There are so many opportunities to engage members of your online community.
Think:
- Pets
- Children
- Relevant current affairs
- Member birthdays (but do it right)
- The welcome email (but do it right)
- Interesting hobbies (do you enjoy clam digging?!)
- Member achievements (in the community and in their personal lives)
- Community milestones (forget numbers – this is more about community campaigns)
- Relevant ‘National Days’ – eg National Sleep Awareness week for an insomnia support forum
Don’t spend too much time trying to come up with exciting, glamorous and unique opportunities to encourage member engagement.
One of the most popular threads on Female Forum is one entitled ‘Good Morning’. Members report in and wish others a good morning and talk about their plans for the day.
It’s hardly glamorous, but it’s community building gold.
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Sometimes the simplest ideas are always the best. You don’t want to overcomplicate anything this is why “Good Morning” is so successful.
You have inspired me in the hobby area. I’m sure many of our customers enjoy aspects of gaming. I plan on doing an engagement campaign to figure out what games they like to play the most. Thanks for the idea.
Yes! we have found an opportunity to engage our community but have no idea on how to get it out there or heard by the community! you see we want to engage a gaming community in a interesting way not like a boring usual way one that will really turn heads. Thanks for the post & I definitely will be checking up on this site for future updates.
The saying ‘keep it simple, stupid’ doesn’t apply more to when it comes to developing plans for keeping your community engaged. The topics here are perfect.
Some great ideas here, i’ve been looking for a while to get more interaction and comments. Thanks for posting.
Amazing post. As an author, finding ways to engage my community is absolutely vital. Something as simple as a ‘Good morning,’ or ‘Goodnight’ online sometimes does more to engage my followers than a long, thought-out blog post.
These are really great ideas! I am gonna try some of them on my facebook page. I think you have mentioned some good topics for engagement. It’s upto us how we can mould them in our respective contexts.
As an example, my facebook page is about teaching people technology. So I can always create a series of Websites related to Pets and things like that.
Thanks for the points.
A nice helpful article! People all too often think that they need tons of money and a team of marketers to get folks participating in their online community, so it’s nice to see advice that can be acted upon without a swollen budget!
Helpful article. I am looking to increase the engagement of my community in the next few months
Helpful post for sure, as administrators and moderators of social communities often come back and say that they can’t find anything new to seed. A bit different for me on the B2B support community side, as some different topics may also be applicable- ie recent technical certifications, new product experiences and feedback, good (engineering) jokes, etc. And I’m glad you didn’t specifically mention religion or politics! Although they qualify under current affairs, with these conversations you often end up in rat holes that can put off users, shut down future engagement, and harm goodwill…