Social media like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are filled with online trolls and an abundance of ads. But with niche communities, you can avoid all of that. Let’s find out more about niche online communities and how people use them to better their businesses.

RELATED: Advantages of Online Communities over Traditional Communities

In This Article:

1. What Are Niche Communities?
2. The Uses of Niche Communities
3. How to Create Niche Communities
4. How Niche Communities Change Online Conversations
5. Conclusion

Niche Communities – the Key to Growing Your Business, Increase Conversion, and Gain More Customers

What Are Niche Communities?

Before anything else, you need to know what a niche community is. A niche community is a group of people who have come together because they share the same interest, values, or objectives.

You probably have heard of Rotten Tomatoes; it’s a site where people join and share their thoughts and opinions through the film reviews. All of the reviews can be read and accessed by everyone in the community. For instance, if you are into movies, a movie club is your place. 

The Uses of Niche Communities

Niche communities provide us with the exclusivity and sense of belonging we want. People nowadays want to connect with a community, such as a group of similarly passionate about anime or Game of Thrones plot theories.

In a niche community, you don’t have to go through dozens of useless postings to discover individuals who want to chat about the subjects that interest or intrigue you. All you have to do to connect with individuals who share your interests is join a community.

Niche organizations can do what Facebook cannot. They cut through the digital noise to provide safe spaces for people to debate specific issues without being interrupted by judgment, trolling or irrelevant information. I appreciate these sites because they allow folks to tap into a hive of shared information.

How to Create Niche Communities

There are quite a few niche online communities out there already:

Instructables

Instructables is a DIY project community on the internet. You may connect with other creators by uploading your newest craft project or audio masterpiece. A group is also a place for folks who need assistance with a DIY project.

Simply make a post about your issue, and you’ll likely obtain solutions from individuals who are more knowledgeable than you. You may also watch lessons and work with other users on projects.

BlogHer

BlogHer is a discussion forum for female innovators about digital marketing, blogging, and business. What began in 2005 as a conference has grown into one of the largest online specialized groups. A job portal for female creatives, yearly conferences, and women-led community support and feedback are available.

Quora

Quora may be able to assist you in building your brand and establishing yourself as a thinking leader. Millions of people use the site each month, asking and answering questions on various topics. You may use it to identify what people are dealing with or to uncover your next product idea and resolve your audience’s most pressing problems.

Behance

Are you a skilled designer? Behance might be the community for you. Adobe founded it, and it now has over 10 million members globally. You may post your portfolio, look for employment, discuss projects, and receive community comments.

Stack Overflow

Not only is Stack Overflow the hub for all things IT, but its job board may help you find your next full-time or freelance developer job. The website allows you to obtain answers to your code issues from millions of users, contribute to open-source projects, answer queries, and get insights from developers worldwide.

These are only some of the very unique and useful niche communities for you to join. However, for those of you who want to expand your business and attract more potential customers, then thinking about getting your own niche online community is the way to go!

phpFox is a feature-rich social network platform that allows you to create robust niche communities where your audience can interact and actively participate (IM chat, live broadcast, threads, polls, quizzes, games, etc.). In addition to the online version, phpFox provides white-label mobile apps, live streaming, and sophisticated chat solutions known as ChatPlus. By allowing you to develop a white-label, stylish, and easy-to-customize website, phpFox saves you time and effort. 

With phpFox and its included features and solutions, you will be able to build your niche communities quickly.

Find out here: Different Steps for Building Different Online Communities

How Niche Communities Change Online Conversations

Niche Communities Are More Personalized

Because these communities are isolated from the rest of social media, they tend to become safe spaces for people to share their views, feelings, and interests.

You’re connecting with folks who understand what you’re going through and why you feel the way you do. This develops an accepting culture, which may be difficult to obtain on traditional social media platforms.

According to Plan International research, 39% of females have experienced online abuse. As a result, 13% modified the way they presented themselves.

Niche Communities Help You Meet People With Similar Interests

You may feel as if you are the only person in your life who is interested in the Impressionist art movement or backpacking across Africa.

Niche online communities allow us to avoid feeling solitary in our interests and connect with others who share our passions.

Niche Communities Provide a Sense of Belonging 

We are hardwired as humans to seek out communities, and as much as we may hate admitting it, we desire collective approval.

These little groups provide us with a sense of belonging that we would not have had otherwise.

Social media can be used to build significant social spaces, although, on larger sites, this is not always viable. As a result, individuals want more true online relationships and locations where they can “fit in” by engaging with others who are interested in SEO, hiking, or prepping for the zombie apocalypse.

Niche Communities Create and Encourage Meaningful Conversations

According to a Global Web Index research on online communities, 45 percent of respondents were upset by harsh language and bullying on traditional social networking platforms. Furthermore, 36% felt they didn’t have a meaningful connection with other users.

Community chat applications like Chatplus from phpFox enable users to engage in meaningful conversations that aren’t common in other public venues.

The app covers everything from mental health issues like anxiety and depression to identity areas like gender transition, racism, and coming out.

It allows you to share your experience, discover a support system, and have conversations that you would be too afraid to do in person.

Conclusion

Niche communities are a trend that all marketers should be aware of. As people lose faith in social media companies and platforms grow increasingly congested, locating and engaging in the online venues where your specialty exists is more crucial than ever.

Whether you’re an eco-friendly e-commerce firm or a business coach, a specialized community will provide you with greater access to your audience, the ability to grow as a thought leader, and the potential to enhance conversion rates.

Create niche communities with phpFox and connect with your customer in a more personalized approach. Give us a call to get your online community up and running now! 

UP NEXT:

• How to Build an Effective Marketing Plan on Social Media

• What Makes a Strong Online Community?

• The Best Social Networking Software

In this blog, we will discuss how to build up a solid functional strategy for your Social Network.

Develop Functional Strategy Based On Core Values Of Your Social Network

First thing first, you have to decide what your unique value proposition is for your users.

How are you going to entice someone to leave the social networking they already use on a daily basis and decide to instead spend time on your network?

The answer is that not all social networks boil down to the same recipe for success. Different users will have different demands and requirements on a network. As long as the features and functionalities of your network satisfy, or at least are appropriate to users’ preferences, they will stay and enjoy your network.

Research indicates that every successful network has only about 20% of functional features identical to existed networks, the impact which makes people keep on coming to a network is from 80% of its unique functional features. Therefore, you should focus on developing specific features which directly identify your site purpose. For instance, LinkedIn takes ‘connection’ into account as the primary functional trait of the network instead of ‘friend’ just like on Facebook. This is because LinkedIn is different from other networks as it’s specifically designed for business and professionals, making it one of the more important platforms to use for those in B2B.

Build Functional Tools To Directly Serve Users’ Intentions

The next thing to consider is to understand users’ behaviors on your network.

In other words, the way users utilize the provided tools will determine the direction you should develop your network.

Providing users with what they are looking for gives you chances to connect with fans, customers, and prospective customers on a more personal, human level.

These unique functional tools don’t need to be complex. It just needs to be straightforward, useful and most importantly, it should work well.

For instance, Instagram is dedicated mainly to photos while Facebook is inclined towards recent updates. Facebook encourages users to share daily elements, whereas Twitter is more about sharing serious issues such as news and updates. While Instagram uses photo collections as the way to connect people, Twitter triumphs the relations using hashtags.

Bottomline

Going through this brainstorm you can definitely have your idea about your Social Network – the strong start to build, maintain and monetize your own community. Don’t worry about how strong or weak of your idea or how to make it happen, you can contact us at hello@phpfox.com – number one Social Network Platform! Our experts and partners are happy to assist you from the day one toward your successful community

Why Niche Social Network?

Niche networks are, by definition, groups of people who are intensely interested in a certain topic. People will be able to discuss the topic at hand without countless clutter and posts on other subjects getting in the way (e.g Facebook, Twitter…)

Linkedin, the world largest Niche Social Network started by the idea of business-oriented community. It helps users create profile as resume like, invite and connect each other instead of friending, sharing and discuss expertise topics, experiences

Nowadays, users tend to use more Niche Social since the concern of privacy, communication, knowledge, and interests. On the other hand, owning a Niche Social Network means you own that niche market. Community management will be much more effective and efficient with lower cost and efforts

Let’s start from the very first step of creating your own Social Network: Niche Idea

Steve Jobs 1996 famous quote: “Picasso had a saying — ‘good artists copy; great artists steal’ — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

I mentioned that so even when you don’t have your breakthrough idea yet but still you can plan to have one base on the compiling others ideas, nurture, adding value and make it your own

With Niche concept, you don’t have to target large community. It could be your own interests and meet others in term of hobbies, expertise or situations.

You can start your niche idea by identifying niche community, this can base on 2 important factors:

(1) psychological factor,

(2) demographic data

Gather all the information, data you have on the targeted community including what do prospect members sharing about common interests? What are their preferences? Like and dislikes? Incentives? Where are they?…

Let’s say you have your own customers that use your products or services, this is the easiest way to approach since you know their wants, needs and how to cater them. Or you are one of the fans in specific activities, professional group member and you understand who are also like you, where are they and what brings them together, it’s great to define that community and lead it.

Engaging your niche community:

Since you identify your community and its preferences in your idea, great start! Now let fine tune it by deciding how you would approach them. There would be 2 common practice approaches

• – Narrow group approach: Focus on small but value prospect group of members in your community first. Apply the best understandings to add value, benefits and set a clear path to investing on how to promote and encourage this group expansion

Even Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg started with a group of students from Ivy League Schools, using their reputations and relationships to develop a much bigger networking later on

With this strategy, you can narrow down investment and effort from the beginning stage. Focus on functions, marketing and values adding on the platform you would build

• – Large-scale approach: normally this is borderless demographic approach, focus on general interests and recruit as much as members from the beginning

Instead of just Social Network for Tax consultants, you can start with Consultants Social Network where any consultant can join and showcase their works from legal, accounting, healthcare to psychology…This will help you more opportunity to approach larger targeted members base

Each approach has its own pros and cons and you can choose one, mix them or selectively use in phases as well. This has to be carefully planned as it fulfills your original idea and shaping how your Social Network Site functions.

Conclusion:

When niche social network and its benefits are clearly adding value to your vision and business, you can start building your own Social Network easily. First of all, it starts with a Niche Idea, where you identify your niche community base on psychological factors, demographic data…Then plan out how you can engage to that community by which strategy.

You may now asking what to do next base on your idea, please check out our post for the second article on how to oversee functional Social Network. You can subscribe to our newsletter mailing list or our social channels

Bottomline:
Going through this brainstorm you can definitely have your idea about your Social Network – the strong start to build, maintain and monetize your own community. Don’t worry about how strong or weak of your idea or how to make it happen, you can contact us at hello@phpfox.com – number one Social Network Platform! Our experts and partners are happy to assist you from the day one toward your successful community