Jim Storer : Return on Community |
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Fostering Member Engagement
"How do I keep my members interested, active and engaged?"
I hear this question all the time... whether it's an existing client or someone thinking about getting started with community and/or social media. And with most questions like this, there are a lot of answers, but there's one overriding truth.
Make sure you're clear about what's in it for them. This gets back to the first steps in building community - understand why you're building it, who you're building it for and why they need it. If your community isn't addressing the needs of your members, they likely come once and never return. So think about your members, understand their day to day challenges and how you might be able to help solve them and you're on your way to success.
There's an expression that "content is king" and while I see this as important with community, it's more important to have good programs. Giving members a reason to come together on a regular basis will go a long way toward building familiarity and the bonds of trust that are so critical for success. Creating variety is also important - a phone call one month, a web presentation another, online chat or a closely moderated forum later in the year. Your members will gravitate toward the type of activity they prefer.
As you build out your community (and programs), you likely need to enlist an select group of members to help seed the community. This group will also help facilitate those early conversations and keep new members engaged. A great example of this in practice is Yelp. They have "Elite" members who frequently post reviews and comment on other members reviews. Members are invited to become an Elite members and are given a special designation on their profile and invited to private parties in their locale.
Understanding the changes your community goes through over time will also help with setting your programming. Early on you'll lean heavily on your "elite team", subject matter experts, industry analysts and vendors to lead discussions and drive the programming. But as the membership at large becomes more and more engaged you can begin to ask them to lead specific events and discussions. The original drivers of your programs will still play a role in your community, but they'll take a back seat to the members themselves.
Regular communication with your membership, usually in the form of a monthly newsletter, provides a reason for them to return. They're undoubtedly busy and overtly telling them "what's in it for them" when they return is an important ingredient in your overall engagement plan. I wrote a blog post last week that outlined the key elements of a successful newsletter. This should help you get started. As your community grows and becomes more engaged, consider increasing the frequency of your newsletter.
Getting to know your members and communicating with them 1:1 on a regular basis will certainly help with engagement. This may seem like an daunting task depending on the size of your community, but I guarantee it'll help keep them engaged. With a community I managed several years back we conducted "welcome interviews" with each and every new member. The interview lasted about an hour and we learned a lot about each member individually, including what they were good at and what they could use help on. We fed this info into a database for our community managers and it became very helpful in identifying members who could lead a session on a certain topic and who might want to make sure they had that session on their calendar. This type of personal service goes a long way toward creating affinity with your community. If the phone interview isn't possible, consider building out a custom profile with this info and making it available to all members to search against. Voila... the self service welcome interview!! ;-)
Finally, listen. Listen to your community. Listen to your members. They'll tell you what they like, what they don't like, what they want.. just listen. Follow discussions and look for member sentiment. It's all too easy to build your community and wait for it to take off. Unless you're really lucky, it won't. Call your members and ask them what they think. Email them when they've made a thoughtful comment, thanking them for joining in and asking what else you can do to make it even better.
In the end, your member engagement is a function of "you get out of it what you put into it." Most successful communities I've been involved in had a dedicated community manager, a person who focuses on the needs of the members full time.
What do you think? How do you insure your community members are enagaged? Any additional tips?
Tue, Jul 22 2008
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Comments |
Regarding starting small and limiting the reach of your community early on... My two cents is that you really need to stay laser focused early on. Resist (as it sounds you are) the temptation to celebrate early wins by opening the flood gates and inviting a large # of people to join. You'll likely need to do too much to satisfy such a diverse audience and end up not doing any of it very well. Most communities are not an overnight success - they take time/patience and grow organically over time. Thanks for all the comments! -- Jim |
July 28 2008 - 9:53:49 AM EST
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JIm would love for you to respond to the issue posed by the first posted comment? How do you convince those within an organization that work with audineces not aligned with our subject matter and for whom the content woudl very limitedly be enticing? |
July 23 2008 - 10:15:40 PM EST
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Jim - great post. We recently launched our community and one of the challenges I'm facing is the desire of people within my organization to rapidly expand our marketing to invite audiences who are not aligned with the original target we had in mind while building the community. I love the enthusiasm, but I keep reminding everybody that there's nothing in it for these other audiences (yet). |
July 23 2008 - 1:38:02 PM EST
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I agree with you about "Make sure you're clear about what's in it for them". People are very busy and the need to keep the content fresh, interesting and organized are important for members to want to return and get information that pertains to their needs. Great post! Jasmine Lombardi - Mzinga |
July 23 2008 - 9:48:12 AM EST
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Love this post. I have also had success having bloggers and SME's (subject matter experts)do webinars or chats at leastr once a month on community specific topics. Also, regular survey's, posted results and a nudge to talk about the results within the community help. - derek @ Mzinga |
July 23 2008 - 9:35:30 AM EST
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Hey Jim,Nice post, and as Aaron says, keep 'em coming!I'm a community manager for an affluent community/resource and agree with your points and comments above: My .02: Early on, we created an "advisory board" of about one hundred members to help guide and shape the community-it's been very helpful in figuring out our next steps- and in fact, you've reminded me to reach out to few specific members today. The welcome interview idea is a great idea- a bit more formality is a good building block to build programs around.A thought on recognition though. In my experience (we have a slightly different demographic) not everyone likes to be featured/acknowledged- maybe just my community?....Tyson Goodridge @goodridge |
July 23 2008 - 7:51:42 AM EST
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Great post, Jim. You are quite right about the perception of content being king - all the content in the world will not, alone, make a community successful. I also like the point about making the rewards for your community gardeners and champions, because their investment is certainly worth something. Listening to what your members are (and aren't) saying is just one good way to gauge the health of your community. Equally enjoyable and valuable post - Alicia | @asquillace |
July 22 2008 - 10:02:22 PM EST
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Jimbo - great tips for engaging your community. As someone that participates in communities regularly, I can't tell you how disappointing it is when I sign up for a community and when I go there, I'm not sure what to do or why I should come back. BTW, looks like you're on a blogging roll. Keep the great prose coming! ----- Best, Aaron | @astrout |
July 22 2008 - 9:44:35 PM EST
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I have to say that one of the best ways to keep people involved is making sure they are recognized. People like to be acknowledged, especially if they can be recognized as an expert, and giving people opportunities to contribute then providing them with recognition for it will keep them interested.Besides that, I think it's important to have multiple ways for people to interact. While most people are used to text-based communities online, varying the methods (forums, blogs, chat, etc.) let's people dip in where they feel comfortable or where they have time to spend.-John Johansen @jljohansen |
July 22 2008 - 9:23:26 PM EST
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Hi Jim - this is a great post. Like you, in the community context, I don't think the 'content is king' approach is sufficient. Welcome interviews, highlighted content of the day/week, and other forms of recognition all play a part in getting people invested and engaged. Great suggestions!Rachel Happe - Mzinga |
July 22 2008 - 8:35:17 PM EST
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Jim. The welcome interview worked wonders to help build loyalty and engage new members ans ideas around programing. Another is conducting an annual session for elite type members on their key business missions or... The top items which keep them awake at night! Excellent post on engagement! |
July 22 2008 - 7:13:57 PM EST
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