of the advantages of a portal:
- Accelerated development.
- Affordable pricing and support.
- Mobile-friendly.
- Integration friendly.
- Easier to differentiate business, products, and services.
- Increases collaboration.
- Boosts engagement.
- Improves search rankings.
- Builds brand trust.
Online Community vs Knowledge Base
Online communities and knowledge bases have the least common things as compared to the other things mentioned in this article. This is because knowledge bases don’t usually adopt a peer-to-peer discussion element. Instead, the knowledge base software collects all the information in one place so it is easily searchable and accessible. A knowledge base is very similar to a resource or file library within an online community with little to no interaction or social element.
The information is still there to be taken, however, the users must find and interpret it on their own. On the other hand, online communities offer more robust information resources, which allows the users to browse files, blogs, and media, then interpret them with other members of the community or other experts of the organization.
Here are some of the advantages of a knowledge base:
- Improved productivity.
- Increased employee engagement.
- Knowledge preservation.
- Empowered remote employees.
- Reduced use of email for knowledge sharing.
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Conclusion
Every engagement platform has its advantages and disadvantages. Online communities can include forums, portals, as well as knowledge bases all in one place. This helps the members join discussions, access information, as well as receive added value from other members in a single space. The choice depends upon what you are looking for and how much can you invest. Understanding the difference between these platforms thoroughly and then making the choice based on your requirements is the best way to build a community for your organization. We hope this article was helpful. Thank you.
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