Great Community Engagement Skills Are Worth More Than Most People Think

TL:DR — If you’re trying to develop a non-support community, invest in someone with GREAT community skills. This is someone terrific at initiating and sustaining discussions, persuading members to make great contributions, and forging connections between members. If you don’t do this, the community won’t succeed.?

The Power Of Great Community Engagement Skills

Everyone undervalues engagement skills—even those who are terrific at them.?

It’s not hard to understand why.

Engagement skills are easily dismissed as ‘talking to people on the internet’.?

How hard can that be? Everyone is doing it every day.?

But that’s like dismissing sales professionals as ‘talking to people on the phone’. Yes, it’s still just talking, but we appreciate there’s a skill to it. The choice of words, intonation, knowledge and attitude make all the difference.?

Likewise, most of the leadership is talking. But again, there’s a wide gulf between good and bad leaders.?

The same applies to engagement skills, especially those deployed by community professionals involved in the work.?

Therefore, we need to understand these engagement skills, why they are important, and what great engagement looks like.?

What Are Engagement Skills?

I’ll define engagement as any direct person-to-person interaction. Any time you engage directly with an individual (or group of individuals), you exercise your engagement skills.?

This includes:

1. Initiating discussions which are engaging enough for people to respond to. Anyone can ‘start’ a discussion, but do you have the ability (online or offline) to nurture an engaging debate that makes people feel more informed and connected and has a long-term impact on the community?
2. Reply to discussions that give the recipient the most emotive and informational value. It’s not too difficult to answer a question, but can you make the recipient feel they were seen and appreciated and increase their attitude towards the brands due to the interaction? Every interaction is an opportunity, but not everyone treats it that way.?
3. Engaging with members to persuade them to contribute positively to the community. Can you motivate people to make positive contributions without dangling tangible rewards? Can you make a personal connection, genuinely understand the member’s desires, and connect those desires to the actions you want people to take? Can you speak to people at their level??
4. Facilitating connections and interactions between members of the community. Can you take a group of people who might never meet and forge powerful connections between them? It takes more than just making an introduction by email. Can you build people’s desire to meet and facilitate a sense of community amongst them? Can you create the spark that makes a friendship or alliance happen?

Let’s now put long-form content into a separate category to avoid confusion.

These skills can be split into distinct levels.

My premise is quite simple. Getting good at core skills drives success in the majority of communities.?

Many problems in many types of communities come down to three issues:

1. We don’t appreciate the importance of engagement skills (or recognise when engagement skills are most critical).
2. We don’t know the different levels in engagement skills?
3. We don’t invest in people to get good at engagement skills.?

Let’s tackle each of these.?

Where Are Engagement Skills Important?

Many of you might be reading this and thinking, ‘ That’s great, but I don’t engage with members often in our community.’

And that’s completely valid. Engagement skills aren’t critical for every kind of community.?

The importance of engagement skills depends entirely on the type of community you're building as you see below:

We can quibble about the relative importance of each category in each community, but that defeats the point. The point is different community skills are important for different types of communities. As a broad rule of thumb, the smaller the community, the more important community skills are (and if you’re launching a non-support community, they will mean the difference between success and failure).

If you’re creating a support-focused community that deflects traffic from one channel to another, the influence of engagement skills (or the individual community manager is relatively low).?

Yes, you need to be able to motivate people to answer questions, but everything else is a numbers and operations game. You will spend most of your time improving and optimising the experience and your processes rather than directly engaging with members.?

However, at the other end of the continuum, if you’re trying to build a group of peers willing and eager to engage and talk openly with one another, then engagement skills are critical.?

Everyone needs to trust you. You set the rules, invite people based on your previous relationships, and nudge and cajole them to engage and participate. Your skills and reputation will determine whether this project succeeds or fails. You are the linchpin that makes this work.

Initiating Discussions – How To Do It Well

I cry a little when an organisation sets a target for initiating [x] number of discussions or increasing engagement by [xx%].?

This focus on quantity always comes at the expense of quality.

This will inevitably result in people churning quickly through the community.

However, focusing on high-quality contributions from the beginning will inevitably attract a high-quality level of discussion. Put simply, there’s a huge difference between a post and a contribution. And if you set and maintain a high bar,??at the beginning, that permeates through the community.

The purpose of a brand community is to encourage people to exchange useful knowledge with one another. Specifically, it’s to help every member make the best contribution with the time, expertise, and motivation available to them.

This is a useful prism through which to evaluate discussions and how we create them. Are we encouraging members to do that in the discussions we create or not??

Let’s begin with what you shouldn’t do. I’ve been using this example for over 14 years now.

Anyone reading this knows it’s marketing garbage. People don’t speak like this. It’s a classic example of corporate-speak entering a community with a repulsive effect.?

Fortunately, most people don’t create discussions that are this bad. However, many community professionals still resort to initiating discussions like this

The community manager has found a topic they think might be exciting and is now trying to stimulate debate.

Many junior community professionals do this when told to encourage discussions (and they’re not experts in the topic).

They find relevant news and ask people what they think. This seems logical, but it also reflects their inexperience and need for more knowledge.?

More experienced community professionals know you shouldn't be asking 'what do you think?' style of discussions because they come across as precisely what they are – weak attempts to initiate activity. They don’t let people experience an emotional payoff from helping someone else.?

What is the difference between ok, good, and great??

Let’s review this example:

As you review the differences between them, you will notice the difference in expertise between them.?

1. The discussion on the left is a simple and fairly generic attempt to solicit a discussion by asking people what they think.?
2. The ‘good’ example solicits examples, resources, and templates which will provide extra value to others in the community.?
3. The ‘great’ example leverages the OP’s expertise to solicit high-quality contributions from specific community members. You can imagine this discussion soliciting a large number of high-quality responses quite quickly.?

These are clearly generic examples. In practice, we will want to adapt our tone of voice, choice of words, and more to the unique community environment. But hopefully, you get the idea. There are skills and knowledge you can acquire to improve deliberately over time.

Sustaining Discussions – Can You Nurture A Great Debate?

It’s helpful here to know the basics about replying to a discussion.?

For example, if people ask a question or initiate a discussion, they need to get a response. We undertook an analysis a few years ago and discovered f members initiate a discussion and don’t receive a response, they’re unlikely to participate again. Likewise, there is an inverse relationship between time to first response and the likelihood of participating again.

But getting good, quick responses to questions shouldn’t be the goal; it should be the baseline!

If we can’t do this well, we have no business being in this business. The quality of response matters too, and this is where we can shine.

The difference between ok, good, and significant here primarily lies in the ability to:

1. Get an acceptable response to the recipient.
2. Make the recipient feel better about asking the question.
3. Solicit expertise from others in the community.?
4. Expand the nature and scope of the discussion.?

ChatGPT has set a new floor for both content and responses to questions.?

If you can’t clearly deliver a much better response than ChatGPT you have a problem.?

Let’s use this as an example:

This is a pretty standard question and a good one to work with.?

You can see the ChatGPT, good, and great examples of responses below:

I’ve only included a simple outtake of the (much longer) ChatGPT response.

In terms of creating a generic synthesis from the web, you can’t beat it. But ChatGPT and similar tools can’t easily identify the top experts and share their wisdom. It can’t filter high-quality knowledge from poor-quality knowledge. And it can’t sustain the debate.?

But this ChatGPT response provokes three questions.

1. Is this the best response for the recipient? It feels like a generic list of recommendations to me—it’s unlikely the OP wasn’t already aware of these steps. It lacks any personal expertise. This doesn’t make it bad; it might give the OP a framework to use. But it’s not the best. Does it make the OP feel better about asking the question? Do they feel listened to, seen, or heard?
2. What information or knowledge is missing? What information or knowledge is absent? Is there expertise the smartest members know that ChatGPT doesn’t? What issues are they likely to encounter? Is there an emotional component to this?
3. Does this maximise the quality of knowledge shared? Remember our principle above, the of discussions is to maximise the sharing of high-quality knowledge. Does this single answer do that? Does it maximise the unique perspectives shared by the greatest number of people??

It’s worth highlighting the difference here between support communities (including those like StackOverflow) and any other type. In the former, the goal is to get one high-quality answer that resolves the question. This eliminates the effort the OP has to invest to find the solution to their problem. In the latter, we aim to maximise the number of responses to solicit the greatest possible level of knowledge.?

The question above is a classic example of soliciting diverse knowledge from the community. A single answer is unlikely to do it justice.?

A good response doesn’t just provide information but also tries to make the poster feel better about asking the question. A good responder recognises that people aren’t information-consuming robots; they have thoughts and feelings, too. How they feel about the response they receive will play a large part in whether they participate again.?

A good response also zeroes in on the hard part of the problem and provides unique insights. It might filter the important information from the less important information. In this case, we know the OP can search for a workflow. They need the experience of using it—that’s where the real expertise comes from. They need information they can’t simply find through a Google search.?

A great response is similar to a great discussion; it aims to maximise the quality of the responses by using personal appeals to members who can make great responses.?

Again, a world-class response would be completely adapted to the community’s tone, personalities, and unique peculiarities.

Engaging Members – Can You Persuade People?

Too often, we try to motivate people to contribute to a community without recognising a simple reality. Everyone is busy, and the internet is the most intense battle for attention imaginable!

We receive dozens, potentially hundreds, of requests asking us to do things every single day. If we commit time and energy to any request, there has to be a strong reason for doing it. That strong reward might be the promise of a tangible reward. But tangible rewards only go so far.?

A far better reward appeals to the things money can’t buy. This typically means a sense of purpose, appreciation, or importance. The skill is knowing which is likely to appeal to the person(s) you’re trying to engage and adapting your approach accordingly.?

It’s also key to do it without being too explicit or patronising. There’s a subtlety and finesse in the approach. You hint at it without stating it. No one wants to receive a message along the lines of:

“Do you want more power? Share your best advice.”

“As one of our top community members, I want to invite you to…”

“Join us on our mission to….”

Strategically, it might be the right approach, but it’s just not the right note. It feels impersonal and phoney and doesn’t let the message recipient experience the joy of a sincere, authentic approach.?

Another example is failing to provide a rationale for someone to take action. This is often presented as a reminder or a false scarcity scenario, again falling victim to the ‘internet is a busy place’ problem.

The words and approach don’t just matter; they play a decisive role in whether people will make that contribution or not!

Let’s go through some examples of ok, good, and great:

The’ okay’ level neglects to provide any rationale. It’s simply a time-induced reminder or a simple plea to help. It might occasionally work if the person is already highly disposed to taking the action, but the likelihood is relatively remote.?

At the good level, there is a clear rationale, an implication that the person has expertise to share, and a little more guidance on the kind of expertise that might help. This provides more guardrails and makes it easier to respond.?

At the great level, we can see it’s highly personalised, emphasises a clear motivational appeal, and plays to the person’s need for importance.?

As with everything else we’ve covered so far, this has layers!

Facilitating Connections Between Members

The skill of facilitating connections between members is the hardest to write about.?

There isn’t a simple script or example of it happening. It’s less about taking individual action and more about running programs or activities to make it happen.?

You can’t simply write many emails introducing members to one another and hope that sparks begin to fly. Instead, you must create the right kind of opportunities for connections to form and then the impetus for members to seize those opportunities.?

You can see examples of these programs below:

As you can see above, there are levels to this. It’s common to get stuck on the basic level of introduction threads, welcome emails, and simplistic group activities and hoping connections form.?

That rarely works. None of them create opportunities for members to connect and engage with one another naturally.?

A better approach is to explore opportunities that motivate members to engage directly with one another rather than with you. This is where mentorship programs, small, facilitated online events around a topic, and in-person meetups work better. You can see these outlined in the ‘good’ column above.?

The best approach, however, is to be more deliberate in creating opportunities for people to connect and encouraging the right feeling when they do. Priya Parker 's book is worth a read here.?

This includes building a meet-up program where you create templates and resources for people to host their meet-ups and invite them to host their own events.

Another option is to collaborate with top members to create engaging challenges. You might contact a few members for feedback on a challenge or mission you want to set for the community. Then, you launch it with their support and quickly attract the early contributions to overcome the ‘chicken and the egg’ problem.?

The final thing to consider (and this isn’t a comprehensive list) is to proactively look out for moments of the sense of community forming and spread them. You might look for any early in-jokes, shared language, traditions, or recognition forming amongst members. When you notice that, you might spread those moments. This might include referring to it in other discussions, content articles, newsletters, and so that other members adopt the same elements and the feeling spreads.

Invest In Upgrading Your Engagement Skills

If you found this resource useful, I’d suggest signing up for our revamped training courses:?

• Successful Community Management ($0). This foundational course is designed to equip anyone engaging with members with the core skills they need to thrive. Thanks to sponsorship from Gainsight, it’s available for free right now - DM me for details.
• Advanced Community Management ($750 USD). This is our course to help novices implement programs to boost community engagement and participation. This includes communicating persuasively, nurturing top members, content programming, influencing behaviour, balancing the signal-to-noise ratio, and rewards/gamification.
• Strategic Community Management ($750 USD). This course is designed to help you strategically and systematically improve your community. It includes strategic thinking, improving the user experience, launching new communities from scratch, positioning, and gaining internal support.?

If you have a larger team and need training customised to your unique situation, DM me.

Summary

1. Engagement skills are grossly undervalued. Everyone assumes they are easy and skilled, but the reality is that they require deliberate training and practice.?
2. Engagement skills are most critical in non-support communities. The community manager’s skillset has the biggest impact on these communities. They have to drive the activity and make everything work.?
3. Learn to initiate discussions focused on the biggest issues and solicit useful resources and expertise from members with the most experience.?
4. Become great at sustaining discussions by ensuring the original poster feels better about asking questions and inviting others to contribute using personalised appeals based on past contributions.?
5. Persuade members to contribute by giving members clear guidelines on the best contributions, creating an appeal to their ego or expertise, and keeping the request simple.?
6. Forge connections between experts by facilitating purposeful member-to-member connection opportunities and spreading sense of community elements.
7. Ensure you and your team are skilled with our free training course. You can now access our completely revamped training courses to advance your and your team’s skillset. You can begin with the free course we have available now - DM me.

Good luck!