Here’s a simple method to become more effective in your community engagement work (and a snippet from the Psychology of Community course).
Segment your audience into unique activity clusters as we see below:
*Don’t worry, you can tweak the level of activity to your community.
Now do a live interview 3 to 5 people from each category (you will need to send 20 to 30 invites for each cluster).
Ask the interviewees how they arrived at the community, what they want from the community, what they like and don’t like about the community, and what they would love to see in the community.
If they’re new, ask them how it felt to arrive. If they’re regulars, ask them what keeps bringing them back.
Ask also about the toughest problems they face in their work (or in the topic).
From this, you should be able to build up a detailed picture of their wants and needs.
Here’s a simplified version of one we made for a former client:
(There’s a lot of text here, click here for the full image above).
Now systematically go through each of the touch points these members have with the community and update the messaging and structure of the site to satisfy these needs.
For example, if lurkers don’t participate because they don’t feel they have authority, why not highlight how much you need good questions for your experts to answer. Put the value in the questions, not the answers.
If regulars want more opportunities to connect with others and be more involved, create those opportunities.
If newcomers need some good reminders to come back and help others out who had that same problem, create those reminders.
Also, make sure the content you create, emails you send out, discussions you prioritize reflect the needs and wants of each segment.
If you spend a few hours now doing these interviews, you will save weeks of wasted time pursuing the wrong activities later.
You will also see the level of engagement steadily increase among all groups.
Deeply Understand The Needs of Members
Segmenting members into useful clusters and building up detailed profiles is a skill everyone building communities today should be adept in.
But, at the moment, so few people do this.
Our Psychology of Community course is going to change this. We’re going to help you stop guessing what might work and use processes rooted in psychology to drive more engaged and gain the outcomes you need.
Strategy Combined with Psychology
We’re also offering a combined package of Strategic Community Management and Psychology of Community for $1100 USD.
I strongly recommend this.
You will have a strategy your entire organization can get behind and know the psychology to accomplish that strategy.
Course fees rise this Friday. Hope to see you on the inside.
Sign up options below.
| Psychology of Community – $675 USD |
| Strategic Community Management – $675 USD |
| COMBINED – Strategic Community Management and Psychology of Community – $1100 USD |
