Demand for community engagement is continuing to grow but clients are looking beyond social media to build owned online communities, according to social media and community management company Quiip.
Speaking to AdNews Quiip GM Julie Delaforce said while the trend is in its infancy, Quiip is seeing more clients with an interest in traditional online communities such as forums.
“We're seeing a lot more inquiries about forum-based communities that are an owned platform for for a business,” Delaforce said.
“Some businesses, particularly the bigger ones, realise the cost of resourcing, building an audience and then the cost of reaching an audience on third party platforms like Facebook. They think perhaps they can spend that money better on an owned platform, where they have more control of what's going on and they have data ownership as well.”
Quiip has scored a number of big business wins over the year including a community management partnership for Seek and Realestate.com.au. It is also working with DDB over Christmas and New Years to help manage its service provision.
Delaforce said Quiip is increasingly seeing new business as the view towards social media and online starts to evolve. She said brands are realising that online is more than “just marketing” and has touch points that hit basically every part of the business.
“A lot of clients are realising that community management is an always-on thing so it's not something that is just campaign based,” Delaforce said. “They need someone outside of those three or four campaigns a year that can have that ongoing conversation.”
Delaforce said she is also starting to see a distinction between social media and online communities starting to grow instead of the two “being lumped into one” discipline.
“Social media is more marketing and campaign focused and there is more of a focus on the creative. As a community manager, your first focus is just on the audience and developing key peer interaction,” Delaforce said.
“There are definite areas of crossover, but I think, because we're seeing that trend emerging of people starting to establish their own online communities, we'll see the roles really develop as well.”
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