Here’s How to Choose the Best Community Management software!

Managing a community is a tough task, especially if the number of members are high and if the group is extremely active. For such big groups, having a community management software is an essential and logical decision. With community management software, member communication, member engagement and keeping the database intact, become easy. But when you go out in the market and do a research, there are several options and features that distinguish each software from the other. Here, choosing the right one becomes a confusing task. In such a scenario, what are the criteria that you should consider in order to select the right community management software? Here are few pointers.

Ask the right questions

• Choosing the right community management software needs to be done in the right way and the first step towards this, is for the organisation to know what it expects the software to do. This needs to be determined by the Board after analysing the requirements. Once the requirements are in place, then the available software can be compared and the best-suited one can be picked up.
• You must be able to understand the ROI of choosing the right software and how it actually helps in streamlining your community processes and in encouraging higher productivity with a lesser loss of time. Know beforehand, whether you need to provide just a chat tool or you need interactive options, for example. Ask all that you need to know from various vendors and understand what their approach is, in resolving your demands.
• The implementation and suitability of the software to the various operating business functions must be analysed. For this to be achieved, you can build a survey or form a core team that can work to understand the expectations of the users as well.

Get the Most from the Demo

As a part of the Board, it is your role to communicate to the vendors about the way your firm works and set the standard right. Instead of going through the demos for the sake of it, do it with a bit of homework. Have your set of questions ready and get a demo as though you are the end user. Once you get the glimpse of the actual product, you can then understand which one best fits your working culture and your community members. It will also help you to understand how many features you actually use in the end. Based on the usage, you can even negotiate the charges accordingly with the vendor.

Discuss Your Options

Once you understand how the product works, and the features, you can have an initial round of talks within your team/community members to understand how good or suitable it is community. You can then brainstorm/collect feedback, list out the pros and cons of the product to realise how efficient it is. You can then list out the questions which can be discussed with the vendor in the final stage. Once all this data is collated, analysed and evaluated, the final vendor must be selected, depending on the ability to offer you the best of the community management services. Consider the objectives of both your audience and your community. If a feature doesn’t address the objectives of at least one of those stakeholder groups, then it probably isn’t something your community needs.

Apart from these, you must also understand the scalability options and the further expected updates that will be needed over time. Also, consider the experience of the vendors and their overall reputation before you take the final call. Once all these factors are considered and analysed, you can choose the right vendor accordingly.

At HashTag, we have worked with a wide range of diverse organisations and have offered customised community management software, that has leveraged business operations and has resulted in an increased productivity. To know, how our team of experts can bring a difference to your community, contact us right away and ask for a demo.