Jordan Miller

The holy trinity of successful communities intertwines cause, experiences and value together. Create these and your community will no doubt hold a special place in peoples’ hearts. Before we unpack this special trifecta, let’s define what success means through the lens of community building. While success is subjective, there are a few things we can all agree on: Communities that can consistently deliver value while also connecting people to one another will prosper. Cause Cause is your ‘why.’ Why does your community exist and why should anyone care to join? It sounds obvious, but many businesses have trouble understanding who their audience is or how their community can help them. Can you answer this? My audience is ___________________. An important component of cause is justifying your community’s existence. If you can define why your community helps people, you’ll see success. That may look like: Offering guidance Answering questions Sharing information Selling a product or service A community that stands to elevate a group of peoples’ lives will eventually break the threshold from ordinary to extraordinary. There’s a number of ways to utilize the Invision Community platform to assist with your cause. Create a niche forum for your members to engage with one another using our Forum application. Sell a digital product or physical item using our Commerce application. Create an event with our Calendar application. Share news, information and blogs using our Blogs and Pages applications. How to create a cause: creating and nurturing your community takes a lot of hard work and determination. Having a passion to serve is a must; without it you will burn out. If you have yet to define your community’s purpose, don’t fret – reading this blog post about how to create a successful community is a perfect starting point. However, if you’re a small or big business and ready to take that next step, start by answering the following: My community will help people by ___________________. Experiences Members participating in a shared experience together is what takes your company from just a business to a community. Your community’s cause inspires experiences. A lively community isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it medium. While you’re consistently chucking wood into the community campfire, you’ll need time on your side. That’s a nice way of saying be patient! The compounding effect of shared group experiences is something a company or brand can’t manufacture, however it’s essential for a meaningful history. Oftentimes, a business owner expects their community to flourish in a year or two. It’s possible, but uncommon, because there likely wasn’t enough time to generate an impact across a population. Be in this for the long haul. How to create experiences: tap into people’s emotions. Create content that takes the member on a journey of highs and lows – encourage them to follow suit when creating their own content. My community will make a long-lasting impact because ___________________. Value We’ve all heard the recycled marketing adage, ‘people come for the content, but they stay for the community.’ There’s a reason content is king; it’s a vehicle to drive new audiences to your community while also making your brand more valuable. However, content is only one of several value modalities. This is when value comes full circle with experiences. A brand does this by easily explaining its cause, creating experiences then adding value by justifying its existence through offering guidance, answering questions, sharing information or selling a product/service. How to create value: A community platform alone won’t create value. It requires thoughtful intention, inspired action and follow up. Offer a world class experience by consistently over-delivering: Offer premium, information-style content (like blog posts, YouTube videos, newsletters, social media outreach). Engage with your members in the community (reply to their posts, feature their content, reward them with public recognition using our Achievements system). Touch base outside the community with email outreach, respond to their social media posts, even monthly calls. Creating a community is single-handedly one of the best decisions you can make for your business. My community brings value to the world because ___________________. We’ve helped serious hobbyists, small businesses and enterprise giants give their super fans/customers/clients the ability to create meaningful connections with one another. Ready to bring cause, experiences and value to your company? Get in touch with us!

Earlier this year, Invision Community launched a native gamification system called Achievements. We added significant improvements to Achievements in our new release, 4.6.8, out now! 🎉 Achievements allows community leaders to reward members with points, badges and ranks for their outstanding contributions. We listened to your feedback and implemented some very exciting changes. In this post, you'll get a crash course on the new updates included in your Admin Control Panel (ACP) upon updating your community to 4.6.8. Once you're familiar with these concepts, you can take action to elevate your community. New! Married group promotions with Achievements. New! Added metrics to better understand how Achievements functions within your community. New! Implemented additional rules to further empower your members. New! Updated email notifications to let your members know when they've earned a badge. New! Download member lists based on Achievements criteria. Before we expand on the new features, here's a recap of Achievements to refresh your memory: Related: Want to know more about Achievements? Read our original blog post. Now that you’re up to speed, let’s take a look at the new metrics and rules. Group promotions Group promotions lay out various user journeys. Based on actions a member takes in a community, for example commenting 100 times, having a high reputation score or having joined a community a year ago, the platform will automatically place them in a group (based on the rules you previously set up). This is useful when creating a hierarchy in your community. The more your members are engaged, the more access / privileges they receive. Now, community leaders can automatically place members in specific groups based on what badges they've earned in the community. Couple examples: A moderator manually awards a member the 'Helpful Superstar' badge. In this scenario, that badge can only be earned if a moderator chooses to give it. Once someone earns that badge, they're automatically placed in the 'Helpful Superstars' group. This group may have the ability to create clubs (whereas the other groups can't). A member earns the 'Engaged' badge. 'Engaged' badges are earned when a member has replied 100 times since joining. Once they've posted 100 replies, the system automatically places them in a new group with other contributing members. Related: Learn more about Group Promotions Metrics Metrics reports are essential for understanding what's working in your community, and what needs improving. Badges Earned: Track what badges were earned during a defined period of time. This is especially useful to track both member engagement as well as identify how often your community moderators are awarding badges manually. Badges earned by member group: How many members in each group earned a badge. Track this when quantifying what groups are most engaged with your community. Understanding which group(s) earn the most badges helps you better tend to groups that might be less engaged. It might be a good idea to show them some extra attention. Badges by member: Search a time-based list of all members with an earned badge total. Easily discover who your VIP members are and reward / thank them for being active contributors. Related: Maximize community growth with our new reporting metrics Rules Set up rules based on various criteria. These rules will automatically take a specific action once the criteria has been met. Member downloads a file: Members may earn a badge for downloading a specific file. This could be useful if your company wanted to share new policies or an announcement; track which members took the time to download the information and publicly recognize them for staying on top of things. Member purchases a package or product: Members may also earn a badge for purchasing either a package or a specific product. For example, you could create a rule for members to earn a coveted product badge for opting to purchase a physical product (like a t-shirt). Only members who've purchased an item from your community would receive this type of recognition. Outreach Jump into your members' inboxes with tailor-made good news. New Email notifications: New notification emails let your members know when they've received a coveted rank. Segment Download a list of members based on a number of Achievements criteria, including points, ranks and badges. In theory, you can upload this list of members elsewhere to target this specific audience (like sending an exclusive email drip campaign in Mail Chimp). Several examples include downloading a list of members who've: Earned 500 or more points Earned a specific badge Reached a specific rank Achievements is a robust feature to engage your VIP members and spark the fuse of inspiration for newcomers. There’s a lot of power at your fingertips. Unsure where to start with implementing Achievements? Check out our original post and determine what behaviors you want to reward within your community. Sometimes just logging in is a good place to start. Reward them for that. 🙂 Ready to take Achievements to the next level? Check out the new Group Promotions and Achievements Metrics now available in 4.6.8. Where are you in your journey with Achievements? Drop us a line in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

Gathering information, then understanding what to do with it, is essential for sustainability. Reporting tools available in the Invision Community platform can help you better understand the inner workings of your community and decide whether your current setup is leading you towards or away from your bottom line. We recognize that knowledge is power, so we expanded our extensive list of reporting metrics. Invision Community’s latest release, 4.6.8, includes additional reporting tools in the Admin Control Panel (ACP) to empower community leaders. Now, community leaders can not only check registration count, topic creation, device usage and other engagement metrics, but may also view reports on follower statistics, top referrers, member preferences and more. In this post, we'll highlight a couple of our favorite metrics included in 4.6.8. New! Metrics to better understand moderator actions: # of warnings given: track how many warnings moderators issued during a defined time period. # of suspended users: track how many members moderators suspended during a defined time period. # of reports submitted over a defined period of time. Moderator actions include any action a moderator takes in the community, for example hiding/closing/deleting a topic. Understanding how your moderators handle sticky situations builds trust and clarity. However, a moderator’s value shouldn’t depend on the amount of warnings / suspensions given. Ideally, a well functioning community with a clear set of guidelines creates a culture where toxic members (and their posts) are less common. Don’t punish a moderator for taking less restrictive action; reward them because they didn’t have to! Why you should care: because metrics are imperative for goal setting. For example, “we want to reduce the number of warnings given by 50% at the end of the year.” In this scenario, the overarching goal is to foster a better user experience, resulting in less problematic posts (and thus less opportunity for moderators to issue warnings). If X then Y: If moderators issued 50% less warnings, then their time is freed up to spend on other important tasks. Related: 5 quick tips to up your community moderation game New! Metrics to understand whether your spam defense tactics are working: Unlikely to be a spammer Possibly a spammer Likely to be a spammer Known spammer No one likes a spammer. Unlike the junk you receive in your physical or email inbox, Invision Community includes powerful tools to combat spam. Our new spam defense metrics let you know if the systems you put in place are working, or if there's room for improvement. We integrated an intelligent spam defense system directly into the platform, as well as a few additional steps to avoid spam, including an invisible reCAPTCHA and question and answer challenge. Why you should care: because spam hogs resources and clutters a community. The higher the "unlikely to be a spammer" stats are in comparison to "possibly a spammer," "likely to be a spammer" and "known spammer," the better. With the new metrics, you'll know without a shadow of a doubt how frequently spammers are flagged and blocked. If X then Y: If there are 75% less spammers per month, then your community's health has increased. Related: 3 major improvements we made to spam management But wait... there's more! Here are additional metrics included in 4.6.8: Members with the most followers Members following the most people Number of content items deleted RSVPs to calendar events Questions with the most up/down votes over time Member preferences Most-used theme Most-used language Information is one of the most valuable resources for any community leader because it prompts inspired action. The additional reporting metrics included in 4.6.8 will be made available to you in the first half of November. Thoughts on our new reporting tools? Drop us a line in the comments.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to moderating/guiding an online community. Each digital world includes its own series of hurdles to overcome. As a community gains momentum and the registration count climbs higher, community moderators are presented with new challenges. These tasks become inherently more complex as a result, siphoning precious resources and oftentimes paint moderators into a corner. Take back the brush and illustrate a new scene with these supportive tips on how to better engage with your community. These pro-moderation tactics aim to foster a greater sense of togetherness and unity while also acknowledging individual members for their contributions. Clear and concise community guidelines. These are the building blocks for a solid foundation. Community guidance is less about different means of restriction and more about the ability to express one’s thoughts and feelings in a healthy way. All communities will inevitably run into toxic trolls, but instead of exerting energy on the negative, give praise and accolades to the positive. As we mentioned in a previous blog post about community guidance, show your community in the guidelines how you want them to post by contributing that way yourself. That sets a precedent. From there, you'll notice other community members participating in a way that is similar to you (TL;DR lead by example). Curate member content. Curating member content is the secret sauce to accelerated growth when it comes to community building. Featuring your members' posts publicly demonstrates your desire to embrace participating members. It’s one thing to comment on members’ topics, it’s another to feature and promote them for all to see. It gives added depth to your community by amplifying differing opinions, builds trust and encourages others to partake. It’ll take extra effort on your end to manually curate content (be selective regarding what topics you want to represent your community); establishing multiple authorities in your community builds momentum. Remember, people come for the content, but stay for the community. Give them both! Moderate on the offense. Moderating has a bad rap. Generally speaking, most view it as a prohibitive tool. A member posts profanity? Moderate! A topic goes live in the wrong section? Moderate! A spam bot infiltrates the latest blog entry? Moderate, moderate, moderate! That aspect of community building will always exist, but setting up automations will save you time and money. More importantly, it creates an elevated user experience because your attention is spent engaging with your members. We have some powerful tools at your disposal to help, including a designated ‘automatic moderation’ section in your Admin Control Panel. Here, community leaders can set up rules that will trigger automatic content moderation. For example, you could create a rule that automatically hides content when it receives three or more user-submitted reports. If your members collectively agree another member’s post is problematic, and three or more of them report it, the post is hidden from public view until a moderator has a chance to review it. Moderation doesn’t have to be a dirty word. And if it does, we have an automatic moderation tool for that, too. Publicly recognizing members. Members who refuse to follow your community guidelines likely won’t fall in line with a public reprimand. Either privately message them your concerns or issue a warning only the moderation team can see. Instead, focus your attention on recognizing and rewarding contributing members. There’s a number of ways you can energize morale, including responding to members’ positive posts, manually or automatically awarding badges with our Achievements system, highlighting engaged members in a sidebar block, showcasing Leaderboard champs or even interviewing your MVPs. The idea is to approach community guidance with open arms – not a closed fist. Team work makes the dream work. There’s a reason it’s cliché. Organizing then empowering a moderation team is essential. Once on the same page in terms of expectations and processes, a community leader is then faced with the daunting task of relinquishing control as their team gears up to congratulate and moderate. Your moderation team is only one moving part of a well-oiled machine. There are times, especially in the early days of a community where, as the community leader, you’re doing most of the heavy lifting. However, there will come a time when the community supports you in return and shares the weight. It’s important to recognize those instances and publicly acknowledge them! The world has enough doom and gloom; be an inspiration to your community and in return they’ll inspire you. Do you have a community management tip to share? Drop it into the comments. We’d love to hear from you! Header photo: Unsplash