Too many professional communities fall into the trap of becoming a place of frustration. Members only visit when something is broken and they want it fixed.
Once they get a solution, they leave and don’t come back.
You can change this by proving value members didn’t expect. The easiest value is often career advice. In B2B communities, most people have similar careers and a lot of expertise they can share.
This means changing the content, activities, and discussions members see on the homepage to incorporate the three main areas of advice.
- Best practices (i.e. what is the best way to….?)
- Fears/Threats (i.e. I’m scared about [x], what should I do?)
- Time-sensitive requests (i.e. I have an urgent problem, how do I fix it quickly?)
The more you can support your members throughout their day, the more they visit your community for help. You can be the widget-fixer community, or you can be their trusted peer group they visit several times a week for advice and new information.