Finding your tribe: How to build communities online

Finding Your Tribe: How to Build
Communities Online
#parselyauddev

@parsely #parselyauddev
Today’s Speaker
Kelsey Arendt
Senior Success Manager

Parse.ly empowers companies to understand, own and
improve digital audience engagement through data. We want
to ensure the work you do makes the impact it deserves.

@parsely #ParselyContent@parsely #parselyauddev
Why should we care about and build online
communities?
We need to be
resilient
We need to remain
relevant
We need to rebuild
relationships

Resilience: Facebook de-prioritizes publishers

Resilience: Time to take ownership of our
audiences
Revisit how to keep audiences on site longer
Re-asses habits, workflows, or assumptions
Take stock of existing social groups & newsletters

Relevance: GEL Strategy
• Creating more content
• Staﬀing up
• Leaning harder into social
promotion
• Honing in on one vertical
• Building personalized
recommendations
• Promoting social media
groups
• Building topical newsletter
GROWTH
ENGAGEMENT
LOYALTY
MORE READERS
FIND THE STORY
READER FINDS A STORY
SPENDS TIME WITH
THE STORY
READER SHARES AND TALKS ABOUT IT

You need to identify
content that new readers
are spending the most
time on
You need to identify what
your bread-and-butter topics
are and what people are
saying about them
GROWTH ENGAGEMENT
LOYALTY
MORE READERS
FIND THE STORY
SPENDS TIME WITH
THE STORY
The key to make either of
these successful

Without engagement: A
“spaghetti strategy”
You end up promoting
content that might not mean
much to the audience
Without engagement: A
distanced relationship that’s
purely transactional
What opportunities have you
missed by not listening to
your audience?
GROWTH ENGAGEMENT
LOYALTY
MORE READERS
FIND THE STORY
SPENDS TIME WITH
THE STORY
BOTH growth and loyalty
depend on engagement to
move forward

Rebuild relationships: Listen to your community
Signal the impact of your work
Pinpoint meaningful relationships with your audience beyond a
transactional page view
Rebuild and foster trust with your readers

Rebuild relationships: Engagement and
Community Management
We’ve de-prioritized engagement
and community management in
newsrooms:
• It didn’t seem important
• It was a herculean task
RESILIENCE RELEVANCE
RELATIONSHIPS
COMMUNITY
BUILDING

What should your community be about?
What’s its foundation?

Narrow the scope: Loyal readers
• Great indicator of potential communities
• Drive more traffic than occasional visitors
• Most likely to subscribe
• Can tip you off to your core competencies
Tip: Start with an area of content most likely to succeed—a community you haven’t curated
content for or new ways to promote the curated content.

Narrow the scope: Loyal readers
Tip: Start with an area of content most likely to succeed—a community you haven’t curated
content for or new ways to promote the curated content.

Understand its nuance: What makes this vertical
potent?
1. Assign a team that’s equipped to gauge the quality of the conversation
around the content

potent?
2. Start with articles within that area of content that show high interest

potent?
2. Start with articles within that area of content that show high interest
Shares = “I want to talk to others about this”
Referrals = “Someone told me I should read this” 
Comments = “I want to talk to others, and you, about this”

potent?
3. Figure out what trends emerge
• Is there a subtopic or template that resonates?
• What’s the tone of high-interest posts?
• How is my community already talking to one another?
• Are there any red flags?

Use data to prioritize what’s worth your time
Your team of experts can look at high-interest content to answer:
• What verticals should we consider?
• Is there valuable conversation happening?
• Is there any conversation happening around it? If not, how do I start it?
Tip: Set yourself up for success—narrow down what topics to engage further
and who should talk about it

Where should/does you community live
online? Where are conversations happening?

Meet your community where they are
Referral channels aren’t just promotional channels. They can give you a
sense of where your community lives.

Facebook: Think like a user
Why are you going on Facebook?
• To be part of a group/community
• For your network, not necessarily for news
Tip: Social interactions may be a stronger indicator of community on
Facebook because they’re proxies for conversation.

Take Facebook and Google out of the picture

Twitter

Instagram
Instagram isn’t just about
influencers. It’s about where your
community has decided on their
own where they’d like to live.

Reddit
Tip: When you see a spike from Reddit, step in to be part of the conversation.

Newsletters
By looking at on-site data, editors understood who their audience was and what content they
were engaging with. They implemented those findings into the creation of a new newsletter.

Comments sections
• Nearly all comments happen within 3 days of post’s shelf life
• There’s a positive correlation between the number of returning visitors and
the number of both shares and comments
• Posts with comments tend to have a higher loyal audience composition
than the site as a whole
• Local/niche news already have a good handle on engaging 
communities

This is how we rebuild our relationship with
our readers: genuine, informed interactions.
No more drive-by engagement.

How do you manage and
sustain your community?

Identify your biggest opportunities and who/
where to manage resources
• Focus on areas prime for building community
• Designate a team that knows your high loyalty content
• Establish a data-informed workflow within that team
• Understand your signals that indicate, “something’s happening”

Establish best practices
• Always keep your community at the forefront
• Stay true to your voice
• Never ask for a sound-off: this is drive-by engagement
• Make engagement a part of each team’s essence

Maintain a healthy ecosystem
• Curate for them, and from them
• Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Your community will evangelize your good
content—and your could-be-good content—and make it worthwhile
• Look for potential follow-ups and contributors

BYOB: Bring Your Own Banner
• Cross-promote your own content across communities
• Diversify efforts within topics and teams
• Diversify your community and create a solid base

When you start rebuilding relationships, 
you remain relevant to your readers, 
and are resilient to sweeping changes.

Visit: 
www.parse.ly/audience-development-solutions/ 
Email: 
kelsey@parsely.com
We’re here to help you make the most out of
your audience data.

Finding Your Tribe: How to Build
Communities Online
#parselyauddev
QUESTIONS?
@parsely

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Finding your tribe: How to build communities online

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