“Every success story is a tale of constant adaption, revision and change.” – Richard Branson, billionaire and founder of Virgin Group.

We all seek success with our Invision Communities. For too many of our communities, however, we yearn for success but we don’t plot the correct navigation to get there. We haphazardly pursue our strategies, trying new ideas and hoping one will stick. It’s time to take a step back and assess your goals in context to your growth. It’s important to understand the stages of the community lifecycle, and to strategically match your goals with your growth sequence.

Alicia Iriberri and Gondy Leroy of Claremont Graduate University surveyed over 1000 publications across multiple disciplines including computer science, information systems, sociology, and management in their seminal 2009 research paper “A Life-Cycle Perspective on Online Community Success.” Their research forms the foundation for most modern community management, and in their paper they write, “The impact each design component has on the success of the online community shifts depending on which life-cycle stage the online community is experiencing.” The right strategy at the right time will maximize the impact.

Every community goes through a community lifecycle of four stages: Inception, Growth, Maturity, and Mitosis.
 

Setting the wrong objective can not only fail, it can even backfire and destroy goodwill. Here are classic examples of good strategies that go wrong because of poor sequencing:

• A new community with no activity that builds dozens of new boards
• A growth community not fostering a unique sense of community
• A mature community not establishing strong codes of conduct

Architecting a community is very different for the first ten users versus the next thousand users. New priorities come into play, community concerns will shift and strategies need tochange. As a community manager, ensure the strategy is appropriate and reflects your community lifecycle to ensure maximum impact.

Let’s take a look at proper goal settings for each stage of the community lifecycle.

Inception
Inception is the start of your community. You’re bursting with energy, enthusiasm, and big ideas. While your Invision Community is full of potential, your goal is to turn your vision into reality:

• Members: Focus on nurturing a core team of members. Your goal is to get 10 – 12 superusers to consistently engage and support the community vision.
• Promotion: Your community won’t contain enough content to attract visitors through search engines, so you’ll have to rely on personal referrals, word-of-mouth, and direct acquaintances.
• Content: Focus on building expertise on core content areas that will make you stand out. You want to be the best in one subject. You’ll need to generate much of the content programming yourself, which should focus on functional value.
• Organization: Establish organizational parameters for the community, define the vision with stakeholders, write your Terms of Use, and validate the community concept.
• Community: The community is heavily centered around the community founder at this stage, so set the right tone and lead through example.

Growth
Growth is where the magic of community happens, balanced against the development of more explicit and formal conduct.

• Members: Shift your focus from nurturing individual users to creating a workflow that can systematically welcome new members.
• Promotion: You should be proactive with your self-promotional activities to build community awareness such as email marketing, social media, or mailing lists.
• Content: Content will now be a mix between self-generated and co-created. You want to highlight community content by others to encourage community expertise. When you create content yourself, you want to start including emotionally-driven questions that connect users.
• Organization: Measure specific metrics for organization goals, highlight community health and successes, secure funding for ongoing budget and team.
• Community: A unique sense of community is cultivated at this time with shared experiences and language between members. Members feel excited to be a part of your community’s growth.

        
Maturity
Maturity is when your Invision Community becomes critically acclaimed and well-known in the field. Even though your community looks to be run smoothly, there are still areas to address so your community doesn’t stagnate:

• Members: There should be a clearly defined process and welcome guide for onboarding new members, an established pipeline that constantly brings on new superusers, and a rewards program that recognizes members for different types of member journeys.
• Promotion: Your site is well-known, so the search engine traffic and content within your community is enough to bring in new users. You can optimize your SEO at this point.
• Content: Almost all content is user-created at this point, which means your focus needs to shift to content recognition, organization, and moderation. Highlight the best community content; categorize and properly tag new content so the community stays organized; and scale your moderation to handle the size of your community.
• Organization: The community is a key part of your organization’s larger success and supports multiple areas of the business. Be a strong internal advocate for the community and align your community with your organization’s new profit areas.
• Community: Superusers not only have the privilege of creating their own content for the community, but they’ve stepped up as mentors and moderators. Your community has a strong culture that’s reinforced by members.

Mitosis
Mitosis is the stage when your Invision Community grows beyond its original mission, potentially splitting off into new subgroups. Many communities stagnate at this point with falling engagement and plateauing registration, but you’re catching onto the next big trend in your industry to grow into.

• Members: New member registrations flatlines because you’re tracking with the industry. Your goal is to continue to delight members with new forms of omnichannel engagement like regional meetups, video conferencing, and headline conferences.
• Promotion: Your community self-generates organic traffic. Your promotion should shift from trying to advertise for yourself to exerting influence with industry partners as a trusted leader in the field.
• Content: Members can find the most comprehensive set of resource documents and discussion on your community. Your goal is to distill the knowledge into the best tips and guides for newcomers to obtain the most accurate information as quickly as possible. You should also archive areas that no longer receive activity while finding growth topics in your field.
• Organization: The community is a critical part of all business operations and integrates into all relevant workflows. You should build custom metrics to measure results, help determine new investment decisions, and streamline business efficiencies at the organizational level that benefit the community.
• Community: Your community becomes an incubator of new sections in a controlled manner for potential spin-off. Superusers control and moderate their own areas of the site like Clubs or Blogs.

Online communities evolve through distinct stages of the community lifecycle. At each stage, the needs and activities of members require different tools, features, and community management. Certain strategies are more impactful when they coincide with the right sequence.

Invision Community makes it easy to get started with a technology platform packed with features that every community manager can start using right away. But how you get to the first ten users, to the first thousand posts, or even to one billion likes will be a journey that’s truly your own.

Share your success story of Invision Community in the comments below. Did you make any rookie mistakes that you wish you knew beforehand? What are some strategies that you’re pursuing right now, and why do you think it’s an impactful decision for this stage of your community’s lifecycle?

We’d love to hear your journey along the community lifecycle.

In a move that surprised many, British cosmetics firm Lush has chosen to quit social media.

With a combined following across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, Lush has a combined audience of over 1.2 million followers.

Lush are being a little cryptic about its reasons but cite having to pay for visibility and getting tired of trying to produce content so just that algorithms will rank it highly.

"Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed. So we’ve decided it’s time to bid farewell to some of our social channels and open up the conversation between you and us instead."

It feels like sacrilege for a brand to come off social media, but I'm not surprised.

Social media is about broadcasting more than it is about meaningful conversation.

And now, even with a huge following,  broadcasting doesn't get the same reach it did a few years ago with platforms pushing paid options more and more.

Lush also targets a very young demographic that simply aren't using social media anymore.

The firm said it was "cutting out the middleman between ourselves and the Lush community".

It remains unclear which direction Lush is going to take to facilitate conversations, but using an independent community platform like Invision Community should be considered.

It cuts out any algorithm biased, money hungry platform. It opens up the conversation between the brand and its customers in a meaningful way, and the brand is completely in control of their data and what their customers see.

At Invision Community, we're seeing more and more brands looking for a solution outside of social media.

Perhaps this will accelerate the trend.

Since the last blog entry in this series I have been very busy. I’m still working full time so haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would have liked on The Dogly Mail but I’m really enjoying the time I can.

Early growth has been promising and I have been experimenting with different ideas that have come from founder members to see what might work long term.

We recently broke the 100 member milestone and that all came from word of mouth. We’re not talking huge numbers but I’m very encouraged for the future. My focus is now on building interactions with four main areas of the site.

Forums

I had imagined the forums being the most active area after seeing other Invision Communities but I don’t think there are enough regularly active members yet for this area to be truly useful so it is (for now) not the main priority. I am however using some forums functionality effectively. I’ve added a special offers forum that is viewable by non members but to get to the actual topic contents you need to register. This seems to be enticing a few people to sign up and I want to approach more retailers to build on this.

I also installed Simple Topic from the marketplace to simplify the posting process down to the absolute minimum steps required.

Polls are also proving popular and new members who may not want to commit to introducing themselves or posting a full topic are at least interacting. I’ll be looking for more ways of adding easy interactions such as this.

If anybody has any ideas for encouraging early discussion please let me know in the comments.

Articles

In the articles section new items are slowly being added and I find this a good opportunity to show some personality and indicate to users what they can expect from the rest of the site. I am trying all kinds of articles such as news, reviews, recipes and dog training guides to find out what I should focus on. I would also like to attract some guest writers for different viewpoints and to free up some of my time. Being able to see article view counts in Invision Community and the direct commenting functionality gives me good feedback.

Events

The launch of the events section coincided with a large dog related event in London and through it I was able to collaborate with the event organisers and do some succesful networking. This has led to some future opportunities for product reviews and reinforces my point from the last blog article where not all of your time should be spent behind the keyboard. Most of the events are being added by myself but hopefully as this section builds others will find it useful for promoting their own events.

Photos

One of the early members was quick to suggest we incorporate image sharing into the website as after all how can anybody resist cute photos of puppies? For this I originally looked at the Invision Gallery but felt that this section needed to have a voting element and Gallery was perhaps too feature rich. I wanted it to be a simple first interation with the website. I wanted people to be able to vote and more importantly encourage their friends to sign up and vote too.

We started out with a simple topic and for the first month with not many people this worked great. One post was an entry and people could “Like” their favourites. It quickly became quite popular and it was clear that we would need something dedicated to the task so I commissioned some custom work.

This was real investment but is already showing promising signs after launching April 1st. New members can now enter the photo competition and register at the same time so most new registrations are now coming from this route.

I’ve recently discovered the profile completion feature so will enable that this month to try and increase engagement a bit further. I want to keep to our non intrusive privacy policy so this will all be optional and limited to member photo and some simple dog breed and numer of dogs fields. The Auto Welcome plugin from the marketplace will also be used when I figure out the best way to deploy it.

With what I have learned so far I have a better idea of what is going to work to attract registrations and there is also a credible amount of content.

This month I will be starting to look into some paid promotion with the hope of hitting my next milestone of 250 members.

I will share my findings and hopefully some helpful marketing tips next month.

We do love a parlour game at Invision Community HQ and we were playing "6 degrees of separation" recently.

You've probably heard of the "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon". This is where you try and connect any actor with Kevin Bacon in 6 steps or less.

So let's try "6 degrees of Invision Community". This is where we try and connect a person with an Invision Community.

David Goggins and Invision Community
Last week, I finished the excellent David Goggins book "Can't Hurt Me".

David Goggins, a retired Navy SEAL, spent a month with Jesse Itzler. This which was documented in Itzler's book "Living with a SEAL", which I've also read.

Jesse Itzler owns the Atlanta Hawks Basketball Team.

The Atlanta Hawks has a dedicated area inside the Atlanta Falcons Football team's official community.

The Atlanta Falcons official community is powered by Invision Community.

Here's another one.

Groot and Invision Community
Groot featured in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie series.

Chris Pratt starred alongside Groot in the same movie series.

Chris Pratt voices Emmet in the LEGO® movies.

LEGO® uses Invision Community.

Over to you.
Do you have any "6 degrees of Invision Community?". We'd love to read them!

I've had this similar conversation dozens of times in the recent past when someone has taken an interest in what I do.

Person: So what does Invision Community do?
Me: We develop and sell an independent community platform.
Person: Oh. Neat.

I used to say the F word. But this used to cause some confusion.

'We develop and sell a forum system'.

This used to elicit a response similar to this:

"Forums? They're still going?"

This line of thinking is quite prevalent among those who frequent Facebook, or use Facebook Groups to manage their micro communities. Even though they probably use forums regularly, or end up on forum topics when searching for things like "Why is my iPhone not charging", they don't realise this.

I recently guested on a podcast, where we spoke about "Facebook or Forums?", and I received this comment.

It appears, then, that the word "forums" has a lot of legacy connotations attached to it. It conjures up images of the past when Netscape Navigator was the world's favourite browser, and AOL was still mailing out CDs.

That is all ancient history now, and we've moved with the times. The product we have now has roots in the product from the early 2000s but it is wildly different and much more capable.

When you explain that you can segment discussions into separate areas (aka forums), and even set up independent micro-communities (clubs), you can see lightbulbs going off.

"That's amazing! I had no idea! So you mean I don't have to have my community in a single stream struggling for attention among adverts?"

Nope, there is another way.

Why not try an independent community platform?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you avoid the F word too?

Online communities shine with the brilliance of humanity. Every day, our communities inspire, evoke, inform, motivate and engage in a hundred different ways.  Every member feels a uniquely individual sense of value from your community. 

For too many communities, the strategy revolves around two simple pillars: content and engagement.  You inform. You engage. And you think your job is done.  However, you’ve barely scratched the surface of offering value. 

You need to expand the ways in which you strategically match your community to member value. 

New studies are coming out that show humans feel up to 27 emotions from admiration to triumph, and the best communities unleash a rainbow spectrum of value – functional and emotional, business to social - for their organizations and for their members.  This results in not just deeper and more extensive engagement, but greater financial payoff.

Indeed, research from global management consulting firm Bain & Company shows brands like Apple, Samsung, and Amazon that demonstrate multiple elements of value have x3 greater customer loyalty and x4 faster revenue growth than others.   

The elements of value can be divided into two broad categories.

Specialize in Functional Value

Don’t deliver content.  Deliver time savings, cost savings, risk savings, organization, connection, education, and variety.

What is the utility benefit to your users? 

Functional values are the core reasons why members would visit your community.  It forms the baseline rationale for your community’s existence, and you want to not just be good – you want to be the best in delivering functional value in your field.

• Improve your Q&A boards for feedback, inquiry, or ideation.  Provide a template in a pinned topic where users fill out a consistent set of questions, so you can answer with the most appropriate and accurate options. 
• Use moderator tools like Recommended Replies to summarize and spotlight key points in a topic.  This saves time and focuses attention on expert information.   
• Super-charge the training for your response team.  Empower them to be subject experts by giving them private training, templates, and extra resources in a staff wiki so they can investigate the unique needs of user inquiries and provide the best responses.       
• Build a set of content resources in the Pages application, which is the most powerful application in the suite.  It can be used to create a set of content resources with unlimited custom fields, filters, and templates enabling you to offer variety, organization, and education that no other competitor can match. 

Spark Emotional Value

Don’t deliver engagement.  Deliver admiration, amusement, awe, empathy,  joy, nostalgia, satisfaction, and triumph.

How does your community make your members feel better? 

Here’s a little secret.  Even though functional value is the foundation of your community’s value proposition, emotional elements are 50% more valuable.  Fortunately, Invision Community comes loaded with ways to recognize, reward, and promote members. 

• Take the time to explain the purpose of a new group promotion, rank, or title.  Don’t let the reward be the goal in and of itself.  You should connect the feature with its underlying emotion by explaining what steps are required to earn the rank, how many others earned it, and what it’ll take to earn the next one. 
• Start with the Leaderboard.  Invision Community ships with the Leaderboard, which provides an overview of the most popular users and content.  Scan for up-and-coming members to investigate what triggers their emotional satisfaction; scan for popular content to discover what excites your membership. 
• Create multiple member journeys.  Most communities follow a pattern of new member to trusted member to moderator.  But members can become superusers in many ways. Members who enjoy nostalgia can organize a Year-in-Review topic. Members who enjoy affiliation should serve as Ambassadors to greet and mentor new members. Members who seek reputation will appreciate new outlets for publishing.  Define multiple pathways that strategically tap into the diverse desires of your members. 

As you implement your initiatives to build a Community of Excellence, take the time to relate the initiative to the Elements of Value (Attachment: IPS Elements of Value Attachment.pdf).  You’ll find new and creative ways of offering value to strengthen the relationship between your community and your members. 

Look deep within your community to unearth the rainbow spectrum of value. 

You’ll discover a wellspring of extraordinary value waiting to help your members shine brightest.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak on the Expert Focus podcast,  hosted by experienced community manager and public speaker, Claire Dowdall.

Claire has significant experience in managing and developing strategies for increasing Facebook Group engagement for high profile speakers and entrepreneurs, while my background is with independent communities.

This set us up nicely for a lively conversation to really pull apart what makes for a successful community, and what platforms to consider when starting out.

From Expert Focus:

Quote

In this episode, Claire gets behind the mic with Matt Mecham the co-founder of Invision Community which specializes in independent forums since it’s birth in 2002.  Matt talks about an insurgency in brands needing independent forum services, the cause, and trends surrounding that. Claire and Matt talk about Facebook communities and how they don’t touch the depth that forums and other online communities can offer. Listen in to discover:

• What limits Facebook groups/communities?
• Why is there more passion and a stronger connection to community forums versus social media platforms?
• Why is personal metadata not as important on forums?
• What are the landscape and people like within different forums?
• What are the positives of being a part of or leading an online forum/community?
• What are the benefits of segmenting content to cause a sharper focus?
• Why you should care about your community and not just use it as sales funnel.

I really enjoyed speaking with Claire, and I hope you find a little time to tune in.

Listen now:

• iTunes link for Apple devices
• On Spotify
• On all other devices

Are you a vBulletin admin looking to stay on the leading edge of online communities? 

As an IPS client who frequents the Invision Community support forums on a daily basis, I often run across existing or former vBulletin admins looking to migrate to IPS.  In fact, based on my not-so-scientific survey, vBulletin is one of the most popular platforms from where admins migrate. Many of the vBulletin users are professional administrators looking for a stable company, rapid development, and a trusted platform to power their communities into the future. 

I interviewed 6 former vBulletin admins who are now Invision Community clients.  Most of these vBulletin admins have 10+ years of experience running successful forums, so their input was especially insightful.   

“I love the design of the admin and moderation back-end, a real treat after living with the antiquated and confusing vBulletin back-end.” -- @cfish

“I like the well-thought concept, the details, and abundance of features and functions.” --@Ramsesx

I’ve compiled the top 10 questions and answers from their interviews and the forums specifically for vBulletin admins for an insider’s perspective on how to convert from vBulletin to Invision Community.  You can also read their full interviews in my Community Guide attached at the bottom.

10. What is the typical lifecycle of Invision Community and what new features come out?

Invision Community is currently on 4.4.  It’s a great time to be migrating as both the software and converter are very mature.  You’ll be able to take advantage of all the new features from Invision Community 4.x such as Social Clubs, Subscriptions, SEO updates, and GDPR updates. 

In general, IPS publishes one major update like 4.4 once a year, with several bug fixes, security updates, and enhancements throughout the year.  The best place to read about Product Updates is the official IPS Blog in Product Updates.

9. What are the pricing options and how do they compare to vBulletin?

IPS is comparable in pricing when compared to vBulletin depending on your choice of apps.  The self-hosted option is cheaper when considering support and upgrades.    

The pricing for an active license is simple, easy, and comprehensive.  A new license includes professional ticket support, forum support, access to new upgrades, and managed spam service for 6 months.  Renew again in six months to continue those benefits.  If you choose not to renew, your software will continue to work.

8.  Is the software mobile ready like vBulletin?

Yes, the software is responsive by design.  This means the community naturally fits and beautifully displays in any device size, giving you a consistent look-and-feel across all devices.  Try it now by resizing your window! 

It also means you don’t need to pay for any extra “mobile bundles.”  This approach to mobile design was one of the reasons why @cfish chose IPS: “I didn’t like vBulletin’s approach to mobile. The IPS approach to responsive web design was inline with my own thinking.”

7.  What are the official Invision Community apps and how do they compare to vBulletin? 

@Steve Bullman converted to IPS because “IPS seemed to offer a better all-round package for what I needed.”  One of the biggest reasons for considering IPS is a broader approach to community.  Whereas vBulletin focuses only on Forums and Blogs, IPS empowers you to build a suite of applications customized to your needs.  Mix and match apps like Gallery, Blogs, Downloads, Pages, and Commerce to build a modern community with resource directories, databases, paid subscriptions, albums and more that go beyond forums.   

You can read more about the apps in Features. Calendar and Clubs are included for free! 

6.  What will be migrated from vBulletin? 

The free converter app will migrate all of your member and content items from vBulletin 3.8.x, 4.x, and 5.x.  This includes members, private messages, member groups, ranks, forums, topics, posts, and attachments.  You can view the full list on Migrate and choose your vBulletin version from the list of choices.

Obviously, you will not be able to migrate any custom themes or custom modifications.  @ChristForums adds, “I wish I had known that the converter was so easy to use and migrate from Vbulletin 5.”

5.  What are the channels for support? 

Every active license comes with professional ticket support, which should always be your first source of contact.  @Markus Jung highlights “fast support” as the item he appreciates the most about his license.  You can also obtain help from the community forums, help guides, release notes, and other public resources. 

If you’re not an IPS client yet, you can post in Pre-Sales forum or email sales@invisionpower.com. 

4.  How do I prepare my community?

The six admins that I interviewed offered several tips for new Invision Community owners.  Prior to the conversion, you should read through the converter package to see what will convert and redirect.  You should purchase other Invision Community apps in advance to fully convert vBulletin items as needed; not delete any old content since Invision Community includes an archive function; and not make drastic changes to allow members a chance to become accustomed to the new forum. 

3.  What will happen to my traffic and URL redirects? 

The free converter app will redirect your existing URLs.  This includes forums, topics, posts, member profiles, print view pages, archived content, attachments, and tags.  You need to leave your converter installed after migration to ensure the redirects will work.   

AlexWebsites wrote, “the converter came with built-in redirects and I was able to redirect most of my traffic. Traffic recovered within a few months.”

2. What are the server configuration and database requirements?    

If you choose cloud, then Invision Community will manage the hosting. 

If you choose on-premise, you can use the free ‘Get Ready’ compatibility file to check your server.  The latest version of Invision Community 4.4 requires:

• PHP 7.1.0 or higher (7.3.x is supported)
• MySQL 5.5.3 or higher (5.6.2 recommended). 

1. How stable is the company? 

Other companies lost their development talent. Other companies were bought and sold by multi-media conglomerates. Other companies have a history of lawsuits.

Through it all, Charles, Lindy and Matt have been here since the beginning providing steady leadership to Invision Communities everywhere.  If you’re looking for stability, it’s nice to know you can rely on the same people who started the company.  For serious and professional vBulletin admins looking to transition, you know you’re not just buying into the software, but investing in the development team, staff, and platform for years to come. Ramsesx shared his personal story: “I always prefer the best for my community from where I earn my income.  An important aspect was the longtime outlook.  Invision Community gave me the feeling of being trustworthy, they are more than 17 years in the forum software market.” 

It’s no wonder that so many successful vBulletin admins feel the same after moving to Invision Community.  You get stability, years of experience, a deep understanding of online communities, and a dedication to development that continues to innovate.  It’s time to bring your vBulletin community over to Invision Community! 

Bookmark this page for future reference and download the Community Guide for experiences from real clients who converted from vBulletin.  Much appreciation to @AlexWebsites @cfish @Christforums @Markus Jung @Ramsesx @Steve Bullman for participating in the interviews.  

- Joel R

Community Guide vBulletin Migration to Invision Community.pdf

I'm only one month in to starting a new community and I've already learned a huge amount. I was a little apprehensive at first but I'm taking things one step at a time and I'm happy with how things are going so far.

The points I'm going to raise are working for me but I'm a beginner and running a website of any description is new. Nothing here is guaranteed and I hope to receive comments from established community admins so I can continue to improve.

The first thing I realised is that I wasn't actually starting a community but instead I'm going to be bringing new tools and ideas to an already existing one. My chosen subject is broad (Dogs) so there is already a well established real life community globally. My aim therefore is not to replicate already available content but to reach this community with unique content and encourage them to contribute their own. More on that later but before I could do that I needed something they could visit.

Get Started

You can spend days and weeks planning and writing business plans and these are all good things to do alongside everything else but they shouldn't stop you getting started. The only thing that really mattered to me was starting on the actual idea and to do that all I needed was a platform. You've probably already guessed but Invision Community was chosen for this as it offered multiple apps that would allow me to have both long form articles and forum content. There's also the monetisation options that appealed to me but I am not yet using. It's good to know they are there when I'm ready though. 

I also considered Wordpress but it lacked the community tools I was already sold on.

Rope in friends and family and use their skill sets

I'm not scared to admit where I need help and as I have hit problems or things I don't know I have called in favours. I don't have a large budget for stock photography subscriptions so a friend is providing photos in exchange for attribution. My fiance is more technically minded so he has helped with some of the set up and help with Invision Community features is only a support ticket away.

There is plenty of general information a quick web search away too but some topics are complex and I thought that if I could free up at least some of my time I can keep focussed on the direction. 

Help can be as simple as nudging friends into posting new topics or comments to get some initial activity and momentum. It's also a good test to make sure you have everything set up with your registration process and identify some potential problems.

These helpers are also now active members of the site of course so it's a two for one. I'm sure they'll be calling in return favours at some point but that's fine, they've earned it.

Encourage all contributions even if you don't agree with them

Coming from a primary school teaching background I see kids come up with lots of crazy and novel ideas all the time, they might sound silly but you never know, they may grow into something bigger. My aim is to foster a sense of community and belonging and people of all ages who have their ideas valued tend to stick around. If an idea doesn't work that's fine but you never know what will work so I'm trying lots of things and encouraging innovation. The forums are a great tool for this as everything doesn't need to be rigidly structured.

Be passionate and confident about your subject matter

Perhaps my top tip…If you don't value your own thoughts and actions then how can you expect others to? Show your enthusiasm and knock away negative thoughts and doubts. 

Use all of your tools

Once you've encouraged your initial core group of members, you need to keep them coming back. So far I've had success using the bulk mail feature for a monthly newsletter to rekindle the interest of early members who may no longer be as active. I was warned about bad email practices so I have our notification defaults set very loosely as I want to build trust by not spamming. Everything I send is opt-in and using the newsletter signup block I've been able to make this prominent but not obtrusive. I'm worried I might be missing out by not being aggressive enough with email but it's a risk I'm taking to hopefully get better long term members.

Get involved with your member activities and conversations

Join in with conversations on your community where it makes sense and be as active as possible. You're running a website but to do so you don't always need to be in front of a computer. Speak to your members face to face as well as through the keyboard. I've been going on local dog walks with clubs and other community groups which is a great chance to network and give your members and potential members the chance to see the people behind the website. If there are events or shows in your field get involved and spread the word verbally. I'm talking to dog owners face to face about behavioural issues and always in the back of my mind is the fact this could be discussed on the website to help others and build activity. Over time these "real world" relationships should also be represented on the website too.

Don't get distracted

I've got into the habit of using a reminders app to keep track of future things I want to do. It is tempting to start lots of things every time you have a new idea but that can take your mind off what is actually important right now. Don't forget about these ideas though, make a note and come back to them later.

Approvals and applications for things can also take time. I found myself sometimes sitting around waiting for adsense accounts to be approved or Facebook apps to be verified for sign in. Don't let this downtime be unproductive.

Keep writing new content

What we have started as new community admins isn't easy, it's going to be a long haul so you need to be consistent and regular with updates. On that note I have a breed profile about Chow Chows to write.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings and if you have any more tips please let me know in the comments.

Helen is a year 3 international primary school teacher currently living in Slovakia. She loves dogs (of course), books, and reading whenever possible. She has travelled extensively for work, particularly in South East Asia and has experienced many amazing cultures. She is a qualified Zumba dance fitness instructor and is now building what she hopes to be an invaluable resource for dog owners.
https://doglymail.com/

I'm sure that most reading this blog are running an up-to-date Invision Community and enjoying all the benefits of a modern community platform.

Little things that get taken for granted now, like being able to view your community on a mobile phone without pinching and zooming just to read a few posts and having multiple automated tools to deal with community toxicity and spam.

However, a little wander around the web soon uncovers some really old forum systems still somehow creaking along.

Amazingly, most of these communities are still used daily, often with millions of posts in the archives.

It might be tempting to ask why keep upgrading and investing in new versions of the software?

After all, if the community is still running just fine and getting daily visitors, then it's ok to do nothing, right?

But there is a hidden cost in doing nothing.

Security
This is the main one for me. Old platforms often have several published security vulnerabilities. Often these vulnerabilities are exploited by scripts that are shared around hacker communities. This means exploiting a website running an old version of a forum system is as simple as running a script and pointing it at your site.

Older forums are also less sophisticated. They rely on unsafe hashing methods to store passwords and lack vital features like two-factor authentication.

Also, consider that the server environment has to be maintained with out of date PHP and MySQL versions. It's a recipe for disaster.

Could your community survive a major exploit where data is downloaded into the hands of a hacker?

The cost could be fatal to your community.

Declining engagement
Even the most ardent of fans on your community will eventually tire of struggling to access your site on mobile devices.

I think back to 2002 when we created the first version of our software. We only had to focus on how it looked on a computer, so naturally, that influenced the design of the forum.

It's not so simple now. More and more of us are using mobile phones to access the internet. A recent statistic showed that mobile internet access outstrips desktop use 2 to 1; and for some countries, mobile internet access is almost the only way people get online.

It's just a matter of time before new members stop registering and engagement tails off.

Competition
At the end of 2018, there were 1.8 billion websites (I Googled it). The competition for attention has never been as fierce.

Your community may be the go-to place for your niche, but what if another community popped up running the latest version of a platform with all the features your members have been desperately asking for?

It may not take long until there is a massive drain from your community.

I'm sure there's a dozen reasons to make sure you're always re-investing in your community by upgrading to a modern platform. This blog merely scratches the surface.

For those of you that do invest and upgrade? You reap the benefits daily by ensuring you are doing the very best for your community by keeping it secure and accessible for most.

If you are on an older platform, now is the time to put some serious thought into making the move to something better.

I put together a little downloadable guide that might help too.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

The Internet is a fierce battleground for users, clicks, attention, and audience.  Competition surrounds your community from all angles and new threats constantly emerge.

The Internet has leveled the playing field for local businesses, solopreneurs, and small organizations which means more people than ever are competing for users.  Online communities are no different, and as companies realize the growing power of communities, you too may face more challenges. 

Online communities are growing faster than ever:

•  IDC predicts worldwide online communities market to grow to $1.2 billion in 2019
• According to research by Leader Networks,  twenty-three percent of marketers who have online communities indicate that the size of their communities doubled in the past year.  

How is your community competing against your competitors?  Is your community growing or stagnating relative to your competitors?   

In this blog post, we identify core concepts of competitive strategy that stretch from traditional theory to unique methods of winning for communities.   

Theory of Competition

The broadly-accepted understanding of competition in the business world rests on the seminal work by Professor Michael Porter, when he mapped out the origins of competitive forces in his 1979 book “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy.”  Fundamentally, all strategies for Porter distill into two basic options: Build on what you already do, or do something no one else can do.  

You can compete by doing what everyone else is doing but be more efficient, such as offering higher quality content, a better user experience, or having a lower price of member acquisition.  Or, you can expand the pie by forging a new position in the marketplace, such as staking out an untapped niche or developing a unique service.    

What’s your current competitive strategy: be better at what you’re already doing and your competitors, or to do something completely new?  

Emerging Theories

A new strategy on competition is emerging that is just as potent as Porter’s competitive forces. It’s especially relevant for online communities in the digital age: reacting opportunistically to emerging possibilities.  

Discovery-driven planning is the field’s most recent thinking.  It was introduced 20 years ago in works like Tim Luehrman’s “Strategy as a Portfolio of Real Options” that talked about flexibility as a strategy.  The idea was also introduced in the more recent “Stop Making Plans: Start Making Decisions” by Michael Mankins and Richard Steel, which argued for continuous strategic planning cycles.   

Online communities are impacted by – and can seize advantage of – fluctuating factors:

• Technical advances and digital disruptions 
• Disruptions in your industry 

The faster you react to market or technological change, the greater your advantage will become over time.  What disruption recently impacted your industry or niche?  How can you capitalize on the opportunity?  

Application to Online Communities

Online communities are at an especially powerful intersection of customers, superusers, industry experts, and brand representatives.  By assembling a broad mix of users, you gain a source of competitive knowledge and crowd wisdom unmatched by traditional businesses.  

• Market intelligence – Harness the power of crowds by letting your members feed you real-time market intelligence on the industry, market trends, and competitors.  
• Use technology to your advantage – Become an expert on utilizing your Invision platform as a technological advantage, whether you’re increasing visitor registrations with Post Before Registering, adding in store filters in Commerce, or enabling the application manifest settings for faster access on smartphones.
• Collaborative ideation – Collaborate with users early in the design process to create services or products that are highly-differentiated.
• Co-Creation – Channel your user’s expertise, enthusiasm, and product knowledge into co-created content such as tutorials, support answers, industry news, contests, and more.
•  Brand Ambassadors – Turn your membership’s most passionate users into brand ambassadors to provide outreach and personalized connections.  

Conclusion

Communities are challenged and tested every day by a multitude of competitors that compete for users. Competition is fierce, and as the web continues to proliferate and level the playing field, competition will only get stronger. 

It’s no longer enough to host a general discussion forum.  Successful communities envision a clear competitive strategy.  

Although competition is fierce, there are winners on the Internet who consistently gain market share. 

The winners are those who understand the fundamental drivers of competition: to create sustainable advantages over their competitors, to offer unique services and experiences, and to react opportunistically.  They also leverage all facets of their community for maximum value.      

Join me in 2019 in defining your competitive strategy and becoming a Community of Excellence. 

- Joel R

Joel R is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. When he's not running his own successful community, he's peppering Invision Community's private Slack channel with his feedback, community management experience and increasingly outrageous demands (everything is true except the last part).

One of the first things I do when visiting a site that I know has a community is to try and find it.

More often than not, it's hidden away in the footer links or buried in several sub-menus and labelled something relatively obscure like "Fans" or "Support".

This is a massive lost opportunity!

We all know that social proof is incredibly important when making a purchasing decision.

When I buy something on Amazon or book a holiday, the first thing I do is scour the reviews. Are the reviews mostly positive? What did other people think about the product after receiving it?

I might see two almost identical products and the reviews, not the price that'll always sway me.

It's that urge to herd to keep safe at play.

So why bury all that out of the way?

Your community should be full of fantastic social proof — hundreds of customers using your product and creating a buzz.

Is it a fear of criticism? We all have had bad experiences with clients who are less than rational with feedback, but that's OK.

The Harry Potter series of books are beloved by millions, made J.K Rowling a fortune, made a celebrated movie series and opened up several themed attractions which are always busy.

Yet, there are a significant number of 1-star reviews on Amazon.

Not everyone will get you or your business.

You always have the opportunity to reply and explain your side, and you are always in control with moderation tools.

Let's face it; if you are to handle negative feedback, it's better to manage it on your community than see it all over social media, Google reviews and review sites like TripAdvisor.

Maybe you're a little embarrassed because the community platform is old and doesn't match your branding.

If that's the case, then come and talk to us! We specialise in migrating communities from legacy platforms with poor mobile support. We offer brand matching services too.

Maybe it's just that you're unsure of what to do with your community.

I get that too. It can be hard to know how it fits in with your brand. I'm happy to help there also. Feel free to drop a comment below.

Our product has several ways to pull content from the community and feature it on your site.

We've helped big brands like LEGO®, Sega, Warner Bros. and more nurture a prosperous community that enhances their business.

The bottom line is that a well manage community should be central to your brand and website.

Hiding it among the "Privacy Policy" links is a huge missed opportunity.

- Matt

We attach a significant amount of personally identifiable data to our social media profiles daily.

I regularly use social media to share photos of my kids and holidays. I post my personal thoughts on products I've used and TV shows I've watched. I'm even tagged in location-based check-ins.

It's all there in my news feed for anyone to see.

I'm not alone. More and more of us live our lives through the prism of social media. We share things we love, things we loathe and things that make us laugh.

With just a few clicks, you can discover a lot of information about a person. More often than not, you can see where they work, where they live and what school they went to.

Scrolling through their timeline often reveals their stance on hot topics such as gun control, the current President and other recent headline news items.

This information follows you when you join a Facebook Group. Your past Tweets are always available to trawl through.

Indeed, there may be some groups that you decide you cannot post in as people would be able to identify you. 

This is particularly true for stigmatised conditions, such as financial help, illness and mental health.

After all, if you were seeking help with a large amount of debt or managing an embarrassing medical condition, you wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that work colleagues, friends and family could read your posts.

The benefit of anonymity for stigmatised topics

"Forums can all offer some initial anonymity, a community, and information that geographically proximate others may not have. What stigma-related forums uniquely offer is that the anonymity protects those who are not ready to be publicly associated with sensitive topics; the community helps to neutralise the “spoilage” of identity that accompanies stigma." (1)

Unlike social media where reams of personal data is willingly added, and which can identify you to other online users, forums allow you to add as much information as you are comfortable with.

Support communities for mental health and illness flourish using forums for this reason. An individual may feel devalued in society and unwilling to share their condition over social media.

"Nowadays people can both avoid and proactively cope with this devaluation by turning to online forums populated by others who share the same devalued group membership." (1)

Forums offer a safe space for these individuals to seek and receive support from others without disclosing large amounts of identifiable data.

Allowing a level of anonymity encourages more people to register and over time, they will develop ties with other users.

For an individual with a stigmatized condition, a forum may be a real life-line in coping with the condition as face-to-face support is often limited.

Adrial Dale, who owns Herpes Opportunity agrees.

"In order for us to truly be able to work through the shame that stigma can trigger, it's absolutely vital for us to feel safe to open up and tell all. Through opening up, we not only get to share with an understanding and compassionate community (which normalizes our shared experiences), but we're also able to begin to release what has felt like our own solitary burden to bear. 

Then a magical thing can happen ... an alchemical process that transforms shame into an opportunity for connection. An opportunity for us to be accepted for who we are *behind* the thick wall of shame. And ultimately, an opportunity to accept ourselves.

Especially in these days of the internet not feeling so private (even in places where it absolutely should be), having true privacy and anonymity is paramount for communities like Herpes Opportunity. Anything other than that is grounds for paranoia and holding back from sharing ourselves. (In fact, just the other day someone messaged me asking "Are private messages really private?") Fear can lead to closing ourselves off, which can lead to isolation and paranoia, which can lead to a downward spiral of self-loathing and depression. On the other hand, safety, connection and compassion creates an an okayness with the nitty-grittiness of what it means to be human."

The benefit of expressing a new identity

"People may strategically express identities when they think they will not be punished, and/or connect them to an audience that is valued." (1)

It is arguably true that not so many years ago, tech-related communities were very much male-dominated, with female contributions valued less.

Forums allow a way to create a new identity that is either gender-neutral thus allowing the male users to assume a gender, or overtly male to ensure their contributions are evaluated on merit, and not with any gender bias.

Christopher Marks who owns Nano-Reef has seen this first hand.

"During a discussion with a women’s group in our generally male dominant hobby, a number of women had expressed the benefit of having an anonymous username and profile when asking for help and advice on forums, they receive equal help without the unfortunate gender bias or belittling that can sometimes happen in real life when seeking the same help in person."

Invision Community's Jennifer has also experience of this on her own community; RPG Initiative.

"RPG Initiative is a community for all roleplayers. We focus on all text-based roleplaying forms that are hosted on the internet. We encourage roleplayers to find each other, discuss roleplay and grow as collaborative writers here at the Initiative in a safe environment."

Jennifer relies on, and encourages anonymity. She knows that because her site is predominately female, some female users identify as male to increase the chances of getting others to collaborate with them.

"Male players are rare, in fact, I recently ran a poll on my site and of those that responded to it less than 15% of them are male (or identify as such). So this gets them more attention and in turn, more people that want to write with them."

Jennifer explains how anonymity is critical to her site's growth.

"Anonymity is a difficult thing to accomplish in a small niche like mine, but it's sort of like a small town where everyone knows everyone, and they likely know all of your secrets. So enforcing rules to preserve anonymity is really important to my community and me. This includes prohibiting the "naming of names" or the "site" that the drama is coming from when seeking for advice or help. This doesn't negate that people may know the existing situation or people involved because they are also involved or know some of the people involved, but it helps cut down on the drama and the spread of negativity and false information about people."

With a forum community, you can truly be who you want to be.

This is not so with social media where others can create bias based on your gender, looks or topical preferences.

Together, together

"In her early work, Turkle argued that the internet provided myriad positive opportunities for self-transformation, but more recently, she argues that the explosion in social media options has led us to develop superficial, emotionally lazy but instantly available virtual relationships." (1)

It's hard to argue against this statement when you consider the content that predominates social media. And often an endless stream of self-focused content.

"Indeed, we provide clear evidence that online forums afford users a way of being genuinely “together, together”, as opposed to what Turkle calls “alone together.”(1)

The bottom line is that it has been proven that allowing a degree on anonymity increases engagement across all niches, but especially those that are built to support those with stigmatised conditions. These forums have a greater sense of community and depth than those built on social media.

When you allow your members to take back control of their privacy, you are empowering them to make decisions about what to share.

Given how eroded our privacy is in our modern always-connected world, this is a precious gift.

If you are looking to create a new community then consider this before choosing your community platform.

References:

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500268X
2: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2017.1339370

It's a new year, and a new beginning. And the possibilities are endless for you and your community.

It’s an exciting time to be leading an online community with Invision Community - whether you’re starting out or switching over - and the new year is the perfect opportunity to start anew.

How are you celebrating the new year with your community? What are your community goals for 2019?

To kick off the new year, I’ve outlined guidance for several types of communities, whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking to take your community to the next level.

New Community
Are you a new community or looking to start one? You’re in the best position because you have a blank slate and everything is possible. Invest in a formative experience during your first year of defining your community’s purpose.

• What are your community’s mission, goals, and objectives?
• What is your competitive advantage against other similar communities or are you developing a new niche? How are you going to develop content programming, site features, or digital services in support of that advantage?
• What is your marketing plan to attract new users?
• Who is your core base of users, and what’s your plan to cultivate your first set of superusers?
• What is your budget to create a sustainable plan for hosting?

Interest Community
Are you a hobbyist with an established community of passion? Your community is a labor of love for you, and while it can feel like you’re pouring your heart and soul into it on a daily basis, it can be refreshing to take a step back and take stock of your community’s purpose, engagement goals, and how you want to lead in 2019 through fresh eyes.

• What’s your plan to create more emotionally-driven storytelling in your community? How are you going to deepen your tribal connection to users and between users?
• How can you incorporate member feedback into your New Year’s resolutions through polls, surveys, and member insights?
• How are you building a scalable community that leverages automation, staff, and user generated content to achieve your objectives?
• What are your engagement metrics year over year for 2018, and what is your projection for 2019 metrics like active members, online activity, best answers, and other user targets?
• How are you going to achieve those engagement metrics through initiatives like new pathways for engagement or enhanced training for staff?

Enterprise
Are you a brand community that’s part of a parent organization? Your organization probably already understands the value of investing in an online community, but rest assured that you’re in good company. In the 50th Anniversary report by the research firm IDC, it’s estimated that 80% of all Fortune 5000 companies will host an online community by 2020.

As a community manager, you’ve probably covered all the basics such as approving your community’s budget for the new year, provided performance reviews of your staff, and mapped out your community strategy to align with organizational goals. Nevertheless, there are always more opportunities to increase your community’s prominence:

• What new early-stage relationships do you want to cultivate with employees, suppliers, vendors or partners?
• How can you create more networking touch points between your community and key constituencies to deliver community-driven solutions?
• How can you present your community’s data to stakeholders in new ways for better insight?
• How can you vest key stakeholders into community decisions and let them be a rewarding part of the conversation?
• What growth areas are happening within the organization, and how can you make the community be an integral part of its delivery?

My personal New Year’s resolution is to develop my website into a Community of Excellence. This involves incorporating thought leadership from professional community management resources, making data-driven decisions, and formalizing a growth plan based on best practices. I hope you’ll join me in a year-long journey of community management as we conceptualize, learn, and discuss how to co-build Communities of Excellence.

It’s a new year of endless opportunities to drive new growth and excellence for our members and communities.

What are your community goals for 2019? Share in the comments below or in the exclusive Client Lounge in the Invision Community forums, so we can cheer each other on, check-in periodically, and provide peer mentorship for each other.

Join me in a Year of Community.

- Joel R

Joel R is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. When he's not running his own successful community, he's peppering Invision Community's private Slack channel with his feedback, community management experience and increasingly outrageous demands (everything is true except the last part).

A successful community manager is a combination of so many things.

Being a successful community manager demands that you be a multi-faceted person and to apply a dynamic personality to a position that’s always in flux.  You’re the authorized ambassador of your organization; you’re the chief moderator who sets and enforces community guidelines; and you’re the counselor and friend to all of your peers in the community.  You may also be the one who updates your community suite, approves members, and manages the moderator team.  Oh, and you find time to be the social media coordinator, digital designer-in-training, and all-around fantastic human being.

You wear many hats and it can be challenging to juggle all of those hats. So what do you do?
 
Take a breather.  The good news is that you don’t have to wear all the hats, all the time.  My head used to spin at the sheer amount of work that I faced as a solo community manager - especially when my community first started out – and I didn’t have a disciplined approach to community management.  I didn’t even know what hats to wear!

Over time, I’ve learned that there are specific ‘hats’ to community management.  The best way to figure out which hats to juggle?  Determine which hats are most important to you, which hats to wear for a specific goal, and which ones to swap out as your needs change.  Create the change you believe in by wearing the right hat.

Evangelist
No matter the niche or industry, you should be a self-professed evangelist who is passionate and always learning about the topic.  This personal interest will shine over time with your expertise in helping other users, bringing in new members with your helpful knowledge, and focusing discussion to evolving trends.  You’re trusted as a leading voice of the community and your organization, and you can use your expertise to spread the positive impact of your organization’s mission.  

User Advocate
You’re passionate about your users because you understand that the beating heart of your community is the valuable feedback, peer support, and testimonials that your users provide. You’re a champion of nurturing a positive and supportive community that’s aligned with your organizations’ goals.  Customer service is a vital component to your team’s community outreach.

Digital Marketer
An effective community manager will engage people, even outside of the community.  This means being a leading voice on external sites like blogs, partner communities, social media, industry events, and professional organizations.  It extends the reach of your organization through non-traditional marketing and gives you and your community an online impact in relevant areas.

Relationship Builder
Part of your job is to be a networker for all the people around you and to be a bridge for authentic relationships.  You want to listen to the ensuing conversations happening around your product, company, or industry, then add value and build relationships with key stakeholders both online and in-person.  It’s especially important to build meaningful relationships within your organization to advocate for your organization’s mission through your community.

Suite Administrator
Finally, you should be an expert in Invision Community to leverage the built-in tools.  Invision Community makes it easy for community managers of all technical backgrounds to get started and run successful communities.  The more you learn of the Administrator and Moderator functionality, the more effective you become in supervising your community staff and driving your organization’s success.

Community Management is one of the most exciting and rewarding roles in the modern web.  It’s a position that’s filled with dynamism and people, and you grow yourself in ways that you never imagined.  An effective community manager needs to extend herself by trying on new hats.  And while some of these hats may be new to you at first, I encourage you to try all the hats and slowly develop your expertise in these new roles over time.  Putting on more hats is the first step to becoming a more valuable and effective community manager.
  
What hat do you wear today, and what hat do you want to wear tomorrow?  No matter which new role you decide to embark upon, hats off to you for stepping up and growing yourself as a community manager.  

Joel R is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. When he's not running his own successful community, he's peppering Invision Community's private Slack channel with his feedback, community management experience and increasingly outrageous demands (everything is true except the last part).

Did you know that the most magical community in the world runs on Invision Community?

For close to 12 years, Invision client @Michael R  has been spreading joy through the Santa Claus Network (ClausNet.com), the world’s largest community for Santa and his followers.

He started building the site in November 2006 and went live in the beginning of 2007, using Invision Community as his platform of choice since the beginning. Michael also founded the James D. Rielly Foundation in honor of his grandfather – a non-profit organization that provides charitable and emotional support to military and first responder families.

As a tribute to the holidays, Mike was gracious enough to be interviewed by Joel on behalf of Invision Community on how he uses Invision Community and engages with his unique community.  

J:  This is such a wonderful community of passion.  How did you get started?

Back in October 2005, I attended the world-famous Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School. It was a Christmas present I received from my wife. At that time, I had already been portraying Santa for 34 years but was a bit skeptical of what I would get out of attending a “Santa School.” 

At the school I got to meet Santas from all over the World!

It was a wonderful experience and I am still friends with many of the folks, but what I enjoyed most of all was the camaraderie I felt with my fellow brothers and sisters in red. This was the catalyst in creating ClausNet – to recreate the same feeling of fellowship I felt at the school. 

J:  Your membership must be very unique. 

ClausNet is the world's largest online community dedicated to the faithful portrayal of Santa Claus.  Our membership also includes Mrs. Claus, Elves, Reindeer Handlers, and all others who devote their time to bringing the magic of Christmas to children and adults throughout the world!
In comparison to other sites, 2,900 isn’t a lot of members. But based on some estimates it’s about two thirds of all the Santas and Mrs. Clauses on the planet!

We are very selective who of we approve for membership. In addition to Invision’s validation process, I personally email each person who registers for an account. I do this to help eliminate trolls and other Grinchy people, but mostly to keep out the prying eyes of children to preserve the Secret of Santa and keep the magic alive for children of all ages!

J:  What Invision apps do you use, and how do you use them?  
We have all the Invision Community apps and rely upon them for many purposes.
  

• We don’t sell products on the site but we do use Commerce for donations. Members can purchase Supporter Level Memberships at varying prices.
• We use Pages and Blogs for posting short stories, opinion pieces, and even business advice.
• We use Downloads for sharing files such as example contracts and business card templates.
• The Calendar app is a great resource in notifying and scheduling regional get-togethers, workshops, schools, and training sessions. 

J: What are some of the most innovative features of Invision Community that your members have embraced?

I believe Invision Community is the most robust platform for building online communities. Our members really like the new Clubs feature.  We use Clubs for regional and local groups as well as specific topics such as prop making and costuming.  

J:  There must be seasonality with your niche. How do you keep your members engaged throughout the year and what are some special events that you host?

Throughout the year we run several activities designed to keep up engagement.

• Member of the Month - Each month, I select a different member of our community to featured. We interview the candidate and post the interview on the site. 
• ClausNet Gazette Monthly Newsletter - We send out a monthly newsletter of content from the website. Surprisingly, it’s the first time many of the members see the content. It is a great way to keep members coming back to the site.
• Christmas Card and Ornament Exchange – These are two of the most anticipated events we hold.  Members sign up and are randomly paired with another, so they can exchange cards or ornaments.  It’s very exciting to receive Christmas ornaments from another part of the world!

We also run several other programs such as an Annual Raffle, Countdown to Christmas, Picture Contests, and Latest News.

J: As a longtime Invision client whose passion is the holidays, what are your holiday wishes to other Invision clients and clients-to-be?

As many of you know, Christmas is my favorite holiday – a holiday that lives in my heart year-round! May this holiday season be one of health and happiness for you and your loved ones. Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Festive Festivas, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Nollaig Shona, Boas Festas, Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas!

J:  Thank you Mike for graciously spending your time with me and other Invision clients to learn how you engage with members using Invision Community.  Hopefully this interview has helped inspire and motivate other clients with some extra cheer during the holiday season!

Outside your window, the leaves have burst into fiery reds and oranges.  A crisp breeze floats in the air.  The birds have long chirped their good-byes.

And you’re sipping a hot cup of apple cider, contemplating the change in season.

The holidays are almost here.

The end of the year is one of the best chances to take stock your community and provide an emotive experience for your members.  It’s a chance to reflect upon what you learned, what new initiatives you started, and what you still have ahead of you.  It’s a chance to provide a sense of closure to the year and to ignite one more burst of community-wide goodwill.  In short, the holiday season is an amazing opportunity to bring your community together one last time in 2018.

Here are 16 ideas for the holidays in four categories.  Try to select at least one idea from each category for a holiday plan that runs the gamut of the community experience.  Choose the ones that you especially like; gather your staff members to brainstorm; and put together a plan that’ll navigate you better than Santa’s reindeer through the holidays!

Design

One of the easiest and simplest things you can do is to update your community’s design for the holiday to provide an immediate visual impact.  Users love to see fun twists on your theme.

1.    Tweak your logo with falling snow or twinkling lights.
2.    Replace your forum icons with holiday ones.
3.    Go bold and install a whole new holiday theme from the Marketplace.
4.    Coordinate the holiday design across all of your social media and web properties.

Remembrance

Your 2018 was filled with emotional triumphs and tribulations. Did your community accomplish something great?  How many new members did you welcome?  Did you lose any members?  Create a shared experience that binds and connects your community closer together.

1.    Craft a year-end mailer that chronicles your community’s victories and struggles.
2.    Post a “Did You Remember This?” topic that reconnects with all the funniest, informative, and most poignant topics.
3.    Edit a “Top Moments of 2018” montage that highlights the biggest events that transformed your community in the past year.
4.    Memorialize members who have moved on or departed your community.

Appreciation

Holidays are all about demonstrating appreciation for your loved ones, and your community is no different.  Take the time to demonstrate an authentic and warm appreciation for all members who have shared the past year with you. 

1.    Promote new users who have done a superb job of supporting the community over the year.
2.    Send out physical or digital gifts as a token of your appreciation to key members.
3.    Write individualized messages for every staff member that highlights their wonderful contributions.
4.    Send a thank-you note to Invision Community in the comments below on how using Invision Community has helped propel your community’s growth in 2018.

Celebration

Finally, the holidays are a season of celebration.  Spread tidings of joy and merriment to all members in your community, social media, and offline for all-around cheer.
 
1.    Count down to the holidays with different daily announcement using the Announcements feature.
2.    Write a year-end “2018 Celebration Message” mailer to applaud all the great events from 2018
3.    Host a winter giveaway with special holiday packages or gifts.
4.    Throw a holiday party as a meet-up, using Calendar and Venues, to mingle with your members in person.

Reconnect your members one more time in 2018 with a rich and shared story of the past year.  The holidays are an intensely emotional time that can provide an occasion for remembrance, an occasion for appreciation, and most of all, an occasion of celebration of all great things that have happened and are yet to come.  Let your community be the gift that keeps on giving.  

Happy holidays to all Invision Community clients, and may your winter holidays be filled with joyous cheer and community friendship!

Joel R is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. When he's not running his own successful community, he's peppering Invision Community's private Slack channel with his feedback, community management experience and increasingly outrageous demands (everything is true except the last part).

Yet again, Joel hijacks our company blog for another generous slice of knowledge from the front-lines of administrating a successful community.

Inspired by Invision Community client @Joey_M who discovered the emoji of serendipity and chief architect @Matt who literally knows everything about Invision Community in ACP Tips and Tricks, they both made me realize there’s always something to learn no matter your level of experience. 

You know how to post.  You know how to react.  You sometimes spice it up and make a poll.  And for the most part, you and your users go about your forum lives with a secure sense of certainty and satisfaction that you know how to interact with your community.

But what if I told you there’s a whole world of wonder at your fingertips, young grasshopper?  Your Invision Community includes stars to navigate by; magical pictures that appear and disappear; and little yellow men who giggle, laugh, and sometimes roll over in delight. 

Here are 5 hidden tips to help you discover a little more of the IPS magic for you and your users.  

1. Click-and-hold

Be sure to dazzle your users with this secret way of changing your content title.  Change titles of your content items such as topic titles, album titles, and download files by using the click-and-hold strategy. Go to your forums and click-and-hold down the mouse over any topic title until you see that you’re able to edit the title.  Surprise! Use this secret strategy as the perfect way to quickly mass edit titles.

2. Stars and Dots

Active forum users jump around dozens of boards every day to stay involved.  And within a loooong topic with many pages, you need a fast way to jump to the most recent unread topic.  Before each topic is an icon: either a dot or a star.  Clicking these icons will always jump you to the latest unread post, so you can quickly dive back into the conversation.  Dot means unread; Star means you participated in the topic.

3. Emoji Short-codes

One of the newest features to be included in Invision Community is emojis.  While there are ways to insert emojis from both mobile keyboards and the editor, you can also start typing “:thumbs up:” to reveal the secret emoji menu.  Try it now in the comments of this article. Last person to give me an emoji thumbs up wins! 

4. Image Attachments

Forum posts come alive with image attachments that add color and vibrancy. But adding thumbnails to the bottom of your posts is a missed opportunity to enrich your post at the appropriate spots within the post.  After you upload an image attachment to a forum post, double-click on the image attachment.  You’ll be presented with a secret menu with options to align and resize, so you can create stunning forum posts with images.

5. Profile Banners

Banners play a prominent part in multiple parts of the community, such as the Calendar, Profile, Clubs, and Blogs.  But usually the page only displays a portion of the banner, and most of the banner is hidden.  If you ever want to see the full banner in all of its glory, click near the top of the banner to auto-magically reveal everything!  Now you see, now you don’t.  

How many of these five secret tips did you know?

If you knew all five, give yourself a round of applause!  It’s rare for even the most seasoned Invision Community administrator to know all five, and you’ve mastered them all.

Did you know four?  Congrats, you’ve done a great job of exploring your community suite and you should keep it up.

Did you know three or less?  You should do some serious soul searching. Kidding. 

But it’s a definite sign that your soul would benefit from reading Invision Community News for more useful tips.  

Becoming a great community manager is a combination of community strategy and product knowledge.  By empowering yourself with more functional knowledge and tools, you’re giving yourself the ability to leverage a bigger toolkit.  Whether you’re typing emoji short-codes to laugh with your members or inserting attachments into a tutorial on hidden tips for your community, I hope you learned something new, something surprising, and something perhaps even a little wonderful. 

Let us know in the comments below what hidden tip surprised you the most.     

Dealing with spam can be an annoying problem for community moderators. It's bad enough that our inboxes get clogged up with it daily.

Invision Community comes with several tools designed to mitigate spam, and make it hard for spammers to get a foothold in your community.

This short video takes you through several key areas:

• The Invision Community spam defense system
• CAPTCHAs
• Question and Answer challenges
• Group Promotion
• Flagging a member as a spammer

Do you have any tips on dealing with spam or spammers? We'd love to hear them. Let us know in the comments.

Once again, we hand over the reigns of our blog to client and friend to Invision Community Joel for another client view of our community suite.

Today @Joel R tackles Activity Streams, and how to make them "your awesome".

Activity Streams is one of the best new features of Invision Community 4 with more flexibility and options than ever before.  It can be an amazing and easy way to dive into interesting and new content, constantly feed new content to your users, and uncover different parts of your community. 

Your community contains amazing content. Activity Streams empower your users to discover the awesome in your community!

While earlier versions of the software contained New Content streams, they were pre-defined and shipped by default.  Now, everyone from users to community managers to admins can create their own unique Activity Streams, customized for the needs of the community or your own browsing interests.  These new options in Invision Community 4 give incredible power to both you and your users to discover new ways of looking at your content.  You can reference Invision’s Guide on Activity Streams.

Let’s take a look at all the different ways to strategically use Activity Streams. 

1.    Home Stream
Make the Activity Stream your homepage!  It’s a beautiful, automated, chronological stream of recent content that constantly replenishes as new content is posted.  Rather than a blocky homepage that is literally stacked with blocks in a chunky mix-and-match, you can offer a blended homepage that unifies all of your content into one continuous stream.  It’s easy to browse, and you can still decorate the page with blocks in the sidebar and hot zones. 

To make the Activity Stream your homepage, go to the ACP > Applications.  Set System as the default app by clicking on the ☆ star.   Then open up System, and make Content Discovery the default module by clicking on the ☆ star.  
 

2.    Default Stream
The default Activity Stream is always one the most significant links in your entire Invision community.  After the homepage, the default Activity Stream is usually the most popular page to which returning users will consistently use.  On some Enterprise boards, the default Activity Stream drives up to 20% of the initial clicks from repeat members.

It’s no wonder why.  The default Activity Stream is the portal to the rest of the website and easily shows recent content.  But how many of us have customized or self-critiqued it?  Review your default stream and filter for the primary content you want to display.    
 

3.    Content Streams
By default, Invision Community ships with a handful of global streams.  While those are appropriate for a new community, they aggregate all content in the community.  This can be problematic if your community emphasizes one content type over another since all content is mixed together and content types with high volume can overwhelm less popular types.  For example, a recent upload of IP.Gallery images can flood the Activity Stream with new images, pushing discussion and blog posts too far down. 

One thing you can do is to create new Activity Streams per content type or exclude certain content types.  Make separate streams for Forum Topics, Gallery Albums, Blogs, and more depending upon your community.  This will delineate content and makes it easier to navigate exactly what you want.  And even within content types, you can filter down to specific boards or categories.  You can create special streams specifically for Introduction or New Member boards; Gallery images and albums, so they don’t clutter up your primary stream; or Club discussions open to all members.   

4.    User Streams
One of the most creative ways to use Activity Streams is to show content from specific users.  This can be strategically used to create streams for specific users or accounts: staff members, special contributors, or leadership accounts.  You can also stealth stalk your most favorite IPS staff members!

Create an Activity Stream of all recent activity, then each user can customize the stream to follow the people most important to them.  Each user can track the members most important to them and survey a quick overview of those members’ most recent activity.  
 

5.    Mobile Streams
There are a couple of options that can help your stream be optimized for mobile.  By default, the Activity Stream can be packed with information.  You can include every detail of when a member registers, changes their profile photo, reacts to an item, and more.  You can also show the Expanded view, which includes up to three lines of text.

If your website receives a lot of mobile traffic, you should toggle on Condensed view.  This streamlines the Activity Stream and packs more content items onto the viewport.  In a typical smartphone, you may only see 2 – 3 items in Expanded View, but see 5 – 6 items in Condensed view.  That allows users to see twice as much content, even on a smaller device.

6.    RSS Streams
For community managers who run an IPS community in support of an enterprise or organization, you can activate an RSS feed per stream.  This allows you to push the content to your other digital properties.  Turn a feedback and testimonial board into a showcase of product reviews; turn Q&A boards into a live stream of ongoing customer support; turn a New Customer introduction board into profiles of actual customers; and tap into the best parts of your community-generated content to fit into other parts of your support channels, brand marketing, and sales outreach.  Leverage your passionate community elsewhere with Activity Streams, and its built-in feature of RSS feeds.   

Like most advanced features, learning to ‘surf the Activity Stream can be tough.  The streams are usually tucked away into the menu or an icon.  And many users are unaware that it exists!

Activity Streams are such an incredibly powerful and flexible tool, which is why I personally love it.  You can slice-and-dice your community in any number of ways, and you gain an instant overview of the parts of the website that are most important, most engaging, and most interesting to yourself.  Spend some time sharing a quick tutorial with your community.  Show them where to view streams.  Show them how to customize it.  And let them discover the awesome in your community!  
 

Today, we're handing over our blog to long time client and friend to Invision Community, Joel R.

@Joel R is often found hanging out in our community offering his insight and wisdom when he's not harassing the team in Slack.

Over to Joel.

Invision Community releases a variety of blockbuster features in every major update, which usually hits once a year.  You may think those updates are not enough (it’s never enough!), but I wanted to spend some time talking about how to survey and incorporate those features into your community systematically. 

This blog post is not about any specific feature, but more a general and philosophical approach in integrating the newest features.  My goal is to help you get the most out of every new IPS update!      

You may think that many of the features in the updates are easy to assess.  You either want them or don’t.  But it’s not that easy. 

I was inspired by some recent personal experiences when I found myself revisiting features from 4.2 and earlier.  I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I still had so much to experience and learn from those features, all of which I had previously reviewed when they were initially released.  Invision Community comes packed with rich features, and no community manager is expected to be a master at everything.  But a systematic approach is your best chance at making sure you get the most out of every feature.

To give a personal example, I jumped into Social Media Promotion when it first came out in 4.2.  The new Social Media Promotion offers several powerful tools for social media cross-posting, and I immediately wanted to learn how I could use it to cross-post content to my Facebook and Twitter accounts.  It’s an easy drop-in replacement for services like Hootsuite or Windscribe and allows community managers to drip interesting content to their social media pages for constant advertising and social engagement.

Well, it turns out my Facebook and Twitter reach is nil because I have no followers (wish I was more Internet famous!), so I soon lost interest and dropped Social Media Promotion as a tool.

A couple of months ago, I was assessing my homepage versus other popular websites when I came across a startling realization: I could make a gorgeously visual homepage on par with Instagram using Our Picks – a feature of Social Media Promotion.

I would intentionally ignore the social media component, but use the other component of Our Picks for a beautiful new homepage.  The context of using Our Picks for a homepage opened my eyes to a whole new way to evaluate Social Media Promotion, and what was once a feature on the back burner is now – literally - the front page of my Invision community.  I love it!   

To help you incorporate new Invision features, I’ve brainstormed 5 strategies on how to make the most out of Invision feature updates.  Each strategy comes with a mini-lesson for an action plan. 

1.    Learn the knowledge, not the feature.
This is my personal motto when Invision Community releases a new feature.  I’m more concerned about the knowledge and broader usage of the feature than implementing the feature itself: What’s the potential scope of the feature?  In what context could the feature be used?  How did Invision Community intend for the future to be used, and what are other ways it can be used?  

I’ve never worried about the technical configuration of the feature.  You enable or disable some settings, and that’s it.  But what’s more important is how the functionality can best be integrated and in what context.  You never know when you might come back to the feature for the next great idea, and you can only do that if you possess the knowledge and application behind the feature.  

Lesson: Try every feature at least once, even if you don’t need it.
    
2.    When at first you don’t succeed, take a nap.
Some things take a while to think about.  Don’t try to cram through all new Invision Community features.  There’s too many to digest in one pass.

Assess the features you’re most interested in one by one, play with each feature until you’re satisfied, test them, find out how they work, and when you get frustrated, take a nap.  Eat some ice cream.  Go jogging.  And revisit in a month.  The bigger the feature, the longer you should think about it.
  
The biggest “aha” moments didn’t come to me right away.  When you try to rush through a feature, you can get rushed results.  Take your time to bounce ideas around your head and try to think through the context of how to best utilize the feature.   

Lesson: For features that you like, set a calendar to revisit after a month.  Then take a nap.  

3.    You’re running the marathon, not a sprint.  
Successful community managers have evolved with the changing needs of our audiences.  While our mission remains the same, the backdrop of user expectations and digital trends has dramatically changed.  

When you implement a feature, you should be evaluating it for both sustainability and longevity.

Is this a sustainable mechanism to keep up with? 
Is this something that I want to continue for the foreseeable future?  

It’s nice to play with new features; every major update is like a Christmas unwrapping of new features.  But you need to prudently pick-and-choose which feature is most appropriate and how it can give you an impact for the long-term.  Sometimes it’s better to do a few things very well than many things not well at all.

Lesson: Ask yourself if you see yourself using the feature 3 years later?

4.    Make it uniquely yours
Invision Community ships with default features ready to use out of the box, but those features are just that: default.  We like to dress up our theme with custom colors, designs, and logos.  You should apply the same flair for customization with your features.

Some features are ready to be customized: reactions, ranks, and group promotion.  Others, however, might take more thinking.  Here are some examples to spark your creativity:

•    Social Sign-in Streamline – are you using the default message, or did you customize it with a unique and clever introduction?  
•    Fluid Forum – did you activate fluid forum and hope it went well?  Or did you use it as an opportunity to re-analyze your entire forum structure for the modern web?  
•    Leaderboard – did you leave it as a Leaderboard, or could it be Genius board for a technology company, or Joyboard for a nonprofit, or Loyaltyboard for a consumer brand?

Lesson: Make the feature uniquely yours.

5.    Talk through your scenario
Every battle-tested community manager knows that the only thing constant is change – whether it’s our forum software, ACP settings, user expectations, and broader digital trends.  It’s important to find a trusted circle of friends and users who can help you steer and implement features.  It may sound great in your head, but other users may look at it very differently. 

On my site, I have a trusted group of users called “Champions.”  In my pre-planning stage, I float my ideas by them as early in the process as possible.  They’ve provided valuable feedback of user expectations with differing perspectives.  I’ve nixed certain features based on their veto, and I’ve tweaked continuously based upon their continuous input.  Talk through your scenario with your trusted friends, and not just with the voices in your own head!    

Community management is such a uniquely rewarding and challenging role because every community demands and needs a different set of features.   Invision makes it easy with regular releases of exciting features, but you also need to make the most out of those features on your own.  Don’t just turn on the next feature: turn on excitement, joy, and community.  

If you notice, I didn’t include a lesson yet in my last strategy when you’re ready to talk about your scenario.  And that’s because it’s the ultimate lesson:

Write the next guest post in the Invision Community Blog and share your own success story in how you adopted a new Invision feature.  We’d love to hear about it.

Thanks Joel!

We love this angle on how to best evaluate the myriad of opportunities the Invision Community software allows.

What is your biggest take-away from Joel's advice?
 

It's 2 am, and my bleary red eyes are fighting sleep. My thumbs are still glued to the Playstation controller as I try and persuade my on-screen avatar to complete the level. If I manage it, I've won another trophy.

Many of us have been there. Investing a considerable amount of time into a game just to get to the next level, win a trophy or better yet, complete the entire game.

I still remember the thrill of finishing Metal Gear Solid. I had become a recluse and lost track of time. Each time I thought about putting the gamepad down, there was just one more tiny thing to achieve.

For decades, game designers have been using gamification to keep players plugged in and wanting more. A well-designed game hooks you completely, and you can't help but keep playing.

In more recent times, social media has switched onto gamification. Each like and share you receive triggers a little dopamine kick in your brain. It's a pleasurable sensation which keeps you coming back for more. How many times have you opened Twitter back up moments after closing it?

What does this mean for communities?
Applying game mechanics to your community can have a powerful effect on member retention and engagement on your site.

There are three main areas we can use gamification for: onboarding, driving engagement and encouraging positive behavior.

Let's look at these areas in more detail.

Onboarding
When a new member joins your community, you want them to complete as much of their profile as possible. Ideally, this would mean that they upload a photo and complete any custom profile fields you have created.

The more information a user provides, the more chance there is that they will come back and that others will start to engage with them. A relatively anonymous member will not be taken seriously by your veteran members.

Traditionally, new members are presented with either a massive registration form or they are never prompted to complete their profile after sign up.

Presenting a sizeable complex registration form is a sure way to reduce your guest to member conversion rates. A persons attention is a rare resource so do not waste the one opportunity you have for a new sign up!

Invision Community has a profile completion feature which displays a progress bar at the top of each page.

This is a great way to add gamification to the onboarding process. You get the best of both worlds. A short compact registration form and a very persuasive reason to upload a photo and complete any profile fields.

Very few can resist the temptation to leave their profile 90% complete!

Gamification can help you convert a new lurker into a contributing member by leveraging the member groups and promotion feature.

Set up your default Member group with specific restrictions that would be attractive to your community. This may be custom signatures, or it could be custom member titles. Perhaps limit the number of images that can be seen per day in Gallery.

The key is to limit access in a way that doesn't agitate or annoy your new members but encourages them to level up.

Create a new group "Full Members" and remove those restrictions. Create a promotion rule that after five posts, they get to level up.

This will encourage lurkers to join in the discussion, so they reach the next level.

You will want to be careful with this feature. You don't want to encourage noise and vapid posting just to reach the next level. 5-10 posts are enough to get them engaged.

Meet Player One
The number one thing you need to have a thriving community is constant user engagement. It is the lifeblood of any discussion focused site.

Game mechanics will help drive user engagement using Invision Community's features strategically.

But first, we must understand the types of players that will frequent your site.

The High-Status Seeker
We've all come across this type of forum member. These members tend to wear their content counts with pride. They cite how long they've been members for. They are the elite member's others look up to.

The High-Status Seeker will want to be in the top three of your leaderboard every single day.

In many ways, the High-Status Seeker is the ideal member. They want to move up the levels as fast as possible and show their experience and dominance to others. They will have an eye on becoming a moderator and getting access to exclusive private forums.

The Social Butterfly
This type of forum member isn't as interested as status as others. They are content to be active and participate in many different conversations. They typically like open-ended games like MMORPG where the reward is just playing the game.

The Social Butterfly can be reluctant to engage with gamification elements in your community, but in many ways, they do not need to as they are likely to become long-standing members anyway.

Engagement and Loyalty
Now we have met the players, let's look at some of the features Invision Community has built in to create a game-like environment to drive up engagement and retention.

Content Count
The humble content count has been around since the dawn of the forum age. In simple terms, it displays the number of posts and comments the member has added to the community since they joined. When content is deleted, the post count is typically untouched.

High-Status seekers love their content count and protect it with their life! Getting to 10,000 posts is a real achievement and sets them apart from newer or less engaged members.

Reputation
Allowing others to like your posts is a powerful way to not only get more engagement but also encourages quality content to be posted. Content with actual value, humor or flair tends to receive more likes than average. This gives the author a good morale boost which they will want to replicate.

In many ways, this is the critical driver for the Social Butterfly. Acknowledgment for their efforts is what keeps them happy and content.

Leaderboard
While the Social Butterfly may be content with receiving likes on their content, the High-Status Seeker will want to top the leaderboard for as many days as they can confirming their status.

The leaderboard is generated each night and adds up each person's reputation given for that day. The winner is crowned for all to see.

The winner also gets a trophy on their profile for 'winning the day.' High-Status Seekers love this feature and do all they can to ensure they are in the top three.

Our Picks
Invision Community introduced the social promotion feature to 4.2. We use it to promote our blogs and good content we see members posting on our forum.

To have your content picked for promotion is a huge thrill, and will undoubtedly put a smile on the face of the author. Both High-Status Seekers and Social Butterflies will love seeing their content promoted on social media and on the site itself.

It is also a great way to keep your social media feeds topped up with quality content.

We are seeing a good number of communities using Our Picks as their home page to give their site more of an Instagram feel.

Level up with member groups
Who doesn't love being invited into a VIP area to sit in the good seats with the red ropes making it clear that not everyone is invited (yet!)

This is a key strategy to engage High-Status Seekers. With member groups, you can create exclusive VIP areas that normal members can see, but cannot view topics or post into.

In practice, it is as simple as creating a new member group called "VIP Members." This member group has access to specific forums.

A member group promotion rule can then be used to level up members who reach specific goals, such as 5,000 posts.

This feature can be used to stretch members to achieve a large goal, or you can use it for a series of mini-goals. Either forum access or increased feature access can be leveraged to encourage goal completion.

Become part of the team
"Welcome to the team!" is a message that most members would love to receive. Being handed access to the private team forums where strategic discussions are held, topics are discussed and where the cool kids hang out is probably the ultimate goal for the High-Status Seeker.

Wearing the moderator's badge is a tangible benefit and validation for all their work in the community.

Inviting great members to become moderators is not only a massive boost for the member, but it is an excellent way to offload some of the workload for day to day moderation tasks such as flagging spammers, checking reported content and dealing with minor squabbles in topics.

Final Thoughts
Gamification is definitely a strategy that you should use to build the base of your community, but it should not be the only strategy you deploy.

Extrinsic motivation in the form of reputation points, member titles and badges are effective, but at some point, those rewards run dry.

I would encourage a mix of short-term rewards such as winning the day and mini-goals to level up through member groups along with longer-term goals such to stretch members. Long-term goals can be access to the "5k" club when the member hits 5,000 pieces of content. However, you will need mini goals to keep them moving forwards, or you risk the ultimate goal being too distant to want to reach.

Once your members are hooked on your gamification, social bonds will grow, and members will want to come back just to engage with their friends.

When you reach that point, you know you have an excellent robust community that will stand the test of time.

Work smarter, not harder is a motto we hear a lot of in our modern age.

This is of course great advice. Invision Community's Admin CP is packed full of tools and settings to help you configure your community to your needs.

In this short video I show you how you can work smarter in the Admin CP.

Dashboard Blocks
I show you how create a dashboard perfect for your needs. The dashboard is perfect to show a snapshot of what is happening with your community.

Search Bar
The search bar is the most powerful tool in the Admin CP. From finding members, settings and Commerce tickets, it's something I reach for every day.

Re-order the Menu
Prioritise the menu to put often used sections of the Admin CP within easy reach.

Copy Settings
With a few clicks, you can copy a single setting from a forum across multiple. This saves a lot of time moving between the forum list and forum settings. This of course works across the suite including downloads, blogs and more.

Copy Nodes
Got a forum or blog category set up perfectly and want to add one more like it? Just hit the copy button and save the hassle of filling in the form again.

These are our tips for using the Admin CP as effectively as possible. Do you have any tips? Let us know below!

We often get asked how to create a portal-like home page for a community.

A homepage has many benefits including:

Showing your best content first
By using the "Our Picks" blocks, you can display your best content first. This content sets the tone for the site and will encourage engagement across your site.

Display multiple areas of the suite
Each application has its own feed blocks that can be used to display content on the home page. If your members use Gallery heavily, then showcase those photos on the homepage. If you use Calendar a lot to schedule events, then show event feeds.
By displaying feeds to content is a great way to showcase all areas of your site on a single page.

Reduce confusion
For those of us that grew up with forums are used to viewing a list of categories and forums. We find it easy to scan the list of forums and dip into the ones that interest us.
For those that are not so familiar, a homepage displaying easily accessible content reduces the confusion and invites true content discovery.

In this short video, we show you how to create a homepage in under 5 minutes using the Pages app.

Pages is available with all Cloud plans and is available to purchase when buying a self-hosting license.

This video shows:

• How to set Pages as the default application
• How to create a Page Builder page
• How to configure blocks to fine tune the feeds

As you can see, it's a straightforward task, and you do not need to know any programming or design to create a compelling homepage.

Do you have a homepage like this? We'd love to see it!