Community website? We teach you how to create it

Welcome back to our blog, here we will comment on some aspects with which you can observe the advantages of a website in the community.

A community website allows people to meet, interact and share. It could be your book club, a discussion forum, or the local soccer team.

Are you thinking about creating a community website? ¡At Meridional Team we teach you how!

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1. Objective

Write down what your community idea is and how people can benefit from it. By offering a support service for your community, you are inviting people to come together and introduce themselves to others. Additionally, if you provide a way for people to benefit, they can participate in the community and grow its size.

2.-Platforms

Consider that, to promote the objective of your community, you can use social networks. Also depending on the size of the community you want to reach with your website, you may need to consider other apps to stay connected to the community beyond your website, for example using chat apps like WhatsApp for communities of 50 participants or less and if the community is larger, use forum platforms such as Facebook.

3.-Define who is responsible

Depending on your budget and objectives, decide who should support you in the project of creating and maintaining your website.

To do this, you can assign staff to a website project on various hosting services. You can let your friends and owners help you and it will be much easier for you.

Think of building a community website and creating a long-lasting community like running a business. Run your community like a company by assigning those involved, assigning a public relations or marketing person to act as a spokesperson, for example.

At this point, it is advisable to create individual contact profiles and email accounts to generate good communication.

4.-Security and legal aspects.

On a community website where data is collected through forms, member registrations and integrated social media feeds, you should ensure that each visitor is informed of the privacy policy. There are templates or generators that you can use to create this page on your website. You can also hire a lawyer to advise you on the legal aspects of your community website,

5.-Content of individual pages

Homepage

To present your mission clearly and quickly, use the structure of your website pages and the strength of your home page to convey the message, presenting your ideas in a clear and concise way.

Your first page is key and should say it all, so include a call to action that leads to a contact form, a social media channel for more information, or a member registration form, so that when visitors Find your community and decide immediately if you want to be a member or not.

Contact page

Just like a corporate website, a community website should include a contact page. This way, people know who to reach out to so they can ask questions or engage and network through other channels you're active on.

6.-Comments and stories from the community

Give your community members a voice and spread their message by posting their stories and reviews on a separate page, as part of the portfolio, blog, or testimonials section of a community website.

If you are very active on social media with daily or weekly posts, consider creating a feed. Inform people of your latest achievements and plans much faster than a blog and promote your community.

Benefits of a community website

When creating a website, the image and presence you want to give to future residents is important, but it is also important to know what strategy you are going to follow on the website and the organization under the image.

1.-Position the page.

You must have a strategy in which both SEO and SEM appear, taking advantage of free applications that the internet offers you. This will allow you to gain visibility. Users tend to trust the first entries they see on Google more.

2.-Build resident loyalty

Through a community website, you will be able to know the tastes of your residents and know what they want. This way, you can offer your audience what they want.

3.-24 hour service

Thanks to the website, users can have access to it, regardless of the time or place from which they access it, which will benefit you when attracting new residents.

4.-Cost-benefit relationship

The benefits of a community website are many, one of them being having a lower cost than any other advertising medium. At first the initial investment will be high, but in the short term this cost will become a low maintenance cost, meaning that, in the long term, this money will be amortized and a greater profit will be obtained than in traditional advertising.

In addition to being much less expensive and you will be able to reach your target audience, segmenting the ads. That is why it is a quick, simple and effective way to achieve benefits at a lower cost.

5.-Position in search engines

Another advantage of having a website is that it allows you to improve your position in search engines thanks to the SEO strategies you carry out, along with a good strategy on social networks.

Contact us if you have any questions. We will be happy to solve it!