How do you promote online community engagement among your staff or colleagues?

No matter it is a brand new community or a seasoned one, it needs to have a common goal, an objetive that makes the members thrive while you are creating value for those connections (and your company! ☝🏻). It is nearly impossible to get people involved in a community if it does not mean anything to them. The sense of belonging it is achieved when interactions, conversations and any community activity means something to them. So make sure to define those goals for your community if you want it to be successful 🚀

Never start a community for the sake of starting one. You want to ensure you have a clear goal and metrics that you can measure for success. Here are some examples: - Goal: To create a safe space for data professionals and enthusiasts to learn and ask questions about the data in our org. - Metrics for Success: # of events per month, # of attendees, engagement (#of mssgs, likes, etc). Once you have a goal it's important to get the following folks on board: - Exec leadership - you want to ensure you have both a financial and social sponsor in leadership for your community - Committee members - communities are not built alone, and they are a lot of work. Next, you want to recruit 2-3 like-minded individuals who can help!

One thing that has been helpful for me is creating time to greet and meet to understand my members—who knows what, and who knows who. This has allowed us to build strong connections. Additionally, establish Community Champions who will keep engaging and sharing on a weekly basis, fostering a vibrant and supportive community.

if the community produces articles to show of the added value it’s important to support with appreciation , comments . There is nothing more important than appreciation and positive thoughts on good things that have been invented within a community of people that bring forward humanity

I lead by example, actively participating in online forums and encouraging my team to do the same. Regular virtual meetups and highlighting the successes of online engagement initiatives help in fostering a positive attitude toward digital community building.

The objectives of the organization must align with the community impact. To promote online community engagements, you will need to consider the platform that is most suitable for your purpose and most importantly how accessible and cost effective it is for your colleagues and staffs? It may warrant a training on how to navigate on the tool for effective use.

One thing to consider, especially for a fully remote team, is tech fatigue. In order to encourage more engagement in the community online, are you also creating spaces people offline? Sometimes having permission to step away from the screen, can lead to higher willingness to participate when members log back in!

In my experience, when a community values the people and purpose for the community, they choose to engage, as it brings them more joy and meaning. My advice is to meet people where they are at, accepting their decision to engage or not. In addition, lead by example. When like-minded people are part of a community, they realize what they put in is what they get out. The right Communities can truly enhance your life.

Even being a product enthusiast, tools or product solves the functional problem. That’s it. One quick recommendation is never go for complicated product. Go for something that’s easy and habituated to use. Reduces friction by all means. Easy to access. That’s the golden rule

Platform and tools are not nearly as important as the rules and expectations you place around how they are used. Internal engagement tools only increase efficiency and connection if they are used appropriately. In all-remote organizations, nobody should expect chat messages to get immediate responses. Likewise, nobody should feel handcuffed to their chat app. Having notifications off and only checking in a few times a day is a healthy boundary to have and perpetuate.

Engaging in co-facilitating knowledge cafes ☕️ with members is a dynamic and effective approach to foster knowledge sharing. An exemplar is the monthly knowledge cafes with KM4Dev, where collaboration and insights flourish. Join us in creating vibrant spaces for learning and connecting through these enriching knowledge-sharing experiences!

Something I enjoyed in one of my previous companies - each department had groups visible on meta workplace and I get to learn their wins, strategies, how they are impacting. I ask questions and congratulate ppl. Sometimes great conversation starts with acknowledging someone’s accomplishments. This helped me the most to engage. I would go a step ahead Implement ideas / suggestions they shared tag them and thank them Or I find them and connect with them. Making contributions visible does the trick

Content varies according to the community. A B2B community will never engage on posts randomly. You will have to push them through your content. And that is what will create an impact through your content. The easiest way to approach this is through a specific content calendar, target audience and engaging content that will leave an impact.

Encourage your company to share what's useful or interesting to members! Often, valuable content is shared in private chats which limits the knowledge shared. Instead, break down these silos, and promote sharing with the community to leverage a one-to-many approach. This allows this invaluable peer-to-peer knowledge to be shared with all of the community.

Have a blueprint for the types of spaces that you intend to create for the community. From private, semi-private to public. Content and format is much more difficult as it is often dictated by the 'mood' of the community. It is therefore important to give space to experimentation otherwise innovation won't happen!

At work, we have a virtual watercooler rendezvous monthly where we basically chat and interact with members of other teams - no work stuff, just random chat about any and everything. I've found this very helpful in learning more about other members of the organization aside from my primary team. I also think colleagues should know each other outside of work as well, and this is what the water cooler sessions help us to achieve. Every company should try this.

Take advantage of where you have existing relationships with community members to privately encourage them to share. Sometimes a simple nudge is just what people need to get a little more engaged in the community. It's also a valuable opportunity to coach some members as community champions who can play a more consistent role in deepening engagement.

Quick tip: stop overseeing what employees are doing as an org This doesn’t make them comfortable. Employee engagement overall is entirely different from online engagement. Employee engagement goal is to make employees involved and belonged Online engagement is for them to build meaningful relationships and conversations

Re. fear of speaking out: Assisting in helping shaping activities requires one to hit a practical note... over ambitious plans without considering the task in an ordered fashion is basically setting up failure. Remember to speak out against a higher authority should not be perceived a criticism but a way of helping shape plans for successful delivery. It demonstrates care!

Encouraging interaction and feedback has been fundamental in nurturing online community engagement. By actively inviting open questions, valuing opinions, acknowledging contributions, and fostering constructive dialogue, trust and understanding among colleagues have flourished. Facilitating platforms for peer reviews, group discussions, brainstorming, and interactive games has not only enhanced collaboration but also created a vibrant space for mutual feedback and continuous growth.

Recognition is key. Imagine you are building a community within org and crowdsourcing endless meaningful insights coming from experts. Each contribution can get them points and translate to a badge. Each badge means opening gate to each reward. Attach to free learning courses, lifetime fav software subscription, reflect as bonus too

Creemos un programa de liderazgo y voluntariado donde podamos incentivar el crecimiento personal o profesional de los participantes de la comunidad. Hagámoslos sentir lo mejor del mundo!!! Únicos, que el tiempo que le dedican a la comunidad (algunas veces días, meses, años). Una escucha activa y que no quede la sensación que les hemos hecho malgastar el tiempo. Creemos juntos con los participantes un gran premio y fiesta anual donde reconozcamos lo que han hecho y como se han alineado a nuestro gran propósito como comunidad.

Not all engagement is good or positive engagement. Rather than rewarding actions (number of posts, comments, or consecutive days logged in), consider rewarding the behavior you want to see repeated (collaboration across departments, using the community to find creative solutions to an issue, etc.).

Appreciating and rewarding community members for their engagement and contributions to the community means a lot to them. It motivates teams and fuels the desire to contribute more. This not only builds a sustaining community but also contributes to career growth. Leaders are able to notice and recognize the efforts of other members, creating a positive and collaborative environment.

Engagement breeds engagement: participate in conversations and thank members for their questions as well as the solutions they provide. Set the expectation the original poster should indicate which answer helped them the most by marking it correct. Establish a Community Champions program and invite your most active and helpful members.

Evaluating and refining engagement strategies is crucial, as they must evolve with the community's needs. Monitoring performance through metrics like participation rates, satisfaction levels, feedback scores, and impact outcomes provides invaluable insights. By gathering and analyzing data from diverse sources like analytics, surveys, and testimonials, I've been able to discern what resonates with the community. This continuous cycle of assessment and improvement ensures that the strategies remain dynamic and effective, fostering a thriving online community.

There will never be one answer for the community. It's a trial and error process. Take your time Get feedback Make more changes, and repeat the process until the community starts working for itself.

Monthly evaluation is very important. One thing I've learned over time is never to cast any strategy on stone as engagement can change overnight, and people tend to move on quickly. So it's important to habitually measure and analyze stats to know what's working and where to improve on, or sometimes, strategies to completely discard.

The tricky thing about online communities is they are shaped by the behavior of their participants. And that's what makes them so interesting as well. Someone needs to be looking at all the numbers every 90 days. You'd be surprised at the trends that emerge over time.

Measure your online engagement strategies after a set amount of time, such as 30 days, 60 days or 90 days to see the maximum impact. Then within your team, you can always evaluate together. If there was a group effort spread out internationally, the results may change as demographics also change member behavior and in return their engagement. This is a huge factor to consider and hence, each Lead should tweak their strategies to fit to their location the best.

🔥 Here's a hot take: If your community doesn't have prioritization and participation from senior leadership, it will fail. More often than not, community is a small team that has to fight for resources and stakeholder participation to run. If that's true you're already set up for failure. You can do your best to make your case on why participation is important. But, unless someone at the top is backing you up, community will always play second fiddle to other departments.

Not everyone will be into it, and you need to be ok with that. You're going to see varying levels of enthusiasm as each member has a unique relationship with online communication, a list of work priorities, and personal obligations. Remember the scene from Office Space when Jennifer Aniston is being passively aggressively told off for not wearing enough flair? Don't be that boss. Be clear about what's required and do your best to engage the team, but be ok with the fact that not everyone will love online community.

Don't over-romanticize ideas. Sometimes, ideas and strategies don't work. It hurts, but that's fine. My mentor would say "Build fast, and break things". Learn fast and move on. Some ideas may not also come fully formed, it is by executing that you'll get to learn areas to improve on to suit the needs of your members. Again, build fast and break things.

Top 5 reasons communites fail: 1. Selfish purpose (the sponsor's or manager's agenda comes first e.g. a promotion, a title, etc). 2. Impatience- communities, like all relationships, take time to cultivate and grow. 3. Too many activities 4. Not enough activities 5. Ignoring members' needs

I'm lucky enough to work in the games industry, so shared passion from internal stakeholders is rarely an issue. Sure, the team have their own priorities so sometimes it's a slog having to convince certain team members to get involved in an upcoming event or activity, but ultimately that just comes down to dealing with different personalities. One thing to always remember is 'nobody cares as much as you'. That's not saying what you're doing isn't important, it's just key to be mindful of the fact that other people in the company have their own priorities.