Increase Member Engagement by Building Community
Member engagement through community is the backbone of a healthy, prospering site. Community drives revenue and growth, so building up membership site communities is a top priority for many.
After all, building community is one of the top benefits of running a membership site. The more you connect and build community, the more loyal your customers become to your brand and the more likely they are to retain their membership.
Communities are built through genuine interactions. Once your members join, they need to keep engaged with the material, with each other, and with you. Active communities both attract new members and retain current ones – which is exactly what a membership site needs.
These are a few tips for increasing your member engagement to build your community.
1. Create a Facebook group for your members
Many of your community members already spend time on Facebook, so creating space for them there makes sense. Members are more likely to join in the fun if they see content during their regular scrolling. Here are some tips to make your Facebook group more inviting:
- Write weekly welcome posts to new members. This is a simple way to post on a regular basis. Tag new members and ask them to introduce themselves in the comments.
- Ask provoking questions that encourage engagement around what your membership is about, or even just for fun. Some of the most engaging posts are asking members to share pet pics.
- Post polls. Ask members to weigh in on topics that interest them. It’s simple for them to click their response. Go the extra step by encouraging discussion in the comments section.
- Share site content. Do you have a new blog post? Feature? Class? Whatever it is, post about it in the group.
- Answer questions that members post.
- Share a relevant meme once in a while.
- Moderate topics and comments and make sure your members always keep content relevant and civil.
2. Create a Slack workspace
Slack is a communication software that encourages collaboration. In the right niche/industry, Slack can be extremely successful. The “live chat” style of communication can make it easier to talk to people one-on-one and have quick conversations, even asynchronously. The ability to post files and photos with live emoji reactions also helps community quality.
Slack allows you to create channels for different topics to help categorize discussions. For example, for a photography membership site, you could have channels for general conversation, equipment, digital, film, lighting, and more.
Slack workspaces may need a bit more strategy to maintain than Facebook groups, as Slack may be a platform that is less familiar to your members. The benefits to using Slack are worth the engagement strategy as it is a more robust platform for discussion.
Did you know that WordPress.org has its own Slack team?
3. Build a forum on your site using a plugin
Forums may seem a great relic from old web 1.0 days, but they have seen a modern revamping and are useful community tools.
You can build a forum right on your own website, driving your community traffic through your own space by using a form plugin. (Hubspot lists nine forum plugins you might consider.)
An online forum approach is helpful if you want to create more structure and organization within your community. Since it is installed directly on your site, you can keep all your material in one place. It keeps your community close to your base of operations.
And since your forum is on your site, you can restrict individual topics to members only. When activating a forum plugin, configure your settings for member access only. With most forum plugins, you can set up restrictions based on subscription level or access level.
As with any community area, member engagement is key. Just as you would with a Facebook group, you will need to create an engagement strategy so that your forum (and your community) will flourish.
4. Use social media to build community and member engagement
Your community lives in many places, but not necessarily in ALL the places. Find out which social platforms your community frequents most often, then work to garner member engagement there.
There are multiple social platforms that lend themselves naturally to different types of communities. Some research may be required to determine which is the best for you. (Consider posting a poll in your Facebook group for feedback from your community.)
Some popular social platforms to consider include:
- TikTok
- Snapchat
- Discord
Whichever you choose, pay attention to the best ways to post. Many communities use hashtags for engagement. Learn which ones apply to your group to help give a sense of community within a large social media network.
5. Host regular webinars or live workshops
Webinars and video workshops allow you to get face-to-face with your audience. You can provide live training material and walk people through it step-by-step. Furthermore, with a chat interface alongside the video, you can interact in real-time to answer questions or listen to feedback.
Workshops are a good choice if you sell access to e-courses or other learning materials. For example, part of your gated content might include an exclusive course built using a plugin like LearnDash. Members of your course can come together in workshops as either a part of a lesson or as a final project.
Workshops allow your members to collaborate and learn from one another. You can build workshops through a website forum for an asynchronous option, or through a live video call where participants can bring ideas and notes to the call to share.
You can host live videos with:
- Facebook Live Video
- GoToWebinar
- Periscope
- YouTube Live
- WebinarNinja
- Zoom
- Google Meet
- Livestream
6. Promote your community to your email list
Since 99% of consumers check email daily, it’s a highly effective way to promote and build your community. Blasting out your community offerings in a newsletter is the final step. Email promotion should be implemented after the above steps are in place. Include a call to sign up for a newsletter in posts, banners, pop-ups, and on social media.
Once you have folks interested, keep your members engaged by following the above steps and watch your community grow before your eyes. After all, you can create the space, but it’s that pure member-to-member interaction that builds community.
What do you do to promote engagement within your membership community? Let us know in the comments!