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Rob Howard
1 minute read time.
4 Ideas for Engaging Customers within Communities

The best kind of content is content that is unique, authentic and engaging.

Here are four ideas to help you boost content to engage customers within your community:

1: Blog posting within your community

A blog post by a product owner detailing their perspective on how the community’s influence is impacting the decisions made in designing and building a product/good/service is authentic and engaging - customers see how their investment of time in the community is in turn impacting the product they know and love.

2: Ask questions within your community

Ask a question regarding your product/good/service is a great way to start getting people engaged and topics started. What would people like to see happen? What do they dislike? This not only provides citizen engagement opportunity but allows you to see what others are talking about in order to improve your product. Or asking the simple question of how one utilizes the product. Has it improved their lifestyle, etc? Could spark convo. It engages folks to share their knowledge and stories.

3: Success Matters!

Positive reviews regarding your product/good/service matter to people and purchasing decisions more than companies want to believe. People love and trust reviews and social knowledge share by people who give their success stories. Customers trust other customers over the brand. If you hear of a success story or review what someone has posted which sounds like a winning topic, keep the conversation going, ask about the perspective, etc.

4: Highlight the fans

Showcasing fans who share the most content and engage in the community is always a step in the right directions to help with engagement. This, in turn, will give them a voice and will ultimately make them want them engage. The more fans you have the more posts and engagement you will receive within your community.

The main theme of these points is that the more you post, whether it’s by your community manager, a customer, a product manager, etc., the more engagement and conversations will consistently stay growing with online collaboration!!!

  • I love your 4th bullet point! "Highlight the fans"

    Community members give freely of their time, to help others and contribute to the cause of the community with whom they've affiliated. More often than not, these members are intrinsically motivated to give, to share, and to help! I feel like a time will come, with any community contributor, where if they do not feel they are adding value, they will withdrawal and move along. 

    It's a very small cost, on the side of community management, to dig into your data and find a handful of your community advocates, and highlight them! By putting the spotlight on them and their valuable contributions, you do a few things:

    1. Provides positive reinforcement to your contributing members
    2. Increases "contributor" and even "participant", and possibly even the "consumer" commitment to contribute
    3. Triggers an instinctive incentive for others who see this recognition, to participate and aspire to achieve similar accolades
    4. Develops a deeper sense of your Community Culture... a culture of recognition and reward for the sacrifice of time and energy that your members offer, to contribute to your cause

    What is the cost of a compliment? What is the benefit? And which of these far exceeds the other?

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