How to Engage and Retain Community Members?
Zekiye Nur Kesici
11 replies
Building a community around your brand or product can be a powerful way to drive engagement and loyalty.
How do you foster a sense of belonging in your community? How do you encourage participation and feedback?
Replies
Eraj Ismatulloev@ieraj
Incentives, and it doesn't have to be monetary.
You'd have to provide them with something to stick around, for example, news, tips & tricks, articles, etc.
Share
To engage and retain community members, you need to create a sense of belonging by encouraging participation, acknowledging their feedback, and providing value through your brand or product. You can also host events or activities that encourage interaction, and establish clear communication channels to keep members informed and engaged.
By building in public. Take your consumers through your journey. As questions and listen. Your product is going to be used by you but by your consumers. Remind them every day how your product affects their lives and give them a reason to justify your product!
I'd say it's just giving them a reason to stay and replying to their queries
Did you test Product-Led Growth to retain community members engaged with your product and so retain them ?
I'd say a lot of times people go to communities to either give or take. That can be to learn or teach, or sell or buy, or even just to connect emmotionally (I'd say that's give and take in one ;P ).
So create things around it, be useful for the people that want to learn from the community you are creating. Share useful content, connect them to other people in the community you know can help them or who are interesting.
And to retain, well, engage :D If you have an engaged community then you will have a retaining community and those that churn were probably looking for something else :)
Hope this helps a bit, and looking forward to also hearing your thoughts :)
Setting the foundation is hard; engaging and getting their feedback isn't that hard.
You must know your ideal customer and where they hang out online and offline.
Now build a community there; it can be Instagram, LinkedIn, twitter, or any other platform where most of your customers are.
Now engage with them, comment on their content, provide feedback, and build a solid community around you.
By now you will understand their pain points and what there main issue is,
Now introduce your product as a story.
The hero is your customer; you are the guide that guides them to the perfect solution (your product).
Now give them some discounts, so they will start using it, and since you already have a relationship with them, you can simply message them for a feedback
One thing I've learnt as a community builder is to highlight the significance of consistent and authentic communication, fostering a sense of belonging, Hero your community above all and celebrate its members achievement as if it were your own. This leads to a base ethic of support and non transactional mindset.
Engage
- Build an open platform for discussion and encourage members to share their thoughts.
- Moderate discussions to ensure quality and avoid conflict.
- Conduct cohort activities to cater to diverse needs and interests within your community.
- Use gamification to make participation fun and rewarding - Don't always make it about the serious stuff. Be you, be real... I've personally loved communities that occasionally send out a tongue twister :-)
Appeal
- Allow members to contribute to content creation through user-generated content.
- Use visual content to increase engagement and authenticity. -
- Regularly onboard new members to keep your community fresh.
Connect
- Be responsive to member queries and concerns to build trust.
- Incorporate measures to protect member data and financial transactions to foster trust.
- Conduct online polls to get to know your members and extract common points within your community.
@between_team hey...:-), here's what's worked for me. Building a strong community must start with identifying a common problem your product category is solving (not just your product), based on that share selfless content about the product category don't be shy to talk about competition and other brands, and share information on what's new in the industry. As tech product owners, we sometimes tend to get into the "working" of things rather than the "solving" so Keep it understandable and a good mix of both.
You can even experiment with doing something really radical. I was once invited to be part of a community clean up and Hike "plog" and we from an entrepreneur community. It was the most fun thing I've done that didn't involve anything "jargony" but made everything so meaningful. Build a core set of people.
Try and build the community online and offline - Meet when you are in nearby cities, have a meaningful virtual meeting where you are offering something substantial this could be information. Celebrate the meetings! take pictures and share on the community.
Here's an example as a Generative AI-based design platform sivi.ai we offered 30 days and 30 credits to our community members and first look at the web app. Sometimes you can offer your product and something else, Like I know of a company that offered free product access and a coffee coupon at startbucks :-).
Keep it interactive, encourage people to ask questions and also invite other members.
I hope I answered your question. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn too @Sivi_ai
Between
@tejaswini_gopalaswamy This is good stuff, thanks for sharing. How do you get your initial members? People who share common jobs? Build in public?
Competitions.
We held a small competition in our discord group to that.
Rules:
1. you need to find two more team mate
2. he should be from the same community
3. work together to win the prize
Best results we have seen ever. That group still has the highest engagement rates.
Make sure the prize is compelling enough.
Share your losses, celebrate the wins of your community members, randomly award someone.
All the best👍