AI to Grow an Online Community: 6 Practical Ways to Use AI in Your Community

There are so many ways that creators and entrepreneurs can use artificial intelligence (AI) in their business.

In our blog, we try to cover all of the best use-case scenarios of AI: how to use AI to promote a business, create content with AI, build online courses with AI etc...

But how about using AI to grow an online community?

This is what we will discuss in today's article, so keep reading below to learn all about AI online community strategies and tips to grow your community engagement with artificial intelligence.

What is an Online Community?

Before we get into the way you can use AI in communities, let's clarify what we mean by the term "online community."

Today, people crave a sense of belonging and connection. They desire to be a part of a group of people who share similar interests.

An online community is made up of individuals who have common interests and come together in a digital space to exchange thoughts, acquire new knowledge, ask questions and engage with one another.

Other than being a place where active members can interact, an online community can be a valuable marketing strategy.

Creating a thriving online community is a fantastic way to expand your business and encourage active participation from your audience.

If you want to learn more about building your online community, check out these articles from our blog:

• Why You Should Build an Online Community of Engaged Customers and How to Do it
• How to Choose the Right Online Community Platform For Your Knowledge Business
• 7 Steps to Revive Your Online Community and Increase Engagement

Although many content creators and business owners recognize the potential of community growth, they may not know how to create one that benefits both their customers and their business.

Often, entrepreneurs turn to social media platforms, like Facebook groups, to build their community.

While social media is certainly easily accessible and can increase your visibility, it may not be the best choice for fostering engagement and keeping your members within a "controlled" environment.

This is where dedicated online community platforms step in, providing a customized solution for creators and digital entrepreneurs who want to construct a private, secure, and adaptable space for their members to connect with one another and cultivate a sense of community.

If you are looking for an online community platform that gives you full flexibility on how to structure your community, full control of community moderation and lets you interact with community members easily, Heights Platform is your best choice.

Plus, Heights Platform - being a community and online course software - offers you many more tools and features designed to grow a thriving online business: you can create online courses, start community membership sites, sell digital products and more. All powered with AI!

How to Use AI to Grow an Online Community The Right Way

With AI, you are essentially using computers to complete actions that generally require human intelligence.

One of the key advantages of AI is that it can process large amounts of data in ways that humans simply cannot. But that's not all that AI can do: to our surprise, AI seems to excel in creative tasks as well: writing, composing, generating images, brainstorming ideas etc...

So why not use AI in communication as a way to run and grow an online community?

Before we get into how to do it, it's crucial not to forget the importance of people interacting with each other to create and maintain strong community connections.

AI can't replicate human qualities like understanding emotions, interpreting body language, being flexible, being a good listener, and genuinely forming relationships.

We should also remember that AI can help with community engagement, but there are ethical concerns and possible issues, like safeguarding data privacy, addressing algorithmic bias, and being transparent about how AI is used.

Now that you know about how to use AI in online communities ethically, let's see how you can do this.

Heights Platform is an online community and course creation software powered by AI. So we know about communities and artificial intelligence.

However, who is better than AI itself to tell us how to use AI to grow an online community?

So we asked ChatGPT this very question: How can you (ChatGPT) help me with running an online community?

ChatGPT gave us seven great ideas on how to use its AI power to grow an online community. So, let's analyze them below, together with our own knowledge and experience.

#1: Use AI to Brainstorm Community Content Ideas

A great way to use AI tools is to gather inspiration and new ideas. So you could do this if you are not sure how to grow your online community or which topics to post about.

You can simply ask the AI a question by providing some context about your community, what it is about, and what you are trying to achieve.

For example, let's say that you are stuck and cannot think about what to share next to spark discussion in your community.

You could use AI tools like ChatGPT to gather new ideas about community posts.

We did it by asking: "I have an online community where people discuss graphic design. Can you help me come up with three topic ideas and unique posts that I can share with the community? The focus of these posts should be graphic design, how to get design clients and tips for using graphic design tools."

And just like that, we got valuable ideas for community content we could share with the members.

#2: Get Personalized Recommendations on How to Grow a Community

The issue with ChatGPT is that it doesn't know anything about you and your business. So every time you ask something, you have to give it an extensive background and context in order to receive an accurate response.

One AI tool that solves this problem is the Heights AI Coach: an AI that acts as your business coach and sends you weekly tasks on how to grow your business, depending on your goals!

The AI Coach is available for creators who use Heights Platform to host their communities and products. Since the coach lives inside your Heights Platform account, it knows a lot about your business and daily progress.

It also knows about your ultimate business goals and struggles since the coaching starts with a quick chat where you can share this with the AI.

With all this information at hand, the AI coach comes up with an action plan for you to follow. Every week, it sends you new tasks for you to complete, and every week, you can update the coach about your progress.

The AI coach can help you grow your business, including helping you build and populate your online community.

For example, we told the AI coach that our goal was to grow our online community, and the AI asked us about what we have been working on lately to achieve this goal and what are our main struggles.

We mentioned how our community members are not engaging with the content, and how we need help coming up with new posts and activity ideas for the community.

After having this quick chat with the AI Coach, it generated tasks for us to complete according to our goal of growing the community.

The picture above shows an example of a couple of the tasks that the AI coach generated for us, to grow an online community of wedding planners (as an example).

The AI suggested that we brainstorm new topics to share by looking at the biggest pain points that our ideal customers are facing, and that we spend some time researching our target audience online.

It also suggested that we create a poll or thread in the community inviting members to actively participate in the community discussions and to be more active within the community.

Every week the coach sends new tasks to complete, and notifies you by email about attending a new coaching session and completing the tasks.

The AI Coach provides ongoing business coaching through the power of artificial intelligence.

And the best part? It's completely free and comes with your Heights Platform subscription!

Think of it as having a personal mentor who's available around the clock, analyzing your specific circumstances and offering detailed guidance without requiring much effort from you.

The AI Coach consistently keeps an eye on your progress, understands your situation, and creates a customized growth plan to address your requirements. It independently generates new tasks for you to work on each week, making it a convenient and efficient coaching solution.

Try the AI Coach yourself by creating a free Heights Platform account:

#3: Create a Community Content Calendar With AI

Consistency is important when it comes to running an engaged online community or forum.

If you want your community members to feel engaged, you need to constantly post new, interesting content, interact with them, answer questions and moderate the community.

So, it is a good idea to preplan your content creation efforts and community activities ahead with a content calendar.

AI can help you create a content calendar and outline all the posts, activities and interactions you are going to have within the community for a given week or month.

Another AI tool that can help you with growing your community business is the Heights AI. In the paragraph earlier, we talked about the Heights AI Coach.

These two AI tools are part of the same platform, Heights Platform, but they are separate tools that can help you with different actions.

Heights AI Chat, for example, is an AI chat that can answer your questions about growing an online business, building a community, creating online courses and using Heights Platform.

The Heights AI also has awesome tools like a "Course Generator" that can create an online course in seconds for you by providing only the course title.

In the example below, we asked the Heights AI Chat to generate a weekly content calendar of posts to share with our online community. Since the Heights AI lives inside your account, it already knows the topic of your business.

In this case, it knows that our community's main topic is "baking": so its answer is tailored to our topic.

Here is what the AI generates as a weekly content plan for a community of baking enthusiasts:

• Monday: Share a mouthwatering cookie recipe that you recently discovered. Include step-by-step instructions and some tips for achieving the perfect batch of cookies
• Tuesday: Ask your community members to share their favorite cookie flavor or any unique cookie recipes they've tried. Encourage them to share photos or describe their experiences
• Wednesday: Start a discussion about different baking techniques for cookies. Ask your community members to share their favorite techniques or any tips they have for achieving soft, chewy, or crispy cookies
• Thursday: Share a behind-the-scenes video of you experimenting with a new cookie recipe. Show your process, highlight any challenges you faced, and ask for input or suggestions from your community members
• Friday: Host a "Cookie Q&A" session where community members can ask any cookie-related questions they have. Encourage them to share their baking dilemmas or seek advice on troubleshooting common cookie issues
• Saturday: Share a fun and interactive cookie decorating tutorial. Provide step-by-step instructions and tips on icing techniques and suggest different cookie designs for members to try
• Sunday: Take a moment to appreciate the joy of baking and enjoying cookies. Share a heartfelt post about your love for baking, the memories associated with cookies, or any personal stories related to your journey as a cookie enthusiast. Encourage your community members to share their own cookie stories and nostalgic moments.

#4: Offer Instant Community Support to Members

AI works 24/7 and never sleeps, so it can offer assistance to community members regardless of their time zones and work schedules, enhancing the overall user experience.

Chatbots and virtual assistants with human-like qualities can offer immediate support to community members, swiftly handling their questions and issues.

By using a well-designed chatbot, you can greatly enhance your community support, making sure that members feel acknowledged.

A variety of AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistant tools are available, and they can be tailored to match your community's requirements. These tools are useful for providing individualized assistance, responding to common questions, and even making member interactions enjoyable and interactive.

Check out this guide for the best AI Chatbots available in the market.

#5: Moderate a Community With AI

A thriving community is a space where members feel safe to interact with each other and can share their ideas and insights in a positive and welcoming environment.

Moderation and community management is extremely important even in private communities where new members are selected as they join the virtual space.

This means approving new posts, deleting harmful or hateful content and constantly monitoring the atmosphere inside the community.

AI-based content moderation tools can help you build a safe and pleasant community culture.

Tools such as CleanSpeak have the ability to automatically identify and filter out harmful content, thus enhancing the welcoming and inclusive nature of your community space.

AI-powered moderation also enables you to spot trends and patterns within your community, facilitating proactive actions and the creation of a more positive ambiance. By nurturing a secure and respectful environment, you will promote more meaningful discussions and deeper connections among your members.

#6: Improve Your Community's Website SEO With AI

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is crucial for the success of any online business.

It involves a set of strategies and techniques designed to boost the visibility of your website and its pages, ultimately leading to higher rankings in search engine results.

In simple terms, following SEO best practices means that your website will appear higher in search engine results when users search for specific keywords.

The main goal of SEO is to ensure that your website stands out whenever your target audience searches for something on platforms like Google.

While SEO can be time-consuming, AI-powered SEO tools can help community builders better understand how to use SEO to their advantage, making the process of achieving high search engine rankings easier.

Take Heights AI, for example, which not only offers valuable insights but also provides personalized recommendations to enhance on-page SEO efforts.

For example, let's say that you have a landing page designed to promote your online community, and you want to increase website visitors for the page.

If you create your website on Heights Platform (this platform has an easy-to-use web page builder where you can create unlimited web pages with a drag-and-drop editor and ready-made templates), you can access AI tools designed to improve your search engine rankings and SEO.

The Heights AI analyzes your web page for various SEO elements. It evaluates things like text structure, heading organization, keyword research suggestions, content optimization, internal linking, word counts, and more.

After completing its analysis, the AI offers specific and detailed recommendations for improving your on-page SEO.

These suggestions are tailored to your particular web page and aim to optimize it for better search engine rankings and visibility.

Grow Your Community With AI Today

Artificial intelligence offers a wealth of possibilities for building and growing your online community.

By leveraging AI tools (among which Heights AI), you can streamline content creation, receive personalized recommendations, maintain consistent community engagement, provide instant support, ensure effective moderation, and even improve your community's website SEO.

However, it's crucial to use AI ethically and responsibly, considering factors like data privacy and algorithmic bias.

To start using AI and grow a community, we invite you to try Heights AI.

This AI is part of Heights Platform, an online community and course creation platform that can help you take your community to the next level.

Discover the power of AI in community building with Heights AI today. Get started by creating your free account - no credit card required!