Engagement doesn’t just happen. It is the result of carefully orchestrated strategies. And it can be frustrating!
Overcoming the inertia of an unengaged community is probably the biggest area of concern from just about every community professional I have spoken with. It is what keeps us up at night and because we are dealing with human behaviors, desires, and psychology, it can feel overwhelming when we are throwing everything we can at our community programs to try to drive that value!
So, what are some of the best areas to focus on when building your community?
Get members involved - the more opportunities you can create for members to take ownership of their community, you will see strong engagement across the board.
- member volunteer programs
- community leader spotlights
- ranks
- badges
- product user/customer education participation spotlights
- Community Advisory Boards
- Steering Committees
- User Generated Content
Gamification - incentivize your members to perform the behaviors that are needed to drive engagement.
- Badges
- Ranks
- Leaderboards
- Member Spotlights
- Challenges/Campaigns/Competitions
Input - bringing your customers into a place where they can utilize the community space to speak into the product in some way is another great driver.
- Ideation
- Q&A
- Event hosts
- Customer Advisory Boards
- New feature beta testers
Awareness - out of sight = out of mind. Create strategies that keep your community top of mind
- Weekly Digest/Week in Review
- Personal messages
- Internal communication
- Social media cross-pollination
- Tagging members
- Surveys
Check out some examples of engagement drivers:
If you have any questions or need a hand, just let us know!