Does your community have a low level of responsiveness?
Are there a large number of discussions with a small number of replies?
Do members have to wait a long time to receive a reply to a discussion?
There are a few simple tips to increase responsiveness.
- Ensure every discussion receives a reply within 24 hours. You need to work hard or have volunteers to do this.
- Create a weekly list of unanswered questions/toughest questions.
- Bump popular discussions towards the top of the community, let weaker discussions slide.
- Proactively recruit experts to take responsibility for certain topics. If someone makes an excellent contribution to a discussion, ask if s/he would like to be responsible for responding to discussions on that topic.
- Guide contributions with a list of topical issues newcomers might want to make a post about (and topics not to initiate a discussion about)
- Recruit members/groups with a particular interest in a specific topic.
- Write content about discussions taking place ("Mike asked a tricky discussion about ….")
- Promote discussions through social media channels with links back to where members can reply.
This isn't comprehensive, but it should be a good start.