How can you use online platforms to engage new members for your community?

To engage new members for your community through online platforms, utilize various strategies. Promote your community on social media platforms and relevant online forums. Share valuable content and insights to attract attention. Offer incentives or exclusive benefits for joining. Actively participate in online discussions and engage with potential members. Host webinars, live chats, or Q&A sessions to showcase your community's value. Collaborate with influencers or industry experts to expand your reach. Use targeted advertising or sponsored content to reach your desired audience. Create a welcoming and interactive environment to encourage participation and foster a sense of belonging.

Consider the psychology and purpose around why your community member is active on a certain platform. Do they typically go there to engage and interact or is it a place where that particular demographic goes to unplug? Their intentions and behaviors should go into how a brand shows up in these spaces. In real life, it looks like this. If you want to read a book and have peace a quiet, you don't bring that book to a noisy bar. It's distracting and you could get interrupted and (generally) it probably isn't the atmosphere for that activity. You would go to a coffee shop or library or a park. Some place tranquil. So, asking questions like: - Why is my community member here? (and) - What are their behaviors and expectations from this space?

There's a great book called "They Ask, You Answer" -- if you haven't read it, get it on your reading list. While this model creates a perfect opportunity for content mining, the model can also be flipped. You ask. They answer. Providing entertaining, educational, empowering content is great on a channel and absolutely important to the digital success of a presence but social media is a place for dialogue, not just monologue. So ask. As frequently as feels appropriate, ask what your audience: -What are you curious about? -What do you think about 'x'? -What do you wish you knew more about when it comes to 'X'? ^^Then, answer those questions. Easy like Sunday morning, folks. :)

Too often as digital marketers, our initial instinct is to talk & post & sell & promote. Our muscles are very strong in the outbound messaging department. But one muscle that often needs work is our listening skills. Listening to truly understand. And this is key when it comes to community management around sensitive topics. Relationship maintenance and repair is also important. I'm thinking about health care, finance, etc. High stress pieces of our human experience that can come out in highly emotional messaging online. While responding to the fluff is sun and takes a special kind of talent, triaging and managing sensitive comments and direct messages requires: time, thought, space to pause, and high empathy/emotional intelligence.

Who doesn't love a feel good' surprise and delight' moment? The teams who get to coordinate it feel great about rewarding a loyal community member and the community member will likely be an advocate for life. Having the mental bandwidth to track, identify and execute on these types of projects becomes the tricky part. If this is a goal for your org, consider the workload of your team and if you'll not only be able to take on this additional responsibility, but do it well.

The strength of a community is not defined solely by it's size. A million followers doesn't equate to high conversions. Rather, strength in online communities can be measured by engagement. So don't be discouraged if your numbers aren't as high as say Taylor Swift (ha). Micro and nano influencers actually can achieve higher sales success margins than some of the largest macro influencers in the game. The strength of your community comes from the work you put in to create engaging, relevant, authentic content, appropriate to the channels where your community wants to engage with you.