The Association’s Guide to Comparing Online Community Platforms

 

We often have people asking us, “what is the difference between Breezio and other online community platforms?” Well my response is oftentimes, “EVERYTHING”; and they usually agree after they see it for themselves.

In all seriousness, in this age of association technology consolidation and digital transformation, many feel that there is a shrinking number of options available for their growing need for online member engagement solutions. After all, 60% of Membership Associations reported an increase in their online communities (According to the 2017 Membership Marketing Benchmarking survey), and all signs point to that percentage to continue to increase.

There are options out there, such as Higher Logic/Socious, and Personify/Small World Labs, Vanilla Forums, etc., but we feel that Breezio is one of the very few companies that stands out from those more traditional platforms. We realize that may not always be the right fit for your business needs but we hope to give you a fresh new way to think about your online community.

There are numerous review sites you can also check out, but as a newer platform on the market which you won’t find on those sites, we wanted to help answer your immediate questions directly and provide you some additional information so you can evaluate us against your other options.

At a high level, you can see that Breezio has a robust platform with some unique solutions that make us stand out from the pack. Content collaboration, learning tools, live events and chat are just a few that we do differently and give you a list of new ways to engage your members.

Compare What matters – Engagement, Easiness & Experience

Let’s explore a few important categories for comparison that directly impact the success of any platform; Engagement, Easiness, Experience.

Engagement

Needless to say, Breezio is the ONLY-and I say this with confidence- community platform on the market that offers content-centric engagement & live interactivity. We move your community beyond forums and chat rooms so you can own the conversations happening around your content. All other online community platforms were built as people networks; content was an afterthought. The essential difference in ideology creates a fundamentally different user experience.

Three ways Breezio allows you to directly engage other members around curated content include:

1. in-line commenting allows you to discuss specific paragraphs without scrolling all the way to the bottom only to forget what you wanted to say;
2. Start chat’s around content allowing members to connect with peers and experts in the field in real time;
3. Coordinate member engagement or schedule online meetings around content for Live chats or video conferencing with the click of a button.

Moreover, for engagement, we subscribe to what John Mancini, CEO AIIM, believes – “The fundamental building block (of engagement) is curated content, not just discussions.” By extending digital engagement beyond the traditional forum-like discussion space, Breezio really aggregates the knowledge and experience of everyone to facilitate a social learning experience that’s essential to optimal member engagement.

By the way, did I mention that we also have chat?

Ease of use

Community platforms present a treasure of knowledge and resources, but only for the ones who can find the relevant information. Thus it is an essential user experience to be able to find relevant information with ease. All three software platforms are accessible through laptop or mobile; yet Breezio’s optimization on mobile display really allows users to have a seamless experience. We know that there’s a 50%+ possibility that you’re reading this on your phone while you’re in line at the grocery story, or in the elevator – so we built it for that. A powerful “Search” is also important for finding people and content. A select few platforms deploy search into the product, but Breezio went beyond a simple integration with Google Search to deliver a system-wide solution that returns all related information in a grid format, enabling the user to find what he/she wants with a breeze.

Experience

We have all been spoiled by the online user experience we get from facebook, google, linkedin and other social tech giants who have raised the bar for user expectations. Users are quick to judge things according to their ease of use and appearances, and rightly so: systems designed to “wow” you are probably more interesting to use and built better for the user than those that seem to be stuck in the 90’s. Breezio incorporates the latest idea of flat design and gamification that are just, simply more fun to look at and more interesting to use. Combined with the real-time, LIVE interactivity and communication solutions, we’ve created a product that simply immerses users in the experience.

The Bottom Line

When deciding on your online community platform there are numerous things to take into account; platform features being just part of the equation. The most important thing is knowing what your goals are and what behaviors you are trying to foster. Once you have those established you can work backwards and start to find the right platform partner that can help you to meet those goals.

We hope that you’ll consider Breezio in that list of those you’re evaluating and we look forward to the chance to help you redefine engagement for your organization!