Joel R

Think about all the different touchpoints where you try to connect with members: forum discussions, blog comments, personal messages, email newsletters, weekly meetings, and perhaps offline events. You write witty and clever messages. You dedicate an entire section of your community to welcome and hello topics. You spend enormous amounts of time trying to elicit engagement from members. What if I told you that there’s one touchpoint that you consistently overlook where members reach out to you, some for the very first time? You receive messages every day and every week from users through the Contact Form. It’s one of the most common touchpoints that you’ll ever experience with members. Unfortunately, most admins gloss over messages through the contact form, because we think it’s secondary to the activity in the community. That’s not true! As a touchpoint to your community, the interactions through the Contact Form are as important as any other user-facing activity. In fact, because members proactively reach out – some for the very first time – this is likely one of the biggest opportunities where you consistently under-engage. It’s time to fix this gap. Here are examples on how to effectively respond to 2 different types of messages from the Contact Form. Let’s look at some sample responses with a fictional online community “Toronto Birding Society” (Note: I know nothing of birdwatching or Toronto). Responding to Guidance Questions Many questions you receive through the Contact Form are “guidance” questions. These are questions that ask about function and features such as “how to?” and “how do I?” The tone is usually neutral, and the intent is positive (eg. to learn). These questions are easy-to-answer and the responses usually involve instructions, step-by-step details, and screenshots. If you only respond to the specific inquiry, however, you miss out on all the potential of member growth: to affirm the relationship, recognize his contributions, instill community culture, and ultimately encourage the member to contribute in a more meaningful manner. Example: Responding to Negative Sentiment Questions The next type of question you receive through the Contact Form are questions of “negative sentiment.” These are questions that ask to cancel, terminate, or suppress various functions because the user would like to disconnect from the community. Even though the tone is neutral, the intent is negative. Just like before, the questions themselves are easy-to-answer. However, if you took the inquiry at face value and answered the specific question, you end up losing the member! Your goal instead should be member retention: to investigate why he wants to leave, to re-affirm the strength of the relationship, recognize his past contributions, invite the member to revisit, and ultimately deflect the original inquiry. Conclusion Busy communities receive messages through the contact form daily and weekly. They’re a recurring part of our community management that we consistently overlook. It’s one of the greatest touchpoints you will ever have with a member, since the member is actively seeking growth (or regression) with the community. Your responsibility is to nudge them in the right direction. My recommendation is to write two templates: one for guidance questions, one for negative sentiment questions. This allows you to quickly provide a framework that can be filled in with personalized details. Use your replies to contact form messages as a way to not only answer the specific question, but grow the member and progress them along the member lifecycle journey.

Are you looking to launch a new online community or revitalize an existing community, and you're worried about the numbers of users? Gaining members - and retaining them - is always the hardest struggle for new communities. Even if you're an established brand or organization, it can be a challenge to build a core group of members. The problem? Most communities launch too early. The truism "if you build it, they will come" is no longer valid. There are countless online peer and social groups, industry associations, and trade organizations competing for your user's time and attention. You can't launch a new community and passively wait for users to visit. The Internet is too crowded now. Ask yourself the hard question: are you having difficulty attracting and retaining new members? One of the best secrets to launching new communities is to already have a core group of members in place -- all done in advance of launching your community. Follow the CHIP process to generate member demand. Download: IPS CHIP Process 2019-09.pdf Part of the magic behind the CHIP Process is that by reaching out, you build relations with existing members in a meaningful manner. Don't push your community idea at this point. Your only goal is to meet people, build genuine relationships, and understand key themes such as user challenges or industry needs. This dramatically heightens your chance of success when you do launch. You have a known audience familiar with you and your community, who can spread the word. You identified a core group of active users, who can immediately start posting. You also surveyed key themes and business challenges, so you even have a headstart on content will be most attractive. By doing this prep work in advance, you've fine-tuned your community strategy to exactly what's needed and can be successful on Day 1. Building a new community requires prep work. Although Invision Community can empower you with a modern set of features once you launch, you need to pair the platform with the excitement and problem-solving that only your community can offer - and that means taking the time to understand what's needed before you launch. Best wishes on your community launch, and share your community's success in the comments below!

Emotion is energy in motion. Today’s article is the last element in our Sense of Community series, and it’s also the most powerful. It allows new communities to win over legacy ones; niche communities to triumph over generic platforms; and impassioned communities to outlast everyone. It’s also the hardest element to cultivate. What is it? According to a survey by psychologist Dr. Jenny Fremlin, shared emotional connection accounts for the single largest factor of community-building. In fact, almost half of all respondents in her research identified shared emotional connection as the factor most important to their community. How do you cultivate the principle of shared emotional connection? New Members For new members, your goal is to initiate them in your community’s rituals and connect them with other outstanding members who will help reinforce your community’s spirit. Induction – Joining your community should be the beginning of a member’s community story, which means leaving a part of himself behind and fostering a new selfhood for your community. Make induction an important part of onboarding a new member. Honor his new membership with community gifts. Require him to fulfill rituals that are unique to your community. Demand that he open himself to the community, the challenges he faces, and what he hopes to receive. By doing so, you are asking the new member to invest a part of their emotional selves in the community from the very beginning. Greater Contact – The more that people interact, the more likely they are to bond. Just like in the real world when a new visitor walks into a room and no one talks to him, he’s likely to leave. But if you can introduce him to other members, invite him to a table with other new members who also recently joined, or connect him with a mentor, then he’s more likely to stay. You can accomplish the same in your community. Connect members as much as possible, which spark new friendships. Existing Members For existing members, deepen their sense of shared emotional connection with these strategies. Community Story – Develop a story for your community, a narrative that is being written by and for members. It brings all members together in a common sense of history, and even though not all members may have participated the entire time, they identify with the story. Why was your community founded? Are you tackling a challenge in the world? Did you undergo a major obstacle? Are you aspiring to improve the world? Where are you going? Write down your past, present, and future and invite members into the living story of your community. Community Projects – All too often, community admins launch projects on their own or with an inner circle of staff. Launch a project that’s open to everyone, where all members can participate, give feedback, and contribute. Define a beginning and end to the project, which helps members with closure and remembrance (“Did you remember the time when we helped on XYZ project?”) . Industry Changes – What are disruptions that are happening in your field or industry? Is it affecting anyone you know? How do you feel about it? Is it positive or negative? How significant is the change? Use these shared events to get people disclosing their emotions about these disruptions, which helps form an emotional connection with others who are experiencing the same. The strongest bonds are among people who undergo a crisis together. Honor & Humiliation – Finally, the personal growth of members is punctuated by the highs and lows of their membership from rewards that highlight special achievement to penalties that discipline bad behavior. These moments of recognition and humiliation unlock joy and pain, which emotionally bond the member to your community. The strongest emotional bonds are experienced by those who traverse the greatest emotional journey – they come to your community as immature or inexperienced, and through rewards and moderation, grow to become a better person through your community. Members visit your community for all sorts of reasons. But out of all reasons, one stands above all others: shared emotional connection. There’s no one way to cultivating a shared emotional connection. Every community will be unique. You and your Invision Community must write your own individual story, cultivate your own special volkgeist, and honor and humiliate members in your own extraordinary way. The energy and emotion of your community will be uniquely yours. In the end, you want to foster your own “community of spirit” among members, an exceptional sense of purpose and friendship wrapped in shared emotion that no other community can match.

Are you curious 🤔about ways to boost your engagement that don't require a lot of effort? Want some shortcuts to set your engagement on fire 🔥? Check out these 4x4 tips of four growth hacks that you can implement in less than four minutes ⏳ to boost engagement. 1. Add a content block at the bottom of topics. Sounds upside down 🙃, right? Most admins add content blocks at the tops of pages to attract users. But what do users do when they're finished reading or replying to a topic? Nothing. They're finished ... unless you add a block such as similar content, popular posts, recent topics, or another content block at the bottom of topics that help them discover new content. 2. Tag in your superusers 🌟 to stimulate a conversation. Your community's superusers are probably just as active as you are, and thoroughly involved in the community. They're comfortable in the community and would love to provide input. Wouldn't you agree with me @AlexJ @GTServices @Sonya* @Maxxius @media @Nebthtet@Ramsesx @tonyv?? 3. Run a poll ☑️. It makes the topic more interactive, and people love voting. 4. Write a contrarian topic or blog "Why XYZ isn't for you?" That's a surefire way to grab 😲 attention and begs the user to challenge back. And if you can't write a contrarian topic, then maybe ... being a community manager isn't right for you. Or is it?? 😜 Hope you enjoy these tips, and and share your growth hacks in the comments below!

Bad communities promise great things to its members. Good communities offer great things to its members. Great communities fulfill the greatness of its members. A primary purpose of every community is to fulfill the needs of its members. A strong community will go beyond the immediate, basic needs and ensure that fulfillment is a positive experience. By doing so, it builds in positive rewards and reinforcement for an enjoyable sense of togetherness. One of the cornerstone ideas of behavioral sciences is reinforcement: delivering a positive experience to members through multiple dimensions. Why they come, why the stay, and how to fulfill those needs is our third element of Sense of Community: Rewards & Reinforcement. Discover all the ways to fulfill member needs for your Invision Community. Fulfillment of Functional Needs Your community must have a clear and unique purpose. Your community must offer something valuable. And your community must solve a problem. This is the prime reason why a user would visit you in the first place and how you fulfill his most basic needs. He searches for a question, and your community provides the answer. Many communities build up their expertise through two ways: Crowd-source community solutions - You can highlight community-driven solutions in Invision Community to curate attention to the best answers. Two of the most underutilized features are Content Messages and Recommended Replies, which allow moderators to showcase and explain great user content. Bring experts into the community – Authoritative content should be posted and marked separately from regular user content. You can accomplish this by giving experts a dedicated Blog, authorship in Pages, or enabling Post highlights. Fulfillment of Personal Needs Beyond the fulfillment of basics needs, users want other wishes and desires. It’s impossible to identify all personal needs, but here are three of the biggest ones why users come together more: Group Status – People like to be on the “winning team,” and community success brings group members closer together. Highlight community success in your monthly newsletter or topic announcements. Competence – People are attracted to others with skills or competence. Introduce superusers and subject matter experts (SMEs) through interviews, team talk, or AMA topics ("ask me anything"). Rewards – Behavioral research shows that users gravitate toward groups that offer more rewards. Use tools like the Leaderboard, Group rank, Badges, and Reputation for extrinsic motivation that excite users and make them feel special. Fulfillment of Shared Values Society and our upbringing instruct us in a set of shared values. We bring those values into our online communities because they provide a framework of how to address our emotional and personal needs and the priority in which we address them. When users with shared values come together, they’re more receptive to helping others with the same value system: A Values Statement: Make it a point to identify the shared values in your community, in Guidelines or on a separate page. Affirm those principles in your interactions and, in difficult situations, frame your decision by referencing your community values. Private communities with high engagement usually have the strongest statements of values. Process vs. Outcome: How you answer is just as important as the answer. If you run a community that is technical, offers customer support, or involves lots of questions-and-answers, the process by which you arrive at the solution can help other users troubleshoot similar but different problems. Reinforce the solving process, and you’ll discover users will feel better about sharing their knowledge even if they don’t know the exact answer. Fulfillment by Networking Groups will naturally coalesce into smaller groups, as people find other people that they enjoy and who fulfill their own needs. Strong communities find ways to fit people together. Multiply Relationships: The sooner you can build relationships among members, the stronger those members will feel towards your community. In my community, I’ve created an “Ambassador” task force that welcomes new members to build personal relationships as soon as possible. Be a Networker: One of the virtues of being a community manager is that you’re normally introduced to the greatest number of people. Use your personal network within the community to connect two users together, bring other users into a conversion, or tap the expertise of others to help answer user questions. CONCLUSION There’s an Arabian proverb that says, “A promise is a cloud, fulfillment is rain.” Make it rain. Find ways to fulfill the greatness of your members, unleash a tidal wave of rewards and reinforcement that touch upon all the functional, personal, communal, and social needs of your members in the ultimate approach to member fulfillment. Build not just a good community, but a great one.