Social media platforms can be distracting. They have a ton of user-generated content that covers the whole gamut, from political commentary to cute cat videos. Cutting through this noise can be really tough, which means getting good engagement rates for your community group is difficult. A private community platform, such as Jambo, offers a dedicated space for your community members to interact. Moreover, a dedicated online community management platform has a host of other benefits.

1. More Flexible and Scalable

You can tweak the UI and UX of a private community platform, which isn’t possible with Facebook and Linkedin groups. You can add or remove features, as you see fit, which goes a long way in delivering an engaging experience to members. For instance, Jambo allows you to recognize leading members of your community with its “praise” feature. When people are recognized for their contribution to a community, they are more likely to become brand evangelists for that community.

Similarly, a dedicated online community management platform allows deeper moderation functions, which allows you to weed out spam and keep the quality of content high. In addition, you can use tools such as personalized content suggestions, leaderboards, and such to push engagement. In that sense, a branded community management platform is a lot more flexible when it comes to customization.

The same goes for scalability, too. As your community grows, you can integrate it with third-party apps and platforms to glean data. For example, if you are running a consumer-focussed community, you might integrate it with your Salesforce data for lead generation and conversions.

2. Better Data Security

When you are running a community on a social media platform, you are at the behest of the platform for your data security. Given Facebook’s recent tryst with data privacy issues, social media platforms don’t evoke a lot of trust. More importantly, in the case of a data breach, user confidence is eroded, which can be detrimental to the growth of your community.

With a dedicated community management platform, you are in control of data security. You can debug the system and look for potential loopholes. You can also include tiered access to the community. For example, if you are running a corporate group for internal communication, you can limit user access according to their position in the hierarchy, with the most sensitive information reserved for the top echelon.

3. Easy Exchange of Information

Dedicated community management platforms come with features that facilitate the exchange of information. For instance, Jambo has unlimited cloud storage to make file-sharing easy. The storage is automatically broken down into relevant categories to make retrieval of information easy. Such handy features are absent from social media platforms, which defeats the primary purpose of building a community: easy exchange of information.

4. Opportunity for Data Mining

Interactions within a community can be a treasure trove of useful data. This data can be used to tweak your existing marketing strategy, and also for predictive analysis. When you are running your community on a private platform, you can use third-party tools to mine this useful information. In the case of social media platforms, the information can easily get lost, in the absence of third-party integrations. Mining data, especially, becomes cumbersome in social media silos as your community grows in size.

When you use a dedicated private platform to build your community, you also get the opportunity to monetize it, if you want to. You can run ads on the platform, or collaborate with brands for sponsored posts. You can even charge members for access to premium information. For example, if you are running a community of musicians, you can host webinars of top mixing engineers, and have users pay for them.

Monetization opportunities do not exist when you are using social media platforms for running a community.

People are familiar with the platform and it is free. However, if you are serious about reaping the benefits of running a corporate alumni group — talent acquisition being the topmost — you should invest in a dedicated community management platform.

Out of the 500 million+ users on Linkedin, only about 1% share content on the platform. In other words, engagement rates on Linkedin are abysmally low. If you are running your corporate alumni group on Linkedin, getting good engagement rates might be a very tough goal. That is just one part of the problem, though.

1. Not Flexible

Linkedin groups don’t come with a lot of functionality, except basic moderation features. And you can’t build your own custom features. As more people join your community, you will need features such as personalized content suggestions, badges for most-active users, and leaderboards. You might even want to integrate your community with third-party software, such as your ERP, in order to centralize your data.

When you are running your alumni group on Linkedin, you are limited by the features that Linkedin has for its groups. The limitation hampers your chances of running a scalable community of engaged users.

2. Data Analysis Becomes Difficult

Even when you are running an alumni network, you should analyze data to see what people are talking about. Based on this information, you can come up with new content ideas to keep the community engaged. Data analysis also gives you the opportunity to identify potential rehires from the group, based on their level of activity and any offline events they have attended in the recent past.

With Linkedin groups, analyzing data becomes a manual task, since you can’t integrate third-party apps. In fact, manual scavenging for data means you could miss on key data insights, which limits the potential of the alumni network.

3. No Custom User Experience

With Linkedin, you don’t decide what ads are served to people in your alumni group, or how group navigation works. If Linkedin decides to change the platform’s UI, you have no say in what features stay. You are, basically, at the behest of the social media giant. With your own branded community platform, you can make developing the user-experience a democratic process.

You can ask members for their feedback and even rope competent people to help you out with improving your UI/UX. That, in itself, can be a good strategy for engaging people in the network.

Author Bio:

Jambo is a community management platform that allows communities to communicate and engage better. Jambo has a host of features that simplify communicating, publishing events, conducting polls, managing memberships and more with use of one integrated application.  We have got features for your every need and more- communicating with members, sharing events and RSVPs, networking, managing memberships, publishing jobs and more; all from one integrated platform.

Social media platforms can be distracting. They have a ton of user-generated content that covers the whole gamut, from political commentary to cute cat videos. Cutting through this noise can be really tough, which means getting good engagement rates for your community group is difficult. A private community platform, such as Jambo, offers a dedicated space for your community members to interact. Moreover, a dedicated online community management platform has a host of other benefits.

1. More Flexible and Scalable

You can tweak the UI and UX of a private community platform, which isn’t possible with Facebook and Linkedin groups. You can add or remove features, as you see fit, which goes a long way in delivering an engaging experience to members. For instance, Jambo allows you to recognize leading members of your community with its “praise” feature. When people are recognized for their contribution to a community, they are more likely to become brand evangelists for that community.

Similarly, a dedicated online community management platform allows deeper moderation functions, which allows you to weed out spam and keep the quality of content high. In addition, you can use tools such as personalized content suggestions, leaderboards, and such to push engagement. In that sense, a branded community management platform is a lot more flexible when it comes to customization.

The same goes for scalability, too. As your community grows, you can integrate it with third-party apps and platforms to glean data. For example, if you are running a consumer-focussed community, you might integrate it with your Salesforce data for lead generation and conversions.

2. Better Data Security

When you are running a community on a social media platform, you are at the behest of the platform for your data security. Given Facebook’s recent tryst with data privacy issues, social media platforms don’t evoke a lot of trust. More importantly, in the case of a data breach, user confidence is eroded, which can be detrimental to the growth of your community.

With a dedicated community management platform, you are in control of data security. You can debug the system and look for potential loopholes. You can also include tiered access to the community. For example, if you are running a corporate group for internal communication, you can limit user access according to their position in the hierarchy, with the most sensitive information reserved for the top echelon.

3. Easy Exchange of Information

Dedicated community management platforms come with features that facilitate the exchange of information. For instance, Jambo has unlimited cloud storage to make file-sharing easy. The storage is automatically broken down into relevant categories to make retrieval of information easy. Such handy features are absent from social media platforms, which defeats the primary purpose of building a community: easy exchange of information.

4. Opportunity for Data Mining

Interactions within a community can be a treasure trove of useful data. This data can be used to tweak your existing marketing strategy, and also for predictive analysis. When you are running your community on a private platform, you can use third-party tools to mine this useful information. In the case of social media platforms, the information can easily get lost, in the absence of third-party integrations. Mining data, especially, becomes cumbersome in social media silos as your community grows in size.

When you use a dedicated private platform to build your community, you also get the opportunity to monetize it, if you want to. You can run ads on the platform, or collaborate with brands for sponsored posts. You can even charge members for access to premium information. For example, if you are running a community of musicians, you can host webinars of top mixing engineers, and have users pay for them.

Monetization opportunities do not exist when you are using social media platforms for running a community.