Online community. Real-world impact. | Social Signal

Engage audiences

At Social Signal, we're experts at turning site visitors into site contributors. Our practice is based on a decade of research into online participation, a decade of experience in online campaigning, and more than twenty-five years of collective wisdom on social marketing, strategy and communications. We put that knowledge to work for you by building online communities with active, engaged audiences – audiences you're conversing with, not lecturing at.

We ensure your success by mapping out a site plan that includes not only the technical architecture of web pages and navigation, but the social structure of activities and incentives for participation. We work to create a snowball effect – where a contribution from one sincere, articulate user sets off a chain reaction where other users are inspired to respond or contribute their own original ideas.

Build trust

Social Signal has a proven ability to create online communities that foster a trusted relationship between your organization and your site's users. Through user-created content, a successful online community brings you closer to your audience – because it ties your identity directly to an online presence that intimately reflects your audience's interests and values.

We focus on building your relationship with online participants at every step in the development process. We start by balancing creative brainstorming with careful needs assessment to develop a concept that will uniquely appeal to the audiences you wish to engage. We often build an initial presence with a light feature set, and then solicit user input into how to develop the site further – giving users a meaningful sense of ownership over the community's evolution. We emphasize skilled site animation and moderation, and supply or work with your site moderator, so that users feel encouraged and supported.

Deepen relationships

At Social Signal we recognize that your online community efforts are tied to real-world goals, and keep all our online efforts focused on your real-world success. An online community isn't an end in itself. Online community matters because it connects real-world people and organizations... helps us to be more effective and satisfied in our real-world work and lives... and, at its most powerful, triggers positive change in the real world.

We emphasize strategies that continually link online community to real-world impact, and that link your expanding online relationships to your offline mission. We work with clients to develop web sites and online activities that support offline events like meetings and conferences. We promote activities and conversations on-site that fuel offline engagement, like campaigns that commit site users to taking action in the real world. We partner with communications teams to integrate traditional media channels with online community efforts, so you engage your publics with a consistent voice.