Managing an online community space or any community effectively is no small feat.
With memberships ranging from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of users, community managers keep wondering "how to build an engaged online community?
But have no fear - This is your guide to community.
We’ve put together key insights from our customer success team on how you can rapidly boost member participation from your current community, how to earn community trust, how to build a digital community the right way.
Whether you're an association leader looking to energize your membership base, a non-profit organization connecting donors and activists, or an enterprise building a new community, by putting these ey community engagement ideas into play, you'll be on your way to building a vibrant community that keeps users coming back.
Table of contents:
1. Introduction
2.What Are the Benefits of Having an Online Community?
3. What are Community Engagement Platforms?
4. Why is Online Community Engagement Important?
5. What Is an Impactful Community Engagement Strategy and Why You Need One?
6.Community Engagement Best Practices
7.Common Challenges When Executing a Community Engagement Strategy
8.Modernize Your Customer Engagement Strategy with LoftOS
What Are the Benefits of Having an Online Community?
An online community provides a platform to build your community by facilitating interactions, resource sharing, enable digital engagement and collaboration among community stakeholders.
It allows you to understand what your members want through direct feedback and data insights, empowering you to tailor content and features to their needs.
A well-designed engagement model helps you:
- Foster connections and public participation
- Encourage meaningful community engagement
- Create an environment that makes community building easier
With an online community you establish stronger relationships, engage and retain members, and create a sense of belonging centered around your brand or organization.
What are Community Engagement Platforms?
In our previous article on the different types of digital engagement platforms, we discussed how community engagement platforms are essential for organizations looking to build trust and create an environment that encourages connections.
But what exactly are these platforms?
Community engagement platforms are online hubs that allow members to interact, share knowledge, access resources, and collaborate around shared interests or goals.
At their core, these platforms help establish stronger relationships, engage and retain members, and create a sense of community centered around your brand or organization.
Excellent community management is key to developing a truly thriving community. That's why our customer success team has put together their top tips for admins to successfully launch, manage and grow vibrant communities using engagement platforms.
Ready to take your community to the next level? Let's get started!
What is Online Community Engagement Important?
Online community engagement is crucial for fostering deeper connections and addressing community issues. It's a cost-effective way to promote your business while building trust and ownership among members.
Engaging an online community allows you to:
- Keep your community informed and involved in decision-making processes
- Encourage community participation and build social cohesion
- Give everyone a voice, including unrepresented groups
- Improve transparency and responsiveness
By designing an effective engagement journey, you can make your community feel valued and heard.
Community engagement platforms allow your community members to share their thoughts and experiences helps build trust within the community, ultimately leading to stronger relationships and a sense of belonging centered around your brand or organization.
What Is an Impactful Community Engagement Strategy and Why You Need One?
An impactful community engagement strategy is a roadmap for building meaningful relationships with the people your business interacts with, whether it's your local community, customer base, or industry peers.
It goes beyond just informing people; it's about creating a two-way street for communication, collaboration, and shared value.
A successful strategy for community engagement takes into account the current stage of the community and employs various engagement tactics to foster growth and participation.
This may include using a community engagement platform like LoftOS, providing words of encouragement, and actively listening to what members do and say.
Why Community Engagement Matters?
Community engagement requires dedication and effort, but the benefits are well worth it.
Here are some reasons why any business, regardless of size or structure, needs a well-defined community engagement strategy:
Stronger Relationships: An active community allows you to build trust and create lasting connections with your audience. When you respond to comments and engage in meaningful discussions, you demonstrate that you value their input and care about their needs.
Better Decision Making: By involving your community in the decision-making process, you gain valuable insights and perspectives that can lead to more informed and effective choices. For example, a software company might engage its user community to gather feedback on new features or improvements.
Improved Branding and Reputation: Consistently engaging with your community helps establish your brand as responsive, caring, and trustworthy. This positive reputation can attract new members and customers while fostering loyalty among existing ones.
Increased Sales: When you build strong relationships and trust with your community, they are more likely to support your business through purchases, referrals, and advocacy. Learning how to increase community engagement can directly impact your bottom line.
By developing an impactful community engagement strategy, you empower your community to take an active role in shaping your brand's success while creating shared value for all involved.
Now let's talk about how to increase community engagement.
Community Engagement Best Practices: 10 Secrets From our CS Team to Increase Community Engagement
1. Build Around Your Key Value Proposition
Articulating the unique value your community delivers makes it easier to align features and drive engagement.
Before strategic planning and launching campaigns, clearly define your central benefit.
Are you facilitating career growth? Enabling business connections? Supporting charitable causes? Running an accelerator program? Understanding the principles of community is key to defining your value proposition.
When you craft experiences laser-focused on that core value proposition, you'll bypass distracting fluff and forge meaningful member bonds. Don't overstuff with unnecessary features or content - keep it precisely aligned with your community's ‘Why’
When your platform is aligned with your ‘Why’ and a clear motivating mission is defined, you can easily spark public Involvement, purposeful interactions tailored to your audience's interests and goals.
How to do it with LoftOS: LoftOS s white label community platform that provides unparalleled flexibility to design your community platform the way you want around your specific value proposition through customization. You can even take advantage of our built-in no-code webpage builder 'Pages' to create a community website.
Use the variety of pre-built modules or even build your own, create custom navigation entry points, define user roles, create stunning landing pages that fit your brand and more to craft an experience hyper-relevant to your members.
LoftOS users also have a dedicated Customer Success Manager that will also help you identify and optimize for your key value prop during onboarding. They'll guide configuring the ideal setup to bring your community's purpose to life.
2. Structure Meaningful Community Member Profiles
In-depth member profiles enable visitors to identify shared interests, spot valuable connections, and bond over mutual causes, leading to successful community engagement.
Encourage users to thoroughly complete profiles highlighting experiences, knowledge, passions beyond basic information. This allows members to discover things in common that serve as a basis for deeper relationships in the long run. Which is essential for effective community organizing.
Having comprehensive member profiles helps create a holistic view of community members.
This drives more impactful engagement. Also, you can encourage your users to consider linking their to social media accounts to reveal fuller representations of members’ personalities and pursuits.
How to do it with LoftOS: LoftOS comes with a robust Members database where admins can create custom profile fields for users to highlight details like certifications, skills, interests and more. You can also enable options for linking registered social media accounts.
As a platform admin, you can also create member databases with multiple users types that can be further segmented based on location, expertise, and more.
With our new Onboarding feature, admins can further personalize the join experience with tailored questions and data collection flows.
Define unique onboarding journeys for different user types like members, experts, organizations and more. The upfront details you gather help LoftOS intelligently match users and foster relevant connections from day one.
3. Curate Relevant Content
Regularly curating, creating and sharing content should always be part of your community engagement efforts. As it keeps members informed and invested.
Take time to discover information they would find interesting or helpful. Identify gaps in resources related to community topics and fill them with pieces like articles, videos, etc.
Engaging the community with relevant content keeps members informed and invested.
You can also cater to diverse needs by providing a blend of how-to guides, tutorials, current news. Encourage users to contribute perspectives by making adding content simple. Bring in subject-matter experts to advise or produce content as well.
How to do it with LoftOS: We recommend getting started with the News module. It allows platform admins and members to easily create and share all types of updates. Our customer TexSpace takes advantage of this module, sharing curated content for the textile industry.
Additionally, you can use our Pages module to create stunning landing pages to showcase your brand story or promote a particular initiative.
4. Successful Community Means Involving Your Colleagues
Community engagement often requires involvement from various team members.
Getting your team members actively participating accelerates community growth by increasing output and showing commitment.
Encourage colleagues to share knowledge, post news, host events and drive discussions.
Top level executives or community managers can conduct Q&As and subject-matter experts can lead workshops. This influx of diverse contributions makes the community richer and demonstrates how to increase community engagement.
Effective community engagement is also enabling colleagues to integrate the platform into daily tasks by centralizing workflows. Facilitate sharing updates across departments. Recognize influential member contributions organization-wide.
How to do it with LoftOS: Involving your colleagues is easy with LoftOS's full suite of engagement tools at your disposal.
Your teammates can use the Events module for virtual meetups, product releases, webinars, you name it. Providing a specialized training program?
Your team can leverage the Programs module to create courses and provide an interactive learning experience. New initiatives in the horizon? You can encourage your colleagues to use the Pages module to create specialized content hubs or landing pages.
5. Facilitate Meaningful Interactions
Move beyond superficial reactions by facilitating exchanges that let relationships go deeper. Segment members into groups aligned on specific topics, locations or demographics to enable more targeted conversations.
Encourage offshoot discussions from initial posts for more in-depth dialogue.
Suggest connections between members with shared interests. Allow 1:1 messaging for more private discussions.
How to do it with LoftOS: You can use the ‘Group’ feature to create special interest groups to bring together smaller sets of members around specific subjects for closer interactions and community building.
But LoftOS goes beyond simple groups with unparalleled intelligent matchmaking capabilities.
Whether you're a business looking for superior networking or a membership organization aiming to maximize engagement, LoftOS offers the most customizablematching system that allows defining your own custom matching logic.
Easily set parameters to automatically suggest ideal member pairings based on specific attributes and interests.
No need to settle for basic system matches - use LoftOS's powerful tools to hand-pick and override recommended connections as needed.
Prioritize relationships strategically through custom weighing and scoring. All with secure, GDPR-compliant data controls. We take meaningful interactions seriously.community
6. Onboarding Should be an Ongoing Activity
Make every community member feel instantly welcomed while continuing engagement long-term. Remember to start every member’s journey with a warm welcome.
Onboarding, an essential aspect of your engagement strategy, can be presented to your new members as automated messaging that introduces key platform sections that provide an informative start.
Look for slumps in participation down the road as cues to replenish excitement. Use polls and quick surveys to address any blockers preventing optimal use. Convey that administrators are responsive and here to help members thrive throughout your community engagement initiative.
How to do it with LoftOS: With LoftOS, your new members can get custom welcome messages that share important information and platform modules to keep in mind.
Our newest onboarding features take welcoming your new members up a notch.
In our latest update, platform admins can design specific onboarding journeys, based on defined user types, that collect crucial member information that can be used by our integrated matchmaking system to facilitate deeper community engagement and networking.
Still not using LoftOS? This is another reason why we think you should try it out.
7. Host Events to Humanize Your Platforms
Community events add meaningful connection by putting faces to usernames, showcasing the benefits of community engagement.
We’re talking webinars, talks, roundtables, product releases, Q&A, they transport the interpersonal elements of in-person gatherings online, much like virtual community meetings.
When organizing online events, you can showcase key platform personalities by featuring different hosts. Foster deeper dives on topics and watch your the engagement rate shoot through the roof — A clear sign of a great community engagement strategy well executed.
How to do it with LoftOS: LoftOS comes with a robust event toolkit. Use our popular Events module to host any type of in-person, hybrid or virtual events.
You can easily keep track of your attendee lists, event promotion, and more. Making it an ideal community engagement platform. Have members that can’t join your virtual events? With LoftOS integrated video tool, you can easily save a recording for members in different timezones to watch later.
See the event modules in action, our customer Audoora and their platform Netzwerk Hörgesundheit, is a good example of community engagement. They organize monthly online webinars with their LoftOS-powered platform for the hearing industry.
8. Identify and Track Data Metrics Aligned to Your Goals
When it comes to online community engagement numbers are key in any decision-making process. But not all analytics carry equal importance.
The key metrics to monitor are those directly connected to your community's core value proposition. First, clearly define what success looks like for your specific use case. Is it generating investor signups? Driving product sales? Increasing event attendance?
Once you've established the right objectives, determine which data points will allow you to accurately measure performance against those goals. Analyze areas like user profiles matching desired criteria, engagement levels with particular content types, and more.
How to do it with LoftOS: LoftOS provides robust filtered dashboards and reports, allowing you to visualize the exact metrics tied to your unique priorities. Easily configure custom analytics tracking for your defined KPIs instead of sifting through irrelevant vanity metrics. With this data in hand, it is much easier for platform admins and community managers to take necessary action to craft content based on around your most popular topics.
9. Transfer Existing Tasks and Processes
First, document all existing tasks, processes and paperwork your team currently uses across various business functions.
Community engagement often requires digitizing and streamlining existing workflows on a unified platform. Analyze which activities and areas would benefit from being digitized and streamlined on a unified platform.
For a startup accelerator program, this could include application funnels, curriculum planning, mentor matching and investor introductions. For a large B2B network, look at member onboarding, event promotion, lead sharing and partnership marketplaces.
LoftOS provides unparalleled flexibility to craft a fully customized experience, replicating any processes or requirements.
How to do it with LoftOS: Once you have a clear picture of the operational workflows to digitize, leverage our no-code configurability to precisely recreate those tailored to your organization's unique needs.
You can build custom databases, create your own modules for specialized requirements, house content resources or promote new initiatives on Pages, host recurring events through the Events module, or use the Programs feature to create e-learning courses like our customer, StArfrica did with their Startup Community.
10. Gather User Feedback to Enhance Experiences
And last but not least, listening. When it comes to good community engagement, always ask for feedback..
Your members' voice is invaluable for shaping an engaging community experience.
Proactively gathering feedback on what's working well and areas for improvement is one of the community engagement best practices we can't forget.
Ask about their motivations for joining, desired types of content, and ideal activities.
Request feedback after new feature rollouts. Follow up periodically on overall satisfaction. Hearing directly from your user base allows you to consistently level up offerings based on their evolving needs.
How to do it with LoftOS: The Forms feature enables you to easily create and distribute user surveys and feedback forms. Customize forms with specific questions, then share via community posts, email or outreach campaigns to boost response rates. All submission data consolidates in one centralized database for efficient analysis.
Common Challenges When Executing a Community Engagement Strategy
While implementing a community engagement strategy can yield significant benefits, it's not without its challenges.
Here are the top 5 obstacles you may face when executing your community engagement strategy:
1. Low Engagement and Inactive Members: One of the most common issues is low participation and inactive members. Despite your best efforts to foster community engagement across various channels, you may find that some members rarely contribute or interact. To address this, try to understand the reasons behind their inactivity and develop targeted strategies to re-engage them.
2. Lack of Time and Staff Executing: A comprehensive community engagement strategy can be time-consuming, and many organizations struggle with allocating sufficient resources. Community engagement makes demands on your team's time and energy, so it's crucial to have dedicated staff members, such as a community manager, who can consistently take care and nurture the community.
3. Lack of Quality Content Engaging: Content is the fuel that drives community interaction. However, creating high-quality, relevant content consistently can be challenging. Respond positively to content that addresses their pain points, interests, and goals. Invest time in understanding your audience and developing a content strategy that resonates with them.
4. Privacy Concerns: With the increasing focus on data privacy, it's essential to be transparent about how you collect, use, and protect your community members' information. Clearly communicate your privacy policies and ensure that your new community engagement platform is compliant with regulations like GDPR. LoftOS, for example, is fully GDPR compliant, giving you and your members peace of mind.
5. Resistance to Change: Introducing new engagement initiatives or platform changes can sometimes be met with resistance from community members who are accustomed to the status quo. To minimize pushback, involve your community in the decision-making process, communicate the benefits of the changes, and provide ample support during the transition period.
By anticipating and proactively addressing these common challenges, you'll be better equipped to execute a successful community engagement strategy that fosters long-term growth and member satisfaction.
Modernize Your Customer Engagement Strategy with LoftOS
There you have it! 10 essential tips and examples on how to increase community engagement from our customer success team,
While launching an community engagement platform sets the stage, real growth happens when you facilitate consistent, meaningful human interactions.
Remember: Don't just broadcast information; engage your community.
Create spaces for lively dialogue, sharing stories and forming bonds, always keeping an open ear to your community needs.
The good news?
LoftOS equips you with an all-in-one community platform to knock these best practices out of the park. Our CS team is here to support you every step of the way as you progress from community creation to ongoing engagement mastery.
If you're not yet a LoftOS user, what are you waiting for? A vibrant branded community is just a few clicks away. Choose your favorite template and get started for free today!
