6 Important Points to Increase Community Engagement

Finding it difficult to engage your community members on your virtual platform? You’re not alone. According to Gartner’s study, 70% of online communities are headed towards an early end. One of the biggest contributors to this is a lack of engagement.

?But that does not mean your community is doomed to fail. There are many successful brand communities out there and prime examples of well-devised engagement strategies that you can learn from.

By interacting and providing a platform for their customers, major brands like Microsoft and even Google have reaped limitless benefits. And there is nothing to stop you from doing the same.

?Follow this checklist to make sure that you are actually doing your best in engaging your online community members.

1.???Identify the intent of your members

?The members of your community have one major purpose. It is to find the answers that they are looking for. Interaction is a plus, yes, but you need to know what is going to make their stay in the community worth their while and create your plan around that.

?Adobe has always been a favorite one for graphic designers and other virtual creators. They can use Adobe’s stack of multiple software for various purposes. But this came at the cost of an extremely steep learning curve. By creating a community, they provided all their customers a common space to communicate the issues they were facing. They followed a simple engagement strategy. All they needed to do was encourage users to ask any doubts they have about the products. They also used the platform to send out announcements on any new updates or releases, intimating their most loyal users directly. This saw their engagement levels jumping to a point where they had to create various subcommunities for each one of their products.

2.???Post different kinds of content

?For a social community, one where your goal is to get people to interact and generate new content, your initial goal will be to interest your customers to respond to your posts. Make sure that you do not put the same type of content repeatedly. Switch up the format to keep things fun.

?Good examples of content would be:

a)????Fill in the blank posts - My book of the month is ___. This leaves an open ending, giving a hard push for your users to complete it with their answers.

b)???Webinars - You can use webinars to host a virtual event such as a festive gathering or a formal conference with your community. These are also a good way to get your members to know each other simultaneously.

c)????Podcasts - A short and simple podcast is one of the best ways to provide bite-sized info that your community members will value. They can listen to it on the go and appreciate the change in content.

d)???‘Caption This’ Contests - Send an image to your community and ask your members to comment with a suitable description. This gives a chance for them to showcase their creativity and unique perspective.

e)????Polls - Posing a question with multiple choices to choose from make it very easy for members to interact with your post. You can also ask them to reply with any additional opinions via comments.

f)????Announcements - Community portals are the perfect space to announce any news from your business or organization. You can directly reach out to your audience on a single platform.

g)???Welcome - Greet new members to your community with a welcome post. Make it a weekly thing or so, where you can welcome all new members together and ask them to give their respective introductions via the comments.

3. Maintain context & relevance

Even if you find something that you feel is really interesting to share with your community, it would be better not to do so if they cannot relate to it. Maintaining context is a very important part of community engagement. Pin relevant posts so that they are easily visible to all users.

For example, Doubtnut is a well-known platform for students to learn and resolve any academic queries. An endless number of questions and answers keep pouring into the platform, over varying subjects, in their respective threads. In such a scenario, posting a mathematics-related question in a languages thread will be unwelcome as it will do nothing but cause confusion among users. Such questions should be posted in their respective threads. On the other hand, important announcements on exams should be pinned at the top of all threads for easy visibility to all the students who are on the platform. This ensures that the information has maximum reach among the users.

?Communities depend on a mutual purpose for success. If you identify what it is and cater to it, you have solved your biggest problem right there.

4. Incentivise activity

Limited-time offers and competitions with exciting rewards are the best ways to encourage activity. Users like participating and giving their own insights on a task or idea, but to really motivate them there’s nothing like a good reward. Discounts, gift cards, virtual currency, or even a free trial to your products are good incentives that can capture their interest further.

?Starbucks has a massive following on social media. They frequently run campaigns to let their community know of their Starbucks Rewards system. It awards ‘stars’ to customers for each purchase made, rewarding them with freebies and exclusive upgrades to their drinks. This creates a loyalty system that keeps them coming for more. They also ask their customers to be active in their community to be notified about Double Star Day — special days when they reward more stars on purchases. This ensures that their customers stick around in the community, indirectly boosting engagement as well.

5. Experts are always welcome

Create a network and reach out to experts in the industry. Invite them to be a member and participate in your community. This acts as a golden motivator to your members as and when they see experienced or well-known people active on the forum, they look forward to interacting with them.

?CMX Hub, an established community for community makers across the world, has its CEO as well as various moderators initiating and driving engagement on their Facebook Group. Other members trust and rely on such posts more than a similar post by another member. Also, they do not hesitate from responding and interacting with these posts, hoping to build a stronger network.

6. Notify your members

?It is very important to inform your users about new activities in your community. This reminds them to check back in and participate too. You can do this in multiple ways.

a)????Emails - Customise your mailing list according to the preferences of your members. Make sure that they only receive updates on topics that they want to know more about. You can also use emails to inform users if someone has interacted with any content that they have posted.

b)???In-community notifications - This is an important aspect as well. In case your users are already online, you do not want to forget about them. Notify them with an alert icon if there is any new activity. This encourages them to check it out and stay online longer.

c)????Push notifications - Reach out to your members directly if they are part of your community’s app. This is the most direct way to interact with them. Allow quick actions through notifications for easy interaction.

d)???Newsletter - Use a newsletter to give your users a summary of the most interesting posts and articles that have come up in your community. Use this to arouse their curiosity about what’s going on, encouraging them to come online and respond.

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Now it’s time to invent, improve and implement your new strategy. Plan your posts in a specific manner to give members an idea of what they should expect. Connect with them in your community and see a spike in engagement!