Managing an online community platform effectively is no small feat.
With memberships ranging from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of users, community admins carry the weighty task of cultivating meaningful engagement. But have no fear - we’ve put together key insights from our customer success team on how you can rapidly boost member participation.
Whether you're an association leader looking to energize your membership base, a non-profit organization connecting donors and activists, or an enterprise building an internal collaboration hub, by putting these practices into play, you'll be on your way to building a vibrant community that keeps users coming back.
What are Community Engagement Platforms?
In our previous article on the different types of community 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.
Let's get started!
Here are 10 Secrets to Increase Community Engagement
1. Built 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?
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 spark lively, purposeful interactions tailored to your audience's interests and goals.
How to do it with LoftOS: LoftOS provides unparalleled flexibility to design your community platform the way you want around your specific value proposition through no-code customization.
Take advantage of 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 o
2. Structure Meaningful Member Profiles
In-depth member profiles enable visitors to identify shared interests, spot valuable connections, and bond over mutual causes.
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.
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
Content is still king. Regularly curating, creating and sharing content 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.
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. Involve Your Colleagues
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.
Enable 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 matching system 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.
6. Onboarding Should be an Ongoing Activity
Make every member feel instantly welcomed while continuing engagement long-term. Onboarding 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.
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 newest 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
Virtual events add meaningful connection by putting faces to usernames. We’re talking webinars, talks, roundtables, product releases, Q&A, they transport the interpersonal elements of in-person gatherings online.
When organizing online events, you can showcase key platform personalities by featuring different hosts. Foster deeper dives on topics and bidirectional sharing not possible in ordinary posts.
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. 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, organizes monthly online webinars with their LoftOS-powered platform for the hearing industry.
8. Identify and Track Data Metrics Aligned to Your Goals
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. 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, StAfrica did with their Startup Community.
10. Gather User Feedback to Enhance Experiences
And last but not least, listening.
Your members' voice is invaluable for shaping an engaging community experience. Proactively gather feedback on what's working well and areas for improvement. 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.
Final Thoughts on Community Engagement Platforms
There you have it! 10 essential tips from the front lines of community cultivation. While launching an community engagement platform sets the stage, real growth happens when you facilitate consistent, meaningful human interactions.
Don't just broadcast information; foster spaces for lively dialogue, sharing stories and forming bonds. Guide members through purposeful programming, not haphazard activities. And always keep an open ear to their needs.
The good news? LoftOS equips you with all the tools and capabilities 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!