10 ideas for community engagement to Take This Week
If you've had the pleasure of running communities, either online or otherwise there's something you've learned. Making people show up within a community is awesome. Making them feel engaged and excited to be there is even more effective.
And sometimes that can be a challenge. It's often difficult to convince people to dive into the action and be involved. There are those who prefer to remain on the fence for a long time. If you're not able to keep participants to be involved, there's a fear that they might drop out completely from your community.
Okay, enough for the scary things. The good news is, it doesn't have to be difficult to keep people engaged in a community.
Actually, with the right tools and strategies, you can get member engagement rolling this week.
What's the coolest aspect? Engagement is like a snowball. As more people are engaged, the more of those active members will help other members become involved. That means your efforts to get the members of your organization involved will create the long-term and lasting impact beyond what you could ever imagine.
If you're looking to get started with your community, these tips will assist. Here are 10 strategies for community engagement that you can steal this week!
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The piece...
1. Customize the new member experience
5. Know your Ideal Member and the Big Goal
1. Customize the new member user experience
Now, let's talk about the most crucial point in a community member's journey beginning with their first minutes, hours, or days in a community.
It's the most frightening thing for your new member. This is like becoming the first student at school. The whole class is familiar with each other and understands the situation, but it can be intimidating to join in.
You need to create to provide the best new member experience. It is important to ensure everyone who comes into your community knows how and where to begin. It is important to bring them into discussions to make them feel welcomed, show them where things can be and how they could be to do, and remind them that you're here to assist them.
in an online community it is possible to achieve this through building a great digital new member experience.
For example, within a Mighty Network, we created the checklist for new members that is customizable and can be made your own. Each new member is shown this, and it walks them through steps like setting up their member profile and saying hi on the forum, asking their first question or responding for their first live events.
What you do with it is your choice. However, what's certain is that an awesome welcome experience will not leave people hanging. People will join and immediately begin taking part.
*We offer free classes on building a magical new member experience in the Mighty Community! *
2. Go live... a lot!
We love live streaming. Whether it's a planned event or an unexpected surprise, live streaming can add an element of real in your online network.
Live streaming may be accompanied by the occasional "um" however don't be too concerned about that. With all the perfectly written social media available, a little bit of humanism is welcomed.
If you're looking to increase member participation by going live frequently, you should try it. You can talk about what you've learned, chat with a community member or an outside guest, or hold a question and answer time or an An AMA.
Before you start Yes, the butterflies the moment you start live streaming are totally normal. It's a little nerve-wracking to live stream when you've never done this before. If you tear off the band-aid you'll love what happens next. Increased engagement.
Also, your presentation skills will improve over time. And those butterflies will go away. Try it out!
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3. Updates to emails
Okay, so as you contemplate your community engagement strategy, think about the role in which email could play.
One of the great things about an awesome community platform, particularly one that has an amazing, integrated app, is that your users don't have to be emailed about everything. They should be getting notifications with their community platform (and a good platform should give them options to customize these ).
It gives you the chance to be really strategic in your use of emails. There is no need for sending out emails to your customers every day. However, you could send updates, or let people inform them about upcoming the upcoming events. If users have been absent from the site for a long time, it can be a good strategy to bring people to the platform.
And when life gets busy, which it does every week, an update of events that have occurred in your community can keep people connected and get them ready to jump back into.
4. Incorporate play
Communities should be fun. There are times when we show an urge to be way too serious, especially when people are paying for community membership. You might be feeling the pressure to try to deliver an event that appears... "professional. "
There's a time and a place for that. We're not saying it's not appropriate to be professional.
Being "professional" does not necessarily mean being serious all the time. An ideal community must also come with some fun built-in. If you can get your members to laugh together and sharing the joy of having fun and being playful, you will be building some awesome member experiences.
Try incorporating some fun things. A virtual game show. Karaoke. Things that break your community away from seriousness and build engagement with entertainment. If you're looking for an event idea that is fun and engaging, we have a full list below.
5. Know your Ideal Member with a Big Purpose
There's something that we recommend taking part in the initial planning of your community, during Community Design(tm). Even if you didn't do this step at the time of planning, it's not too late to start these activities now.
Every community needs two things. First of all, you need an ideal member. It is essential to understand what your community's purpose is. Be as specific as possible about the members you have; learn who they are, what their hopes and their dreams as well as what they are passionate about.
If you are able to develop a particular ideal member, this can increase the community's involvement. Instead of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, you can simply focus on helping others.
Ideal member to solve the issue that they are facing. Ideal Member is a way to get members involved and participate.
Another aspect of this is to create what we refer to as a Big Purpose. The Big Purpose of your organization outlines what your community is for and how you can help them do. This is how it looks.
By the way, we have totally free training on finding your ideal members as well as your main purpose within our massive community.
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6. Moderate that thing
Being a great member of your community doesn't only revolve around what's happening in your community. One of the main reasons is knowing the items that your community should not have.
This is how a robust community moderation approach comes in.
Members should feel comfortable in your community. They should know that they won't be bullied or abused. It is important to trust that they won't see posts which are racist, sexist, homophobic, or some other form of discrimination.
So if you want to create a community where people feel safe, you need to build a good moderation strategy. Let your members know what the expectations are, and refer back to the guidelines regularly. Don't be afraid to use the tools for moderation in your community platforms to filter or remove offending content. Also, think about selecting the most active faithful members to aid you out with the task of moderating.
Moderation isn't something that is thrilling from the start. Nobody gets their thrills from having a pen and paper to write out guidelines.
Trust us when we say that the safety and psychological security of the members of your community will be worth it. When people feel secure and secure, they're more inclined to participate.
7. Build rituals
Imagine you could go back to human communities that existed thousands of years ago. When our ancestors sat in campfires. What made those communities stick to one another?
The main reason for community bonding was the power of rituals. Rituals helped to define belonging in the society. They were used to mark major life transformations, like those rites of passage that mark the transition from being a young person and becoming an adult. They were also used to commemorate the passing of time. They were used to mark the passage of months, weeks as well as years.
The community you live in can reap the importance of rituals as well. As you go through the daily activities of your group be aware of the occasions that should be ritualized. Perhaps you've done something with new members and you want to keep doing to everyone, like the new member experience we talked about above. Maybe once a year you have a certain type of community event, something everybody looks at looking forward to. Maybe it's just an annual community party.
When you create these special moments by naming these moments, and making them special, you are creating rituals. This is something that humans have done since the beginning of time, making rituals a powerful way to engage the community.
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8. Ask questions
As we've looked at communities, we've discovered one thing repeatedly that causes the sense of engagement. This isn't a secret.
The point is...questions!
Questions draw members in. Questions ask something of them. Questions get them to pull off their own experiences and knowledge, something everyone is happy about. In short, questions might be the key to member engagement.
We care about the topic so much that, a few years ago, we put together this fantastic guide for 1,000 discussion questions which you can utilize to spark discussion in your group. Download it for free here.
9. Go on quests
Another thing we've put into our game that we're overjoyed about. Quests. Just like knights from the past Quests are a way to take your group in a quest. There is a comprehensive and no-cost training for creating quests for our Mighty Community too!
10. Unscripted
Another tip for getting to the magic of community engagement. Are you ready?
Unscript.
For community administrators, it could be tempting to keep a tight rein on everything. Clean all the things. So that everything looks perfect. But ask anybody who's lived in a group and they'll inform you that the most effective moments are often the ones which nobody anticipates. They're the ones that aren't scripted.
It might be the live stream where the guest isn't allowed to participate and the resulting discussion ends up being more powerful than that session would be. There could be a moment when a member of the community breaks into tears while other members jump in to support and encourage them.
It's obvious that there's nothing you can plan to include unscripted moments. This would be a detriment to the goal.
But do create space and time to be connected in ways that aren't perfect scripted. Be willing to let the magic take place.
11. Empower your best people
As the name implies, isn't something that should be accomplished alone. And leadership of a community doesn't have to be done by itself as well.
One of the secrets for a successful community engagement strategy is to bring people in rather than trying to make it an all-person event. It might mean formally hiring an administrator for the community. However, often it is just giving members the tools they need to be present.
This can be done with things like an Ambassador Program. It offers members rewards by inviting new members. You could also consider promoting the best of your members to become co-hosts or moderators. These can be unpaid or paid positions You may also be surprised to find that people committed to your neighborhood love the opportunity to take on a leadership role and go more deeply.
Are you ready to get started?
The tips we've provided should have you excited to bring an exciting new dimension to your community. Be aware that the presence of thousands of members won't do much good in the absence of engagement. Utilizing these suggestions will help you bring members to your community and retain them. As we've found repeatedly members may join community for its benefits or their courses, but they stay in communities long-term because of the relationships they build in the community.
If you're in search of an amazing platform to create your community on, come try ! It's a community engine that is all-in-one that brings together forums, messaging, subgroups and live streaming, courses along with integrated events and many more. It is possible to charge for the membership fee, offer courses for sale or access to subgroups or bundle any and all of them. And it comes with an amazing app that is loved by your customers.
But don't take our word for it; you are able to try it for free during fourteen days!
Ready to start building the community of your dreams?