What is online community engagement?
Online community engagement refers to the extent of interaction and activity within your virtual community by its members. It involves purposeful efforts to engage members, draw them in, and facilitate meaningful connections among community participants. The higher the engagement, the better.
How to increase community engagement: 5 ideas
Depending on where you’d like to increase engagement in your online community, some tactics may work better than others for specific situations. Here are ten ideas worth trying to increase online community engagement:
1. Focus on educating
It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the customer who understands all of the features of your product or service is more likely to use it, recommend it to others, and spend more money on your products in the future.
2. Make members feel special
Your customers appreciate feeling valued, so boost your online community engagement by finding ways to reward and celebrate them. Gamification encourages customers and employees to share more frequently and passionately, increasing overall engagement with your brand. It’s also a critical step in building an online community your customers will love.
3.Leverage user-generated content
Customers trust user-generated content over branded content and are more likely to engage with it. Take your strategy to the next level and boost your online community engagement by creating a vibrant social hub of user-generated content.
Ask your superfans to share video testimonials about how they use your products and how your product makes their lives easier and then share this content within the community.
4.Directly engage disengaged members
Getting inactive users to be involved in the community is a difficult task. But there are tactics that can help these users to re-engage. It’s important to first understand your inactive audience, so you can reach out when the timing is appropriate. Utilizing branded community software can help you spot disengaged members and get more insight.
After you review inactive member metrics, the next step is to try contacting them using automation rules or re-engagement campaigns. If outreach is successful, these users will stay re-engaged more often than not.
5. Gather feedback
Feedback is crucial for online community success, and there is no better source of feedback and ideas for improvement than the criticism of your customers.
Online communities provide an opportunity to monitor and listen to your customers, helping you identify issues or discover what you’re doing well. Constantly asking for feedback can help foster engagement, and acting on that feedback can create a sense of community ownership.
As said this it should also kept in mind to be able to follow them in order. Share your thoughts in comments.