Joel R

The World Health Organization (WHO) is the world's most trusted source of information on international health, and a foremost partner to public health agencies combating the coronavirus. They also understand the critical need for risk communication and community engagement to respond to the coronavirus pandemic -- a valuable strategy that any online community can adopt in these volatile times. In March of this year as the coronavirus was already rampaging across nations, WHO published a series of guidance for risk communication and community engagement. One of the major lessons they learned during some of the most perilous outbreaks including SARS, Ebola, and MERS was that community engagement was a critical factor in the success of containing any pandemic. Here are 3 best practices from the World Health Organization that can help online communities navigate any crisis. INFODEMICS One of the biggest problems hampering the effective treatment of coronavirus, or any major disruptive event in a community, is the excessive abundance of information - an "infodemic" from multiple and untrustworthy sources that reduces trust in any advice. The flood of information can quickly overwhelm any at-risk population. Community leaders need to proactively communicate. As WHO recommends, "One of the most important and effective interventions to any event is to proactively communicate what is known, what is unknown, and what is being done to get more information." Communication from community leaders establishes the chain of communication and establishes themselves as a source of credible information. By getting out in front of disruptive events and staying in regular communication with your members, you build trust and ensure that proper advice will be followed. PERCEPTIONS OF RISK Different groups of people perceive the same problem differently. In the case of coronavirus, WHO discovered that certain segments of the population didn't understand the risk of the virus as much as they should have - a gap of knowledge that effective communication would have addressed for different populations. Part of the goal of WHO's risk communication and community engagement is to "help transform and deliver complex scientific knowledge so that it is understood by and trusted by populations and communities." Community leaders need to tailor their communication to sub-groups. While regular announcements and general updates are important for the community at-large, it leaves knowledge gaps for different sub-groups of your community membership: clients need to be informed of service interruptions; vendors need to be informed of supply chain disruptions; superusers need to know how to direct users for help. Different stakeholders have differing needs, and each group requires customized and tailored communication to best navigate through the crisis. ADDRESSING THE UNKNOWN & MISINFORMATION One of WHO's recommended actions for leaders was to be prepared to communicate about the first coronavirus case, even before the full picture was known. Even today, much is unknown and data is still being compiled about coronavirus. But in a digital world where misinformation gets mixed in with the ease of a tweet or share, it's more important than ever to communicate factually while acknowledging uncertainty. Address uncertainty by systematically collecting questions and providing answers to all questions. In the beginning of any crisis, you won't have all the answers and events will still be unfolding. It's critical to establish an early dialogue with your community to gather concerns from members, to monitor for misinformation, and to systematically compile questions into a FAQ. Source: Risk communication and community engagement readiness and response to coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Interim guidance 19 March 2020. World Health Organization. On behalf of the entire IPS team, we wish our clients well wishes during these difficult times! Executive Summary Problems of crisis: infodemics with excess information, different perceptions of risk among sub-groups, and uncertainty with misinformation. Solutions for community leaders: proactive communication, customized communication, and addressing uncertainty.

CEO Mark Triggon, previously the chief merchandising officer at Target, laid out his plans to turn around the beleaguered American retailer Bed Bath & Beyond. Part of that plan was reducing the number of can openers from 12 to 3. Sales rose. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Tritton explained how tests conducted in his first few months at the company showed that less is more when it comes to product assortment. “The big takeaway: Selling too many items in stores that are overcrowded leads to ‘purchase paralysis,” Mr. Tritton said. Bed Bath & Beyond exploded across the American landscape in the 1990s and 2000’s with its focus on opening new “big box” stores for home merchandise where it was meant to be a category killer – consumers would shop in stores that offered them anything and everything. It was famous for its floor-to-ceiling options, and a simple trip for a new shower curtain turned into a shopping spree for every room in the home. In recent years though, that approach has soured on consumers. A Business Insider reporter commented on her latest trip, “From our first steps in, the store was overwhelming. There was merchandise packed top to bottom on shelves that lined every wall.” The tides have changed. Consumers are being offered – and overwhelmed – with more choices than ever before. PARADOX OF CHOICE One of the great benefits of the modern web is a proliferation of choice: choice in sprawling ideologies, choice in niche interests, and choice in shopping for thousands of products at a click of a button. All of this, every day. Unfortunately, that abundance of choice can stress and even paralyze our ability to make decisions. Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined the term Paradox of Choice in a 2004 book by the same name, where he advanced the idea that eliminating consumer choices can reduce anxiety for shoppers. In other words, instead of offering 12 options for can openers, offer 3 options. What does this mean for online communities? LESS IS MORE Across the spectrum of communities and forums, some of the biggest critical mistakes are forum creep and feature bloat. New features are mindlessly added thinking it will lead to higher engagement, new forums are added for every conceivable discussion, and design choices are automatically enabled at the default without aligning to your strategy. Your initial goal is to sweep through your entire community and identify the areas that align with your community strategy. For categories and boards that are low-value, low traffic, or not aligned with any strategic objectives, you should aggressively consolidate or eliminate. There’s no hard rule when it comes to design choices, although 7 has been touted as a magic number for short-term human memory. You can use this magic number across a range of design decisions. For example: At most 7 Reactions At most 7 Primary Menu options At most 7 major sections or content hubs THE JAM EXPERIMENT Choice overload can actually lead to less sales. In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar of Columbia University and Mark Lepper of Stanford University led a much-recited study where they presented passerbys at a food market with two tables: one with 24 fruit jams, the other with 6 jams. The one with 24 different jams generated more traffic to sample and taste. But guess which table generated more sales? The other table with fewer jams, which had ten times more purchases! The moral of the story? At junctures of your member journey where you ask users to make a critical decision such as user information when registering, subscriptions, or selling products, don’t be the table with 24 jams to sample, but never able to sell. BIG BOX & SMALL BOX Invision Community offers an interesting approach where you can act like both a “big box” community for your general audience and still offer “small box” cohesiveness for more intimate groups. The feature is called Clubs, which empowers smaller groups to form and split off from the main audience. This is an especially consequential feature for mature and large communities looking to organically cultivate their next generation of engagement. Indeed, this is a trend happening in a large way among next-gen consumers, who are realizing the perils of broadcasting and oversharing. In a 2019 white paper “The New Rules of Social” led by youth creative agency ZAK, nearly two-thirds of the under-30 respondents said they prefer to talk in private message rather than open forums and feeds. Facebook themselves launched head-first towards social groups back in 2016 after the US Presidential election. In a 6,000 word essay called "Building Global Community," Zuckerberg sermonized on the importance of building connections in meaningful groups: Forum administrators on Invision Community have been building meaningful communities since day one. When properly deployed, Clubs will allow you to cultivate – and retain – users in a more focused environment without the distractions of your larger community. CONCLUSION For community managers and forum administrators who have run their Invision Communities for many years, you know first-hand that the power of community doesn’t come from adding another feature, another board, or another category. Happiness and fulfillment come from actually connecting with members, through education, enlightenment, problem solving, and teamwork. Overloading your community with theme options, excess reactions, and overbuilt boards get in the way of your true goal. Become the CEO to reduce the overwhelming options of can openers. Sell more jam by offering less of it. And unfetter yourself from unnecessary choices to discover a clearer connection to your members. Executive Summary Bed Bath & Beyond CEO declutters stores, sales rise Concept of paradox of choice: users can become overwhelmed and stressed when presented with too many options Jam experiment: table with more jams gets more traffic, but table of less jams gets more sales For large and established communities, use Clubs to offer intimate and uncluttered experiences.

The goal of every client here in the Invision peer community, myself included, is to launch and run successful communities. Whether I’m going to be able to achieve that success in the new year depends entirely on trying these 10 steps. I know if that if I stick to these steps, then my community will grow – and I know if you follow along, your community will too. 10. Ignore Google Google makes me laugh; Google makes me cry; Google makes me want to pitch myself into the freezing icy waters of the San Francisco bay. But focusing on Google’s up-and-down volatility isn’t what is going to make my community successful. It’s a distraction, and at worst, a wrong commitment of attention. 9. Remember My Past Sins I’ve made every mistake imaginable – including over-the-top themes, too many customizations, and chasing after dream goals. The very worst is not making a database backup, then losing everything. Most of us came up through the School of Hard Knocks, and we should learn from those experiences. 8. Treat Every Person as Gold Members are the beating heart of your community, and are truly what makes your community special. I’m committed to taking time out every day to message, comment, or reply to 3 new people to cultivate new relationships. 7. Practice x3 Nobody is perfect the first time they try something. Thomas Edison famously stated that he found 10,000 ways for a lightbulb to not work, and 1 way that it did. Whether you’re publishing new content or designing a template, refine it multiple times. 6. Start as a Guest I don’t do this enough and I always find something surprising when I do. Either something is missing, something can be improved, or something is wrong. The guest experience is the very first impression a visitor will have, and it can shape all of his future expectations. 5. Less is More It’s easy to get sidetracked and to let your community get bloated with content and features. It’s better to be amazing in one domain expertise: you offer the most authority, the most trusted content, the latest news, or the most comprehensive overview. Excite members by being the best at what you do. De-emphasize, consolidate, or archive everything else as needed. 4. It’s Not the Feature; Its What the Feature Does It’s easy to think that because Invision Community ships with a new feature, then you should use it. You don’t. You should always pre-qualify the feature by asking how the feature can help you better engage with your community, how does it engage, and how can you customize the feature even better for your members? 3. Bring Your Superusers Along Even though I invite my superusers into a special private feedback group, I don’t leverage their knowledge, experience, or perspective enough. I recently asked for feedback about a particular feature, and it turns out none of them use it! 2. Experiment & Learn There’s always something new to learn, explore, and implement. It's my personal goal to enrich my personal skillsets in areas like leadership, team building, mentoring, emotional intelligence, organizational behavior, and psychology for more effective community management. On the promotion side, you can learn about email marketing, digital marketing, social media, creating rich media, and more. On the content side, you can always improve your content writing skills, emotive writing, keyword research, and the conversion of one content piece into multiple media and formats. 1. Enjoy the Journey For any community admin who sticks with his community for several years, you can get burned out. I know the feeling, and I like to periodically remind myself about what I enjoy running the community. There’s so much to learn and do that it can feel overwhelming, so it’s important to take every day in 2020 one day at a time.

On behalf of the Invision Community staff and company, I'd like to wish our clients and community warm blessings and gratitude for the New Year. We're proud to be the community platform of choice for you and your organization over the past year (or decade!), empowering you and your users with the space to debate, discuss, investigate, solve, innovate and celebrate a shared sense of purpose. The ability to positively touch and connect with the lives of others regardless of location is one of the most transformative benefits of the modern web -- and there's never been a greater demand or need for online communities to connect members in an authentic, branded experience. Your community is the gift that keeps on giving, and we're delighted to be a part of it. Here's a round-up of the 2019's most visited, most commented, and most clicked-on articles from the Invision Community Blog: Invision Community managers use tools like Saved Actions and Auto Moderation to work smarter with 5 of the best time saving features Avoid the Engagement Trap, a never-ending race that measures all the wrong metrics in a community The crowd goes wild in the teaser announcement of the forthcoming mobile apps for iOS and Android Go back in a time machine with a Decade in Review - a celebration and testament to the enduring power of community. Once again, may the magic and wonder of the holiday season stay with you throughout the year!

The engagement trap is a race to community activity for the sake of activity. It's usually measured by simple aggregate numbers like the total number of posts, topics, likes, or members. Many community managers and webmasters enjoy spouting engagement numbers. It's an easy number to brag about. It's an easy number to find. It's also, unfortunately, a terrible metric to measure. Engagement metrics are exhausting since you're aiming for higher-and-higher goals, which grow into unreasonable levels over time. It's misleading, because it's not indicative of information exchanges or quality resources. And it's ultimately harmful, because it encourages participation in socially-charged conversation that are ever more entertaining, more controversial, and more extreme. You don't want members to chat. You want members to learn, to advocate, to innovate, to educate, to support, to problem solve, and to enlighten. Engagement metrics are marketing numbers used to measure audience size and a currency of the attention economy where you're the product. It's an entirely wrong metric for online communities where the goal is not how big you can get, but on how you can help your members. Your Metrics & Your Strategy There's a famous management quote from Peter Drucker that says, "what gets measured gets managed." What you want to measure, and therefore manage and improve, is a reflection of your community strategy and your objectives. Here are some ideas of what you could measure: The number of questions or feedback requests that were answered in high-value boards of functional content The number of educational resources that were added to a certain category The number of new topics that were posted in a growing section The selection of special keywords or tags that you want to track The number of informative reactions that were given out in a certain period The participation of high-value experts in your community Segment Your Community Not all parts of your community should be treated equally, especially if you have a large and dynamic community with several apps and categories. Your community may have a mix of one or more of the following: Educational and functional-value boards Social and member-based forums and boards New sections that are growing Mature sections that have leveled off Different content types and reactions Different groups of members Instead of evaluating your community as one entity, segment your community. This allows you to hyper-focus your attention and grow specific areas that match with specific objectives. For example, I always measure the number of new topics in boards that are educational and informative, since they're high-value functional content. I don't pay attention to mature sections that have reached saturation, but I aggressively track new sections. Measurement & Analysis Invision Community ships with a powerful set of Statistics in the ACP that cover every application. I personally spend more time in Statistics than any other part of the ACP, because it gives me the data and research to inform my decision making. It helps me focus my attention on the sections that matter the most to my community strategy and reveals unexpected insights. The ACP won't have all of the fine-grained filtering or data reporting that you may need. Maintain your own recording, even if it needs to be manual. Conclusion Trying to boost engagement is a race that you'll never win. It has nothing to do with your community strategy; it doesn't measure the value you give and receive from your audience; and it can push you to drive empty traffic with unintended consequences. Independent communities that focus on the hard, difficult work of offering communities of indispensable value will always find growth. It will be the right kind of growth, in the right areas of your community, with the right audience. That's a race that will meaningfully empower your members and your community to the finish line. What are the most important metrics that you measure? Or are you in the engagement trap? Share in the comments below and see how other IPS clients can help. Are you looking to start a successful community powered by the statistics and content management of a modern community platform? Get in touch with IPS, Inc. for a discussion and product demo.

Whether you call them Champions 🤩, Advocates 🌟, or Superusers 🏆, every community contains an elite group of members that carries 🏋 the community. They don't just drink the kool-aid 💧. They mix, chug, and swim 🏊‍♀️in the community kool-aid. Learn 🔢 four community management concepts about Superusers in less than 🕓 four minutes. 1. 90-9-1 Rule (aka "1% rule"): The 90-9-1 principle refers to the lopsided inequality of user engagement that 90% of users are lurkers 🙈, 9% of members contribute from time to time 🙉, and 1% of users 😸 account for almost all contributions. Superusers are the 1%. 2. Intrinsic Motivator: Motivation that comes from internal motivation💖, rather than any external rewards. This could be a sense of satisfaction 😃, pride 😤, ownership, loyalty, friendship 🤗, or other emotional and internal motivator. Long-term superusers 🏃 are wired to intrinsic motivation. Tapping into intrinsic motivation is key to providing new motivation for superusers. 3. Spiral of Silence: Be careful ⚠️, however, that your superusers don't overwhelm 🛑 the conversation which can lead to the Spiral of Silence: a theory that as the vocal minority becomes louder 📢, other members adopt the same views or fail to share opposing views. You'll need to privately manage this vocal minority, especially if they're negative 💢. 4. Work Out Loud 💬: An engagement practice for superusers to visibly share 🗣 their work online in your community. It offers opportunities for superusers and members to openly share 👯 their knowledge, generosity, purposeful discovery, and growth ✨. Usually entire point ✴️ of communities of practice.

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.