Designing Better Community Engagement

includes two amazing engagement framework

Happy New Month!

Let’s muse on engagement a bit 😄 There’s something I’ve been doing around it lately that has completely changed how I approach prompting engagement.

When I first joined BloomElle, there were already some engagement rituals in place like Thursdays for career convos, and so on. For a while, I flowed with the arrangement but eventually, I got tired of how generic the prompts felt. I didn’t want to just show up with conversation starters, I wanted people to connect and connect intentionally. So, I paused the whole prompting schedule and started searching for something that would hit different.

I stumbled on two frameworks and since I discovered them, I’ve been leaning on them to brainstorm better engagement prompts. Not just for the sake of interaction, but to help me be more intentional the way I want people to feel and what they can walk away with.

For context, I work with a community of black and culturally diverse women navigating life in the UK. While the community thrives on its own, we also like to guide conversations so it’s more intentional and tailored to our people need. We have dedicated engagement days, but we also leave room for organic conversations and look out for opportunities to uncover areas we can offer support whether that’s putting an webinar, recommending the right resource or connecting someone to the right person.

Let’s get into the frameworks…

Community Engagement Frameworks

1. Connection-Focused vs. Result-Focused Engagement

I honestly can’t remember where I came across this one, but it stuck. I missed to document when I found it, but I think it either from a newsletter or blog post. Here’s how I understand it:

• When engagement is Connection-Focused, you’re pushing for belonging, support, and presence. It’s more about making space for people to feel seen. This is where you go from “How was your month?” to “What’s one thing this month that kept you going despite the uncertainties?”

• Result-Focused engagement leans towards goals, progress, and accountability. It encourages members to reflect, track progress, and celebrate their wins. e.g monthly check-in prompts to celebrate achievements no matter how small.

What I love is that both styles serve different needs and you need to know the one your community needs per time. Some weeks, we want to reflect and get motivated, and other weeks, we just want to breathe.

2. The Community Weaving Framework

Now this one is a game changer. I found it on LinkedIn and instantly saved it. Unlike a checklist of “how to keep people engaged,” this framework helps you see what is already present in your community and how to work with it, not just add more.

It invites you to reflect on five things:

• What brings us together?

• What holds us together?

• How do we connect regularly?

• What roles can we play?

• How do we journey together?

You can read more about it here

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How I Use Them…

Whenever I want to post a conversation starter, I check in with what’s going on in the community. Maybe someone shared something interesting that deserves a deeper conversation, or a particular topic has been lingering across the chats.

I sit with the prompt or prompts for a bit and see if it’s reflects or communicates any of these frameworks. Is it calling for connection or results? Which element of the weaving framework does it tap into? Whatever I get to discover, I tweak them to make it better and more interesting.

Another way I go about it if I want to juggle my brain a bit is to use AI. I describe the type of community I’m managing and what I want to achieve with the kind of engagement in there, I share the frameworks and ask for prompts suggestions using the frameworks as a guide. Not everything hits, of course, but it gives me a starting point.

Two prompts I’ve shared recently that literally took off:

• “Today we want to take a moment to celebrate the sisters within the community who have shown up for us in big or small ways. Anyone who has helped you in anyway, encouraged you, dropped a helpful resource, offered a listening ear or simply made you feel seen 💕 Drop their name or tag them and tell us what they did. Let’s give each other flowers today 😁”

• “Imagine you could write a little note to the version of you from January 1st… What would you say? 🥹 If you’re up for it, drop your notes let’s look back on how far we’ve come. whether it was loud, quiet or messy”

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Here’s a sample of how these frameworks can change how you prompt conversations (created with AI):

Generic: “How’s your week going?”

Connection-Focused:

• “What’s one unexpected thing that made you smile this week?”

• “What kind of week has it been for you — calm, chaotic, in-between?”

Result-Focused:

• “What’s one task or win you’re proud of knocking out this week?”

• “What’s moving forward (even if slowly) this week?”

Weaving Framework:

• “What reminded you this week why you joined this community?”

• “Who showed up for you this week in big or small ways?”

• “What routine or small habit helped you stay grounded this week?”

• “Have you been more active or quiet this week? What influenced that?”

• “Did anything shift for you this week — perspective, priorities, pace?”

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Now, depending on the type of community you work with, you can adjust the tone and focus of the conversation to align however.

First try it out with the prompts you already have on ground to get your mind off on track. Then you can involve AI when you get a hang of it 👀 Just trying to make sure you don’t overly depend on AI for the entire exercise

Side notes:

• So many of us create valuable resources and then let them gather dust after a single use. Here’s a reminder (for you and me) that the great thing you shared once, can be repurposed.

• I put together a couple of templates that you may find useful:

  • A Resource Library Notion Template to organize the resources in your community, and

  • Event Planning Templates (Notion & Sheets) that includes an end-to-end workflow and a task tracker.

    You can check them out here

Talk soon!

Feel free to say “hi” on LinkedIn 😊

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