Learn how group chat can improve your Private Online Community

Learn how group chat can improve your Private Online Community

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Want to grow the user activity of your private online community? Then, build and sustain real-time communication first. A private online community can come alive when there is active participation from several members. The activities can be Q&As, discussions, webinars, contests, forums, opinion polls, and so on.

Contextual interactions, conversations, and member updates with real-time messages can benefit your private online community immensely. You can achieve this by integrating advanced group chat features with your community platform.

Make sure that your users find the interactive flow of their chats fun to be in. Only that can entice the users to stay on your community platform. Such conversations will not only engage the members but also bind them to strong, lasting relationships. Unbroken streaming of group chats without friction can, thus, be the key to the growth and success of your private online community.

Real-time group chats can be a massive source of information. Its benefits go to even those who aren’t members or users of your community. Those who merely search on a private online community for first-hand knowledge. You don’t give your users such an interactive and engaging communication platform. And they move to third-party apps to have more specialized conversations.

What real-time communications mean for you

With the capability of two-way sharing, in-app messaging allows users to conduct contextual chats. From the perspective of a private online community's moderator, an in-app chat solution can enable interactions. You can achieve this without the need for chat-specific platforms.

Popular communities such as Reddit have hugely benefited from real-time chat features. These simple features can help you attain high levels of user engagement, and resultantly, user retention. Reddit is hailed as a ‘super community’ for quite some time now. The Reddit platform, for instance, provides every imaginable topic with space for discussions. Reddit's user base is vastly diverse. It ranges from pet lovers to foodies to blockchain wizards.

No doubt, group chat and messaging present an appeal of an altogether different level. While forum posting is all about asynchronous communication, group chat, and messaging climb a step further. It facilitates real-time communication using many modes—voice, video, and textual chat—at the same time. With this, it enables instant idea sharing and collaboration amongst the group of participants. A powerful tool for sharing information, it also helps create a symbiotic bond amongst the community users.

Real-time group chats enable you to provide your community with a platform to share ideas along with rich media experience... on topics that matter the most to them, and at a time of their choice. You can build small communities within your larger community platform. And, thus, encourage more interaction, catering to every interest.

Give users an awesome interactive experience

Build, customize and grow your online community’s messaging channels. You can do this by using SDKs (software development kits), APIs (application programming interfaces), and a UI (user interface) kit.

• Engage your users through topic-based group chats using multichannel 

• Enhance the user experience by enabling quality group chat and hang-out via video and voice-calling 

• Create a unique community hub for each user so they can experience their dream community platform. 

Stand out from the crowd

Multichannel messaging, driven by integration-friendly capabilities, can improve the quality of conversation greatly. It enhances the user experience too. So, power-packed multi-channel messaging can transform your online community. Make it mighty appealing for both higher retention and deeper engagement.

Here are 7 Stand-Out Steps to go about implementing the chat and messaging strategy:

• Use the messaging platform to its best – Users must find your private online community a joyful experience to visit and hang out there. If you make them feel stressed, or take much effort in chatting, they will leave your platform within seconds. Work towards using the full potential of your messaging platform. That will help you optimize the user experience. 

• Make conversations meaningful – Your private online community is a space for every member/user to bond and belong. Contextual conversations connect people based on their likes, dislikes, and requests. So, use in-app messaging to turn your users’ conversational experiences into sheer joy. Let your developer team use a cutting-edge UI kit to customize in-app messaging. 

• Make interactions real-time – Use real-time messaging SDK and API plugins to connect your users 24x7 — online and offline. And organize and allot conversations as per your community guidelines. 

• Combine voice, video, and chat – Written conversations are great! But also connect your users through high-quality voice and video. And you’ll bring in deeper engagement to your private online community. So, to build and grow an intimate private online community, you need a combination. You’ll need messaging channels that combine visual, voice, and textual chat in a fine balance. 

• Enable interactive media sharing – Entice your users to engage. Make it simple and smooth to share audio and video files, gifs, documents, images, and other attachments. Such rich media sharing can do wonders to attract, connect, and retain your community users. 

• Build trust in your community – Make users love your community platform. Provide them with personalized messaging experiences. These help create trust between your users and your community or target audiences. 

• Monitor and protect users – Secure messaging is expected the moment your users engage with your app. Give them no chance to doubt or guess if you're protecting their data. Use end-to-end encryptions and cutting-edge safety and security controls. This is to keep your/user data organized and protected from lurkers and hackers. Moderate users with message filtering and spam protection. And guarantee the entire community's safety through prompt user deactivation. 

Conclusion 

Online communities offer promoters, members, and other stakeholders a vast storehouse of resources. No other platform seems to match that. And the key to this wealth is users. They crowdsource information to build up a robust searchable mine of the same.

But a private online community may not mean much on its own. Beyond posting on forums and searching for content it may not do much either to the community or the promoters. This is where real-time group chats can play a transformational role. Private online communities can create powerful groups around shared interests and knowledge. To do this, you can use tools such as group chat and community messaging.

The real-time, interactive, and contextual group chats can make a private online community come alive within no time. These tools can create the cohesion that binds users together and retains them. They can take the community user experience to a new level altogether. It is a win-win combination for both, the community hosts and the users.

Group chats and one-to-one and community messaging surely have a lasting impact on your private online community. By augmenting the benefits of forum posting, they will build loyalty and trust. Eventually, they will also attract high-quality community engagement. Group chats and messaging can turn out to be a killer combination for you. They will both play effective and complementary roles in the growth and success of your online community.