“If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won’t succeed. We can’t pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.” -- Adam Grant.

Slack & Facebook groups

Ever since the pandemic hit which revamped the conventional way of doing things, and especially now we are possibly looking at a Pandemic 2.0 since the Omicron came into emergence recently -- furthermore it is pushing more people all over the world to spend more time interacting with each other in online communities especially through Twitter, Facebook, and Slack. If you are looking to tap into growing your online community by bringing people together for a wholesome purpose; Come join the club of building your community.

Building a community and maintaining a community is a daunting task. A community is a place that throws a spotlight on your target audience, presents you with oodles of opportunities to connect with your customers, grow your customer base and customer engagement organically in your community, in turn, achieve your brand growth.    

Starting your community with a vision or goal in mind is simple. You know what you want, now comes the question of where do you want to start your community? Starting your community on channels like Facebook and slack seems to be a plausible option because everyone is aware of it and comfortable with it. You are aware of the benefits and ghastly consequences you might face in your community.

Although, there is always a clause, in the long run, the purpose of starting your community might get dissipated into thin air or serve no purpose like it once did in the beginning! How? Let us take a dissected look at where and when Slack and Facebook groups can become a tad much to handle and when your Own brand community can solve those issues in a much easier way.

Benefits of using Facebook & Slack groups

    Benefits

                Slack groups 

              Facebook groups

Familiarity

Slack has more than 12 million active users. Most people use Slack for work, connecting with fellow colleagues, or the other side of the world. 

Oh! Come on! Who are we kidding? Facebook has more than 2.8 billion active users across the world.

Private options

If you are looking to create a private community exclusively for a closed customer group, Slack allows you to create Private channels within your community.

Facebook allows you to create members-only private communities that can access the content and post in the group -- this protects the privacy of your group members and also reduces spamming in your group.

Findability

Although Slack has millions of users, their community is mostly used by professionals and is not much discoverable or much familiar with customers and target audience.

If you are just looking to grow your community, your target audience might possibly join the group because of the brand likeability factor.

Livestreams and video calls

Slack supports video calls between members of the group, but only two members can video call with the free version, with a paid upgrade you can make video calls in a group.

What is the best way to strengthen community engagement? By live streaming and interacting with your active community members. 

Push notifications

Slack uses push notifications to let you know when someone sends you a direct message or posts in a channel.

The main advantage of Facebook groups is that you get notified whenever your members are online.

Limitations of using Facebook & Slack groups

            Limitations

                Slack groups 

            Facebook groups

Difficult to organize

Organizing Slack channels can be a meandering task because one has to organize the channels by customizing sidebars, suppressing images and gifs, and maintaining threads can be overwhelming.

When we talk about Facebook groups, there is no good way to organize past interactions. This is cumbersome.

Participation and engagement drop

Participation and engagement in a slack channel could potentially drop once your community members start expanding. 

The engagement drop happens with Facebook groups as well since it is too difficult to curate content targeting a specific set of audience and leads.

Data ownership and analysis

Slack takes the data ownership of your community and you don’t actually own the data nor can you do data analysis because of their strict guidelines and restrictions.


Facebook provides an absolutely free platform for creating your community, but it doesn’t give you the opportunity to data ownership and data analytics.

Diversity & Scalability

Slack channels don't attract a diverse crowd since more techies are using Slack compared to your target customers. 


When it comes to scalability, even though slack provides a limitless number of channels, keeping them organized can be cumbersome.

Facebook groups can attract a whole bunch of members and users who are solely interested to be a part of your brand community. So diversity is not a big deal.


Scalability factor also is not a big issue.  

Search options & Threaded discussions can get clunky 

Threaded discussions could be a literal pain, to rummage through or search a particular topic in a threaded discussion is going to make your head spin. 


Searching should be improved - right now it's ungrouped. You have to do a more detailed search, which will then narrow the results.

Searching for a specific keyword or names in Facebook works fine as far as you know what you are looking for, if not a gist or fragment, then it wouldn’t be of much help.


Maintaining focus can be challenging

This is an example of how Slack looks like. 






Another example of how Facebook groups look like. In no time, your members will be watching cute puppies videos on Facebook and this could be the biggest problematic factor on the aspect of maintaining focus.



                 Image source


Benefits of our community-building platform

For too long, when you establish a community in Facebook, Slack, or WhatsApp groups, even if you are having a paid community, there is this feeling that none of these quite fit the bill. Why? Especially when the data is always owned by Facebook, Slack, or WhatsApp, and the rules and guidelines often keep changing according to Facebook and Slack. Why not have your own online brand community where you can bring a group of fanatics who could provide great content to your community?

Apart from the fact that there are multiple community-building platforms out there to choose from, why not try and experiment with different platforms like Habitate for starters?

We at Habitate strive hard to help brands build their happy community!

We like a little bit of funky, a little bit of oddity, we love building happy communities.

We make community-building an easy-breezy task with oodles of joy and fun where members can connect and express their feelings with the help of emojis. Of course, this is not the only cool feature we have, we have a curated list of the best features that we provide as a community-building platform.

Customization options

Okay, no matter how many fun activities or live streams you do on Facebook, or how you can still have your brand logo in the Facebook group, the Facebook logo is always going to be there on top.

Creating your brand community with your brand logo & brand name with a customized URL. Creating your brand community with lots of customization options gives you a wholesome feeling and the same gets reflected on your community members as well. This gives a level of uniqueness to your brand community.

No sidetracks or distractions

Having a brand community is the foundation and platform upon which knowledge and skills are shared. When you give your community members a place that makes them feel like home, that has little to no distractions, then you will embrace your community members on a lifelong journey towards the quest of becoming better every day and more importantly have fun and enjoy the journey all along.

Have an uncluttered and organized space

Organize your community with the help of boards and categorize them with the help of tags, it would be so easy to have a separate board for different topics which you feel the need to have so, and you render your community members task easier to go back and search with the help of tags. It is a great handy tool that helps you keep everything tidy and organized, so you don’t have to deal with cluttered spaces anymore.

Schedule your events

One of the best features that could keep you organized and on track is the Calendar option in a community where you can schedule events, define the timeline, invite members, and venues so you never have to worry about missing out on any events anymore.

For privacy, there’s always a private community

Private communities normally have some type of restricted access, so not everyone can join. Even a modest barrier to entry serves a valuable purpose. It keeps out the riff-raff. This alone can foster a community that’s 10x more useful than a public community or if you are more inclined towards having a private community based on the contents you post and on your user persona, we enable creating private or secret boards, wait listing for your community.

Search options simplified with tags & keywords

The search bar results in our platform are enabled by certain keywords, tags, and categories. So all you need to do is search for the topic, tag, keywords, or the specific field. Voila! You'll find a list of options related to your search. The fuss of going through threaded messages is eliminated easily.

You don’t have to pay a hefty price

Well, this is an absolute deal-breaker! Of course, your brand community doesn’t come for free but it sure does come as cheap as only $9/month. Do check out our amazing pricing plans here. Now that is an absolute offer you don’t come across quite often. We care about building the best community for your brand or product, and we don’t compromise on that. We help you achieve the breakthrough you seek from your community.

Be the sole ownership of your data

You have the whole ownership of your data, there are no restrictions like Slack and Facebook groups nor do the guidelines keep changing periodically. You can do data analysis with the help of performance analytics in your community. After all, it's your community, so it is only fair when you have complete control over it.

The final verdict

It is long overdue that you should provide your customers with something fun and different, which is loved by your customers. No matter how many fun activities or live streams you do on Facebook, people are in constant turmoil whenever Facebook hits the headlines, people tend to deactivate or abandon their accounts owing to a bunch of reasons; the fear that lies in the uncertainty is unparalleled. Gathering all the people to join your community is one hell of a task and we definitely don’t want to lose them under any circumstances.

Slack is often focused on internal work communications and many find the threaded messages can get clunky over time and it is highly impossible to search and find something based on a specific keyword -- it often results in hit or miss.

Building your brand community has a lot of perks, although it might be a meandering process it will never disappoint to reap the rewards for you in the long run and it will take you on a lifelong journey with your customers for decades to come!


The number of ways our community-building platform can help you build and craft your community just got easier, made simple and elegant. So why not start your community-building process with us? We offer a free 30-day trial, and we also love to have conversations with fellow community enthusiasts, we have a hearty and fun conversations every Saturday, not sure if this is your cup of coffee then do check out our community cold coffee conversations and book your slot soon, since we are always completely booked, so book your slot in advance for our next Community and Cold coffee session here, We'll see ya there!

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