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🧭 7 Themes to Guide Community Content 🎯
Creating community content and programming requires creativity and structure to ensure long-term success. Without a framework, brainstorming can feel haphazard and ineffective. To guide your brainstorming efforts, consider these seven themes to guide your community content and programs:
- Education
- Provide opportunities for participants to deepen their understanding and mastery of a subject matter.
- Offer workshops, tutorials, or courses tailored to the interests and needs of community members.
- Stories
- Share the history and founding narratives of the community, highlighting important milestones and key figures.
- Introduce new members to the community's backstory to foster a sense of connection and belonging.
- Debate
- Facilitate discussions on topics relevant to the community, encouraging diverse perspectives and respectful dialogue.
- Create a safe space for members to engage in challenging conversations and explore different viewpoints.
- Welcome
- Foster a welcoming environment for new members by providing orientation sessions, mentorship programs, or welcome events.
- Encourage existing members to reach out and connect with newcomers, helping them integrate into the community seamlessly.
- Celebrate
- Recognize and celebrate the achievements, milestones, and contributions of both individual members and the community as a whole.
- Organize virtual or in-person events, awards ceremonies, or appreciation posts to highlight noteworthy accomplishments.
- Cultivate Relationships
- Create opportunities for members to forge meaningful connections and friendships with one another.
- Host social gatherings, networking events, or casual meetups to facilitate personal interactions and bonding.
- Collaborate
- Engage members in collaborative projects or initiatives that align with the community's goals and values.
- Encourage participation in group projects, community-driven campaigns, or crowd-sourced content creation endeavors.
These themes can serve as a starting point for brainstorming ideas that resonate with your community's unique purpose and values. Challenge yourself to generate at least 10 ideas for each category, pushing beyond the obvious to uncover innovative and engaging concepts. By applying this structured approach to brainstorming, you can bring clarity and direction to your community content and programming efforts, fostering meaningful interactions and driving long-term engagement.
Let us know how you've used these ideas in your content plan!
This post was originally published in 2022 but has been revised and updated from its previous edition to ensure accuracy and relevance.
How to Format Code
In the 2024.006 release, the Rich 2 Editor was enabled by default for new sites. W00T!
There are several ways to format posts. I’ll focus on formatting code blocks.
This is what a code block looks like when you’re ready to enter your text. You can use it to change the appearance of your text when you want to highlight something special or enter code. When you use a code block, the code you enter will be formatted properly without having to fiddle around with things.
Options for Code Blocks
Rich 2 Editor:
Select the paragraph symbol next to the text entry box of the comment or discussion you’re about to create. Then, click on the quotation mark symbol. That will open a drop-down menu where you can click on the “</> Code Bock” and then enter your text.
Advanced Editor:
The code drop-down menu looks like this:
Highlight Text:
You can enter text regularly and then highlight the text you want to appear as code. A drop-down menu will appear. Select {..}, and your text will “translate” it into a code block.
Markdown-Based Macro:
In the comment or discussion box, type a backtick followed by your text and then another backtick. The text will be formatted as code.
References:
AI Chatbot on Community
One of my awesome teams has developed a AI Chatbot for their alumni and students to use. They would love to see it embedded in the Community to entice their students & alum to use it.
Of course, we love that here on the Kaplan Community team so wanted to see if anyone implemented something similar?
It's being built similar to ChatGPT but trained just for this specific course offerings but will look like ChatGPT when you've accessed it.
Has your org done anything similar? Appreciate it!