A while back, in an internal community project, the client mentioned they had dramatically increased the number of visits to the community.
How did they do it?
They migrated all the internal documentation to the community platform and forced people to visit the community to see it.
They hoped once people were on the platform they would stick around to browse other content and participate in the community.
Not only did this not happen, it added frustrating hoops the audience had to jump through to access the information they wanted. It caused far more harm than good.
While placing the thing people want at the back of the store might work for supermarkets, it doesn’t work so well with communities. Having to register for a community to access an article (or attend an event) doesn’t make you more likely to participate in the community, it makes you more likely to find the information elsewhere.
Forcing people to visit a community portends a knowledge and motivation problem. It suggests you can create and execute a compelling vision to gain the interest and engagement of members.
Time to go back to the drawing board and revamp the concept of your community.
