Looking to get more visitors actively participating on your WordPress site?
Turning your site into an engaging social community is a proven way to boost engagement, create loyal followers, and gain marketplace insights.
HubSpot research indicates that social media increases website traffic by an average of +55%. Furthermore, 66% of consumers expect companies to offer social media customer support.
Clearly your visitors want to connect via social platforms – why not build one right on your own website?
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk through how to seamlessly integrate social features into WordPress using BuddyPress. Follow along to start fostering member relationships that drive real business value.
Why Build a Social Network with WordPress
Before we dive into the how-to, let‘s explore the main reasons you should consider activating social capabilities on your WordPress site:
Increase Visitor Engagement
Social features like user profiles, activity feeds, and messaging give visitors more ways to actively engage with your brand. Recent studies have shown sites with community options can improve key metrics like:
- Time on site (+33%)
- Pages per visit (+25%)
- Comment volume (+100+)
By facilitating on-site interactions between visitors themselves, you make the experience inherently more engaging.
Encourage Loyal Followings
According to Social Media Today, 52% of online consumers feel more loyal to brands that interact with them on social channels.
Building custom social networking right into your WordPress site allows visitors to develop stronger connections with your brand, establish relationships with other community members, and gain a sense of belonging.
Gain Customer Intelligence
A vibrant social community generates valuable intelligence about who your customers really are and what they care about.
From user profiles, you can gather demographics, interests, and contact information. Comments, forum discussions, and messaging provide a pulse on opinions, questions, concerns, and feedback.
These organic insights allow you to improve products, fine-tune messaging, identify upsell opportunities, and resolve issues in a personalized way.
Boost SEO with More Content
An active user community fuels all sorts of new keyword-rich content:
- User profiles and activity feeds
- Comments and forum discussions
- Reviews and testimonials
- Questions and answers
Search engines crawl these high-value community contributions, leading to better rankings and visibility.
Clearly WordPress sites stand to gain tremendously by integrating social engagement tools. Next let‘s explore how to make it happen.
How to Add Social Features to Your WordPress Site
The easiest way transform standard WordPress into a bonafide social network is by installing and configuring the BuddyPress plugin.
With over 2 million active installs, BuddyPress is the most popular and full-featured solution for enabling community building capabilities like:
- User profiles
- News feeds
- Messaging
- Groups
- Notifications
Let‘s go through getting up and running with BuddyPress on WordPress step-by-step.
Step 1: Install & Activate BuddyPress
First, login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New:
Search for "BuddyPress" and click the Install Now button.
Once installation completes, click Activate to enable BuddyPress.
Step 2: Setup Components
Navigate to Settings > BuddyPress and select the Components tab:
Here, you can toggle social capabilities like activity streams, groups, messaging direct on and off.
Enable the options that match the type of community you want to build. The defaults work well to start.
Step 3: Configure User Settings
Still under the BuddyPress settings, choose the Options tab next:
There are tons of configurations here to dictate how users interact like allowing uploads, friending capabilities, notifications preferences, etc.
Review each setting carefully and enable/disable based on how you want to manage the community experience.
Step 4: Set Up Profile Fields
You can collect all types of info in member profiles like location, website, hobbies, skills, education, and more.
To activate additional profile inputs, navigate to Users > Profile Fields in the WordPress dashboard.
Click Add New Field, give it an intuitive name, assign it to a field group like Contact Info or Personal Details, designate the type of data being collected like a textbox or checkbox, and specify visibility.
Repeat to gather the profile information important for your community.
Step 5: Create Social Groups
Within your social network, groups allow members to form mini-communities around shared interests.
As the site owner, you determine the parameters including:
- Public – Anyone can join
- Private – Approval required
- Hidden – Only visible to members
To setup a new group, visit Groups > Add New in your WordPress dashboard:
Fill in details like name, description, privacy setting, images, and member assignments.
Repeat to launch multiple topical communities relevant for your audience.
Step 6: Seed Interactions
Once the underlying social components are in place, focus on jumpstarting conversational momentum:
Welcome new members – Drive registrations then recognize newbies to foster inclusiveness
Spotlight active contributors – Feature standout fans and amplify their voices to motivate broader involvement
Send activity digests – Email recaps of trending topics reengage less active members
Share exclusive content – Entice visitors to join and contribute to unlock premium community perks
Building an initial critical mass of vibrant discussions keeps site visitors hooked and immersed.
Step 7: Moderate Actively
As your social community expands, some management oversight helps ensure conversations stay substantive, appropriate, and on-topic:
Preview member signups
New member registrations funnel to a moderation queue allowing you to validate legitimacy before public profiles go live.
Ban troublesome users
Employ zero tolerance for trolls. Control abusive commenters by instantly blocking them from the community.
Flag inappropriate posts
Enable any participant to report questionable content for admin review and rapid removal.
Automate spam prevention
Tools like Akismet instantly detect and quarantine likely spam contributions to keep public exchanges free of unwanted drivel.
Make Emails Reflect Brand Voice
BuddyPress automatically dispatches site update emails to users as new activity occurs.
While convenient, default alerts could benefit from matching your brand‘s distinct style and personality.
Customize Message Text
To tweak the text in system emails, visit Settings > Emails and click Edit to modify templates:
Revise content to adopt your brand‘s tone, terminology, and messaging standards.
Change Presentation Formatting
Additionally, visit Emails > Customize for applying visual styling like colors, fonts, imagery, and layouts:
Altering aesthetics promotes familiarity and gives notifications an official, professional polish.
Guarantee Email Delivery with SMTP
Now that messages align with brand voice, it‘s equally important they reliably reach inboxes, not get derailed as junk.
Relying on standard WordPress/BuddyPress SMTP is risky. Instead establish dedicated delivery infrastructure through providers like:
- SendinBlue
- Mailgun
- Sparkpost
Third-party services boast superior deliverability and tracking capabilities helping cement arrival regardless of inboxing algorithm uncertainty.
| Provider | Reliability | Security | Analytics | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SendinBlue | 99.9% | TLS/SSL Encryption | Inbox/Read Rates | Free – $11/mo |
| Mailgun | 99.9% | TLS/SSL Encryption | Engagement Tracking | $35/mo |
| SparkPost | 99.99% | TLS/SSL Encryption | Link Click Analytics | $20/mo |
Review options above that satisfy reliability, security, and list management needs. An affordable investment here practically guarantees your vital community email exchanges consistently reach members without issues.
Alternative Social Plugins for WordPress
While BuddyPress works great, you have options when activating social networking and community capabilities in WordPress:
bbPress
The popular forum builder allows site owners and members to launch focused topic-specific discussions.
Use When: Enabling Q&A interactions is the priority
Social Articles
Leverage crowdsourcing so visitors submit, vote, and curate content. Democratizes publishing while keeping quality high.
Use When: Seeking visitor-generated posts like stories or news items
PaidMembershipsPro
For sites needing advanced subscription management tools plus community discussion areas.
Use When: Selling access to locked "members only" content sections
Each option above serves different yet complementary purposes. Mix and match to get the exact community functionality your WordPress site calls for!
Let‘s Recap
Social features boost on-site engagement. Facilitating visitors connecting with each other via groups, messaging, and feeds increases time on site, repeat visits, and participation.
Member communities build loyalty. Offering personal ways for visitors to interact online with your brand and one another fosters allegiance and goodwill.
Conversations provide customer insights. Ongoing exchanges like user-submitted profiles, posts, and product reviews offer invaluable real-time intelligence about audience needs and interests.
More content aids SEO. Additional keyword-rich member contributions like forum commentary improve search visibility by enlarging domain authority.
On top of driving value across areas above, social communities grant simple membership management controls via groups, improve brand sentiment through peer advocacy, increase sales from special offers, and resolve support needs faster thanks to self-service discussion forums.
Clearly integrate social features and facilitate community building pays dividends across the customer and visitor journey.
We walked through getting started by activating BuddyPress on WordPress then customizing components like feeds, messages, and groups to match intended use cases.
Don‘t forget to consistently moderate, contribute quality content, highlight engaged users, customize email notifications, and leverage SMTP for guaranteed inbox delivery.
Soon you‘ll be on your way to enabling wonderful visitor interactions that make your website a go-to gathering place for quality conversations!
What aspect of managing or participating in an online community interests you most? Let me know in comments!
