Community Engagement: Start with Knowing Your Members
Before we dive in;
I’ve had a great time connecting with so many amazing community folks over the past 3 weeks. As promised, I'm still offering FREE 1:1 chats until March and it’s free.
Now let’s talk engagement 😎
A lot of times when we get stuck with engaging our community members, it’s not necessarily about the programs we are doing or not doing- it may be that we simply don’t have an understanding of the people we are catering to.
Apparently, we have this generic idea of engagement and what it entails and so we tend to run with that idea in default mode and then when it’s not working, frustration sets in.
How about taking the time to understand the kind of people that are gathered in your community first, before putting together the strategies?
Who are these people? Get to define them by their age, interests, demographics, passions, behavior, etc.
What do they like? From the data you have gathered or from the persona you have created, observe and document what they tend to gravitate towards.
What is their day-to-day life like? This is very important in guiding the manner you push content, push for engagement, and even schedule programs. Cause if your members are so engaged with their jobs or lives during a particular time and you’re pushing for attention then, you won’t get it.
What are their expectations? Yes, because people don’t just join your space to add the number of spaces they are already involved in and so that means they expect you to deliver on something. Find that out and work it out.
By considering these questions, you’re able to determine what to expect from members, how to serve them better, and what to define as engagement. And once you know what success looks like, you can set realistic goals and measure them using relevant metrics.
Example;
If you’re building or managing a community of professionals who are mostly working and hardly interact with random chit-chats, what you’d track could be event attendance, questions being asked and help being offered, the number and frequency of resources shared, the response rate to your content & resources, etc.
If you’re building or managing a community of NFT enthusiasts who just bought into your art, what you’d track could be the number of active members per month, the rate of discussions per time, the engagement for every program implemented, etc.
You find that in these two scenarios, engagement is defined differently and that’s hugely dependent on the people being catered to.
Some ways to get to know your community members better include;
Crafting a member persona
Analyzing the data collected during onboarding
Conducting regular surveys
Having 1:1 conversations
Knowing and understanding your community members is not a one-off thing, as your community grows and evolves so will your members. So, you have to continually observe, document, and improve your strategies.
By understanding who they are, what they need, and how they communicate, you can create an engaged community.
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Till next week, I appreciate you.
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