Welcome back to the second part of our engaging communities blog. In the first part , we shared our first four top tips for keeping your users truly active and coming back for more. We talked about asking the right questions, shaking things up a bit, personalising the community, and fostering a community spirit. In this part, we’ll delve deeper into ways of keeping that spark ignited with happy communards. So without further ado, let’s get started!
5. Incentivise appropriately
No matter how interesting your community is, your participants need to be compensated in a way that reflects what you expect of them. The mere act of gifting them something also shows that you recognise their efforts. Think about your brand and choose an incentive method that fits. Also consider the effort you would like participants to put in, and make sure the value matches that expectation.
6. Share your insights
These people are giving up their time because they have some vested interest in your brand. Beyond the financial incentive, another great way to keep them engaged is by telling them what you are learning. Reiterate how instrumental they have been in gathering these insights, and how grateful you are for it. It’s even better if you tell them what decisions have been taken off the back of these insights – this will give them a great sense of belonging.
7. Seek feedback
It never hurts to ask for feedback from time to time, so you can understand what they like (or don’t like) about your community. Perhaps they would like more tasks, or more open discussions with other participants. Of course, you won’t be able to keep everyone happy, but even asking the question shows that you care.
8. Think about cadence of tasks
Relying on infrequent tasks will never cut the mustard, no matter how good they are – little and often is key here. When you kick off any community – no matter how long – you should have some idea of how many tasks you want to run, and how regularly. It’s no good fumbling around for ideas once the community has launched, as you will lack direction and the participants will sense that. Set up a plan from the start so you know which tasks you could run, and roughly what they will look like. You don’t have to flesh them out just yet (although that does have its advantages), but a clear plan will mean you can launch tasks regularly and keep the community feeling fresh.
The biggest bit of advice we can give is to take some time up front to really carefully think about your community. What do you want to get out of it and how will you keep your audience active? Participants like to know they are doing a good job. So take care of them and you’re on the fast track to a thriving community.
If you’d like help setting up your community or if you’d like to know more about Whycatcher, get in touch here.
