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30+ Community Engagement Strategy Strategies

Apr 6, 2022

The most successful communities are made up of enthusiastic, supportive and engaged members who are always keen to share their ideas as well as offer their opinions and assist others within the group.

While this sounds great in theory, it's a challenge of how to increase participation in the community is something that many brands struggle with.

For help on ways to engage with your community and creating a community engagement strategy, keep reading. We'll go over the essentials of community engagement. This includes three community engagement best practices, top tips and 30+ community engagement ideas.

What's a community engagement strategy?

A strategy for community engagement is a strategy that companies can employ to increase engagement among their community members.

The term "community engagement" refers to the manner that individuals engage with each other and create within a group. In virtual communities, members are able to contribute, study and interact with each other within the community through creating, posting and commenting on the content of a group.

A community engagement strategy is able to establish an environment that can strengthen and maintain social ties among community members. It can also increase community members' sense of belonging and commitment to the community.

Find details about importance of engaging in community and what benefits you can anticipate from a successful plan for community engagement.

The importance of engagement with the community

Community engagement is a critical component of any brand's marketing plans. Community engagement is extra important for helping brands connect with their clients and gain advantages over their competition in addition to helping increase their sales and create leads.

Why is community engagement crucial?

A successful community involvement strategy could:

  • Establish trust
  • Increase brand loyalty
  • empower community members
  • Access to a variety of perspectives and expertise
  • Create a culture of collaboration
  • Improve communications

Engagement with your community is an essential method to generate excitement around your brand. If you can boost your community engagement then you'll benefit from many benefits.

Community engagement best practices

If you are considering the community's involvement There are a few important aspects to keep in mind. The following best practices in community engagement are aimed at creating an atmosphere of cooperation and positivity for all your community members as well as limiting conflicts.

Here are some of our community engagement tips:

  1. Create a safe environment for engagement

To achieve this, it's important to have the guidelines for community engagement in place so that members know what kinds of participation is acceptable and required in the community.

Here are the rules of the community for this Studio of online course creators :

Appointing moderators is an effective way to help create a safe atmosphere for the community. Moderators are able to help manage conflict and safeguard community members, while also setting the tone for any communication within the community. Make sure that you clarify what expectations you have of your moderators internally and the steps they should be taking to resolve rule-breaking and handle concerns.

  2. Create an energy and a sense of mission

It is among the best practices for community engagement which course designers and brand owners could employ to assist people in the community to aid themselves.

If you want to increase involvement in your community, make sure you give your group goals that are shared by all members. It gives users an understanding of what is expected of them in the community, including what kinds of content to share, the best way to engage with other members and what they can gain from being an active member of the community.

While also benefitting your community members Setting goals for your community can aid in defining your long-term community engagement strategy. If you have a clear goal in mind there are many community engagement ideas that are relevant, rather than taking a scattergun approach to engagement and content creating.

  3. Test different engagement strategies

In the process of developing an approach to community engagement, you must also remember that everything can change! The most effective community engagement strategy must be adaptable.

Be prepared to switch up your strategy if something isn't working or if you come across a new community engagement idea that you think could work better.

It is among the best community engagement methods because it lets you to continually enhance and improve your community in order to meet the requirements of your participants. Keep your community relevant and adaptable.

With these community engagement best practices to keep in mind, you can check out our 30+ community engagement ideas below.

30+ ideas for community involvement ideas

If you're searching for ways to engage your community, ideas that will help kickstart your community and maintain it Here are our best recommendations.

For ease of use for you, we've split these community engagement ideas into 3 sections: community engagement basics tools to engage with communities, community engagement and community engagement events.

Community engagement basics

  1. Engage your viewers

If you're trying to build an engaged and enthusiastic community for your brand, you need start by establishing yourself and your team.

All content you share should appeal directly to your intended audience. Consider your voice and brand personality. Anyone who is writing in the group for your brand needs to utilize the same tone - it's the same for content, engagement and even responding DMs.

The way you speak to your audience does not only depend on the words you use. It also includes your community involvement strategy as well.

A successful community engagement plan can be tailored to the needs of your group of people - from the kinds of partnership with your brand as well as the polls and surveys you conduct, and the challenges you set for participants. Remember this whenever you're searching suggestions for ideas to engage your community.

Try asking you:

  • Do these words resonate with my target audience?
  • Is this the type of content that my viewers want to view?
  • Is this relevant to my goals for my community?
  • Can this be of benefit to my readers?

If you can ensure that your audience is at the center of all you do, you're much more likely to have success in your strategy for community engagement and find efficient ways to engage your community.

  2. Encourage multi-channel engagement

The secret to a good community engagement plan is to view it as just one part of your larger digital marketing strategy.

Community engagement is not just the process of encouraging active participation on the Facebook group, for example. The strategy you employ to engage your community should feed into all of your channels for marketing.

Why? Since people don't tend to use just one platform. Users who are on your Facebook could also choose to follow you on Twitter or Instagram, join a private group, or subscribe to your newsletter. Don't pass up the opportunity to reach your clients across different touch points.

Explore common themes you can apply across your various marketing channels, and then map out the way they will be used to cross-promote. Remind your community members about other ways they can keep up-to-date with your brand and also include links to other channels of marketing in your social media bios as well as landing pages.

  3. Have fun!

This is a really important aspect if you're looking to boost community engagement by making your community enjoyable! It's so much easier for people to engage in a community that's light-hearted and joyful as opposed to one that's dull boring, dull, and far too serious.

Below are some ideas you can try:

  • Your community can be given a cool name
  • Make jokes with others
  • Post memes
  • Utilize GIFs
  • Play games e.g. Guess Who? or you can spot the difference

If you're able to bring some entertainment to your neighborhood and your members are more likely to get involved. Don't underestimate this simple yet powerful community engagement technique!

  4. Stay engaged

At the end of the day, the most important thing people in your community are looking for is the chance to engage with your company and image. When you sign up to an online community, you want to know who's running it. It's important to be active within your local community in order to inspire your fellow members to do the same.

If you're a creator of courses, this is especially important. When you're the face of your brand, your community customers would like to hear from you. It's about being available to your group - ideally every day, multiple times every each day.

Being active includes:

  • Answering direct questions
  • Like posts of members
  • Sharing relevant material
  • Replying to DMs

If you're not able to participate in your group every day you can appoint one or two individuals on your team to take on the job. You should make sure that you provide them with an appropriate introduction to your community - and your own endorsement. The members of your community need to know that this person or team is an expert and that they can count on their actions and assistance on your behalf.

  5. Make space for member activity

While being active is really vital, the activities you participate in your neighborhood shouldn't interfere with other members' activities. To encourage more involvement, allow your members to be involved.

Be patient when answering questions in the community and let the others take over. Unless the answer is targeted specifically towards the group, then let it be your turn to take the lead and answer. After that, you are able to come in to confirm the answers or provide clarity. The ability to take a backseat is the best way to get increased participation as well as creating an enduring, self-sustaining community.

Tools for community engagement

  6. Rewards your participation within the community

One of the most effective strategies to encourage more engagement in the community is to reward active members and encourage other members to engage more. There are many strategies to accomplish this, but the method you select is based on the products you offer or brand as well as the general goals of your organization.

Below are some suggestions you might like to explore:

  • Recognize top performers: Give a the opportunity to give a shout-out to your members who are the most helpful or who are particularly thoughtful or knowledgeable. This private gesture can make your customers feel special.
  • The those who have the highest participation: You could improve the status of your top group members by having them become the moderators or instructors of newly joined members.
  • Set up points systems: You could also create rewards for members where community members get points or tokens every time they engage with others, and add amounts to presents, products or discounts on your products.

There are many ways to encourage the participation of your group. Think about adding this approach to boost group activity and build loyal customers to your brand.

  7. Publicize member milestones

A different approach to community engagement to consider helping your members develop a system to mark important milestones.

If the community you have is built around your academy or course is it not time to start giving announcements for recent graduates? If you're a school with multiple courses, you could try creating a tier system comprising bronze, silver, and gold levels that each include their own announcements within your community. When someone hits a milestone and you announce their achievement. The system can be customized to fit your brand and course personality - assign graduate animals, numbers, food groups or anything else!

It is also possible to set dates for important occasions like achieving objectives for business owners or mastering new skills. Opportunities for engagement are limitless!

  8. Encourage questions

For any community to be successful, it must have constant flow of inquiries and responses for the discussion to stay and interaction - flowing. If you can encourage people to raise questions within your group, it opens to the possibility for inexperienced members to engage with other members.

If some people are hesitant about answering a question or weighing in on an issue, particularly if they're new to this topic, they'll likely be comfortable posing a question to the group. It's important to make it clear that asking questions is a norm in your community and doesn't just have to be restricted to moderators only for a better way to increase engagement.

  9. Repost members' content

The members love to feel loved! A way to achieve this is to share content from members within your group.

This is especially nice for sharing member wins and celebrating successes. If anyone in your group shares an amazing thing which has happened to themspecifically in relation to your product, include it in the group.

It's a brilliant community engagement strategy and it's a nice bit of free promotion for your company as well!

  10. Give badges

What are you waiting for? Why not set up an award system for your community?

If you're looking for community engagement ideas it is simple to implement. The most active members of your community are awarded a top contributor' badge that highlights their hard work and encourage others to do the same!

Here are other badges to consider:

  • Expert
  • Idea generator
  • Top conversation starter
  • Excellent Answers
  • Most helpful

The goal is to develop badges that will give you the most engaged community members. Select the badges that have the most relevance to your company's image and match your unique brand personality.

  11. Remove inactive members

It is also possible to consider adding rules for absence from your group too. It could include removing users who do not post, interact with fellow members, or engage any way in your community for a specified time.

It's normal for people to join an online community, only to gradually fade away when it ceases being relevant for them. It would be wonderful for everyone to be active and engaged, but the reality is that people's priorities change as time passes.

While you'll want to take care with this community engagement strategy setting up rules to govern your activities can be helpful to make certain that you have community members who genuinely want to be a part of the group.

The effect could be to make your community smaller but it will aid in making your community feel closer and intimate, helping to boost the engagement of your members even more. Sometimes , it's about the quality of your community than its size!

  12. Create private groups and sub-communities

In every community, there are sub-communities. Imagine them as cliques within the classroom. People naturally gravitate towards other people, forming smaller groups of members who share similar views, interests or ambitions.

As you develop your strategy for community engagement Do not overlook the smaller sub-communities or groups. Instead, encourage them! It is possible to do this with using private groups.

  13. Create a coach program

If you really want to reward your most active members, you could also set up a coaching program as part of your long-term community engagement strategy.

Offer loyal customers as well as course graduates the chance to coach the newcomers - they serve as mentors in your community and could even be given the chance to create their own communities that are built around the products you offer.

Invite them to post product testimonials, demonstrations, and tutorials of their personal experiences with your products. Customers who are already customers are the best resource in promoting your brand, therefore why not make use of them!

  14. Offer referral benefits

Looking to add more members to your community? Ask for recommendations!

Encourage your existing members to introduce new members to the group and share the group with their network. Offer incentives, such as a discount on your products or community points (see the idea in number 6). ).

With this community engagement strategy it is possible to use your current community members to create leads, and also promote your group. Adding benefits is a sure approach to improve participation.

  15. Provide downloadable resources

Your community members should have an opportunity to have access to exclusive resources and content to increase community engagement rapidly.

This method of engagement to motivate your existing members to continue to be active and to get the signatures of new members. The resources are an excellent method to show the importance of belonging to your local community in a tangible, useful way.

These are some options for useful resources:

  • Worksheets
  • Checklists
  • Cheatsheets
  • Excel spreadsheet templates
  • scripts

  16. Consider brand merchandise

If you're looking to get old school, you could make brand-related merchandise. A community-exclusive product is a fantastic option to enhance the cliquey feeling of your group Only those who are who are in the know will be able to purchase the merchandise.

Branded merchandise is a really effective way to make a collection of members feel like they are part of a community. It is also possible to use this concept of community engagement in your reward program for members of the community - Users earn points and can use their points to  purchase items. The bigger items cost more points, giving customers even more incentive to get involved with the community!

Are you in need of ideas for a new product? Check these out:

  • Keyrings
  • Mugs
  • Bottles of water
  • Caps
  • T-shirts
  • Backpacks

There's no end to the things you can transform into products that are branded to the people in your area. It's best to begin small, and then move to larger items once you've tested how this community engagement strategy can benefit your company.

  17. Invite podcast guests

Do you have a podcast? Invite community members to be your guest!

This community engagement idea has a few different benefits - active members of your group are rewarded for their work and you can show off your best client success stories! Imagine it as a live demonstration to your product.

Members of your community are likely to have their own particular areas of expertise and knowledge too. There may be an expert hidden in those ranks within your group who could make for an entertaining and inspirational guest.

In order to use this concept of community engagement, you should encourage your group members to talk about themselves and share more details on their experiences Then, you can contact the ones who sound like an ideal fit!

Pro tip: even if you don't have a podcast however, you may still employ this community engagement strategy for writing blog posts, newsletters or case studies of your customers. It's worth learning about your community inside out.

  18. Make connections

One of the best ways to market your business better is to make partnerships - and community engagement is no different. If you want to generate an interest in your neighborhood look for brands that are relevant to collaborate with.

What makes this engagement method succeed? Partnering with a partner gives you the opportunity to connect with a larger public and attract many more people into your social network. When your partners post about your business or your product, you are exposed to a huge new pool of prospective customers. If you can find partners who are bigger and have more experience than you , it's even better!

Partnerships can be fun for members of your current community as they'll benefit from fresh opportunities, knowledge as well as information gathered through your connections.

  19. Utilize micro-influencers

It is also possible to consider forming collaborations with influencers.

In the case of the use of influencer marketing in conjunction with of your community engagement plan There are a few factors to keep in mind. Find micro-influencers with a a genuine passion for your product as well as are respected and knowledgeable within their field of expertise. Influencers with these qualities will be more effective for community engagement rather than the big name brands that only post content that promotes other companies.

There are even micro-influencers in your community who have built up an reputation as helpful and engaged members. You can ask them to test the product, and then post videos of their experiences in order to boost the engagement of your community organically.

Community Engagement Events

  20. Community challenges, themes and challenges

A really fun and effective method to boost community involvement is to set challenges for your community members. This can be done on a quarterly, monthly or every week. You can think of challenges that help to increase your members' sense of achievement and foster co-operation.

Remember to celebrate and reward the users who have completed the challenge successfully or within the given time frame and post any user-generated content (UGC) that is related to the contest.

There are also regular themes, or even daily ones to encourage members to post and share content. The community has Welcome Wednesday where new members introduce themselves and Flaunt-it-Fridays where members can talk about their successes. This is a really effective way to start discussions in your group.

  21. Host , ask me anything

If you're looking to boost the engagement of your community quickly Try organizing an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session.

Create a timeline for your AMA and ask members of your community to answer their questions in your community area and then answer their concerns!

You can also ask thought-leaders and industry experts to conduct AMAs in your community to give your members a chance to pick their brains and gain knowledge.

  22. Try a Live Q&A

Alongside hosting a traditional AMA, you might also want to hold an interactive event. Utilize a live streaming platform such as Instagram live for live Q&A sessions in your local community. This will give your members a more personal encounter - they love to see a friendly person!

Choose a host who is proficient in front of the camera, and is able to think on their feet. This could be you or one of your team, regardless, they should be familiar with your products, your niche as well as the requirements of your clients through and through.

  23. Organize webinar events

In the case of community engagement events, webinars can be a great method to have in your back. While they can take longer preparation than the other options on this list, they can also be the most effective way to promote your product, brand as well as your local community.

Webinars provide a wonderful opportunity for doing deep dives into issues that pertain to your audience. It might be worthwhile holding an Product Therapy session where you address common pain points that customers face when using your products as well as answer the key questions. Also, you could do product demos and tutorials.

  24. Offer one-to-one coaching sessions

If you're looking to offer your members of your community something truly exceptional, you could offer them one-to-one coaching sessions. Perhaps you can use them in your rewards system that benefits those who are the most active, or organize them according to a first come, first served basis.

Establish your virtual office hours and give members the chance to sign up for an exclusive meeting with a coach. It's an opportunity for your community to pick your mind and an excellent chance to establish your status as an expert within your own community.

  25. Run competitions

One of the best adaptable ways to engage your community that you could make use of is competitions. There are endless possibilities to personalize competitions for your brand or your products. Select the one that is best for your community!

These are cool ideas to get inspired:

  • Invite community members to customize your brand logo
  • Run a scavenger hunt using different clues that are hidden within several posts
  • Answer a question or trivia challenge

Contests can encourage members of your community to join your community, increasing activity and communication among members. Make this idea a part of your wider approach to community engagement to add the fun of friendly competition and a sense of competitiveness to your community. How can you encourage members of your community to set up themselves competitions?

  26. Take advantage of the giveaways

A really easy way to increase engagement in your community is to post a giveaway. Request that members share your posts and also invite a friend or follower for the chance of winning. This immediately increases the visibility of your brand and gets other customers excited about the offer!

The community engagement approach should be used in moderation to avoid devaluing your products However, it's a good solution if you're searching for other ideas for community engagement to make things interesting. It's important to create an exclusive offer in order to enhance the FOMO experience.

  27. Do a flash sale

If you're hoping to garner lots of interest within a brief time, try a flash sale. Nothing beats a flash sale to get people excited!

To maximize the benefits from this concept of community engagement It's best to plan your posts leading up to the event. Make sure you build anticipation for your sale by creating posts which count towards the day of sale. Be sure to keep publishing to let the community know how long they've got left too.

If you need help in this strategy for community engagement Check out Neil Patel's webinar for no cost. Sales funnel course for templates, a calendar of content and many more.

  28. Early bird post offers

Help your community members feel special by giving them discounts on early bird sales and access to the latest merchandise. This is a great way of increasing the number of pre-sales you can sell, and also giving your community members something they can be enthusiastic about.

  29. Run polls

Do you want to inspire your audience to take part in a discussion or question? Create a poll.

They are extremely clickable. They take less than a second to complete, they get your community members to think about the issue They also give you feedback on the opinions and views of your group. Make sure you are involved!

  30. Ask for surveys

As with polls, surveys are a really effective community engagement method. Surveys are your best weapon in gathering feedback from your audience members on what's working and the areas that need improvement in your branding. There are surveys you can conduct to get feedback from your customers too.

Surveys allow your customers the opportunity to share their voice heard. They help members get more involved with your brand and the process to improve your offerings. As a business person, having access to quality feedback is a significant benefit that allows you to continuously adapt and improve the products you sell to your customers.

  31. Make virtual coffee in the mornings

If you're looking for an opportunity to help your community appear more like a group by making online coffee-related mornings. Chatting over a coffee, even if it's virtual, can help a bunch of strangers instantly feel like they're acquaintances.

This community engagement strategy will have long-lasting impacts for your local community, creating a feeling of camaraderie which could take months to develop. Naturally, if your community is located around a specific location then you can organize in-person coffee mornings as well! Try to motivate your fellow members to set up your own events and meet with each other in person.

  32. Publicize seasonal events and celebrations

Need content? Make use of seasonal celebrations and events as a way to ensure your content is varied, relevant and fun! Why not run a seasonal most popular photo competition, or even a holiday giveaway?

These ideas for community engagement are all designed to increase the participation of your group as well as increase the number of members who interact and cooperate. They're enjoyable, but really efficient. Pick your preferred approach to community engagement, and then give it a go.

Are you feeling you're inspired? Make your own community engagement plan right now!

If you're inspired by these ideas of community engagement, you can start building your own strategies for engaging with communities. Do not be afraid to remain open to change and adjust your plan as you see which strategies are effective and which ones don't.

Create your own community today or join our course creator community to keep studying.