By Ashly Stewart, Content Marketing Manager

Relationships always find a way

“Life always finds a way,” Dr. Ian Malcolm wistfully declares in the summer blockbuster hit, Jurassic Park. 

And as I watched Jurassic Park for the 50th time while simultaneously responding to a comment on a Reddit thread, I realized this important sentiment also rings true: “Relationships always find a way.”  

Even before the pandemic changed all our lives, community forums on Reddit, Facebook, and other sites proved that connection isn’t contained to face-to-face interactions. People have been turning to online forums to find people who share common interests, gain new knowledge, and find a fun way to spend their time for a while now. 

But since the pandemic hit, these nice-to-have places of acceptance and entertainment turned into need-to-have online communities of genuine support and friendship. Online communities also became one of the only ways to engage with members, meet for events, and gain financial support for associations and nonprofits of all sizes. 

If you’re wondering how to grow a new online community, but you’re wondering where to start, you’ve come to the right blog! Read on to learn six ways to grow a new community and set the proper expectations for your internal teams and your members. 

What is an online community and why is it so important? 

Many people already have an idea of what an online community is and how it works, but it’s always good to remind ourselves why communities are so important and why they’re worth your time and investment when you have so many other things going on.  

1) The number of online community users rose last year as 44% said it was more important to have an online member community in 2020. Did the pandemic contribute to the rising numbers? Absolutely. Will remote work and play fade as the pandemic subsides? No. Long-distance connections are here to stay, especially as online communities get better at closing the gap between members using various digital experiences like video, custom online groups, and virtual or hybrid events.  

2) Our communities are expanding beyond our back door. The digital space has made our world feel smaller while making our communities feel bigger. Between text, video tools, mobile apps, and our online communities, it’s just as easy to meet someone in the next state or even the neighboring country, as it is the person living next door. These long-distant connections make your association’s reach go further and it makes your community even bigger. 

Even an association that seems hyper-local like a chamber of commerce can now proactively reach people who are planning to move to their towns. They can have a dedicated space on its online community for “People new to the area”, and from there, breakout groups can meet and connect over places they’ve just moved from or their hometowns outside of the local chamber community.  

3) You don’t want to miss the new opportunities to build deeper relationships and grow your association. From using your online community to post an updated events calendar, to allowing members to meet and build their own custom groups, it’s easier than ever to make your members feel like they’re a part of your mission, engage them in volunteer opportunities, and secure support.  

But, wait, can’t a Facebook group do all these things, too? We’re glad you asked.  

Social media isn’t cutting it anymore 

Social media certainly has its place in attracting and engaging with members. When it comes to online community, social is a great initial meeting place for potential members. After all, nearly everyone has a social media account, there are no barriers to meeting people from different regions, and you can post as many videos and memes as the group can handle.  

But for active members looking for a place to truly call their own and a place for your team to create a “source of truth” for member knowledge and activities, you can’t beat an online community.  

The most important element of connection, especially online, is trust. And community members are sharing that trust one of the biggest aspects that’s lacking about social media groups. In fact, internet users were found to have 31% mistrust in social media content. 

Want to learn more about social groups versus online communities? Check out the e-Book.  

7 ways to grow a new community  

Now that we’ve covered two of the biggest questions people have when launching a new online community, let’s dive into six online community best practices to help set expectations and get ready for community growth. 

1. Gather your internal community ambassadors. 

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your online community will take longer than that, too. It will also take support and advocacy from a couple of like-minded ambassadors. Find the cheerleaders on your team who can help you make a business case for new tools or systems, who can help you promote or manage the community, who can strategize and pull reports, and who can be guinea pigs for any new online community campaigns and features.  

Launching an online community can feel overwhelming, so having one or two people on your leadership team or peer group can ensure you stay motivated and complete your project timelines. 

2. Look for member influencers. 

At the same time you’re building your internal team, you’ll want to be recruiting your member influencers. These are members who are actively engaged with your organization, whether through regular social media interactions, events, or volunteers. These people believe in your mission and do a great job rallying other potential or current members around your efforts. These influencers will be key in building trust in your community and will be essential to start generating member content.  

3. Promote it often. 

When it comes to getting the word out about your new online community, we can’t stress enough how important it is to promote it early and promote it often.  

A month or two before your community goes live, you can start planning and promoting the new messaging around your online community, tutorials and videos showing the benefits of the community and how to access it, and maybe even plan contests for launch day (the first post gets a prize, the first video posted gets a prize, etc.)  

4. Find your balance. 

Benjamin Morton, Senior Product Consultant for CommUnity, says that one of the biggest markers of success of an online community is a good balance of member-generated and staff-generated content. In order for your community to be the hub of your latest and greatest organizational news, updates, and opportunities, your staff will need to plan to publish and post regular content.  

At the same time, your staff’s time is precious, so even from the first day you launch your community, you should start recruiting your influencers and content contributors. You want your members to start owning their community and to start taking some of the content generation work (posting about new topics, starting breakout groups, volunteering to be a part of a new blog post or article) from your team. Consistent member-generated content proves beyond a doubt that your members are truly connecting and gaining value from the community. At that point, it’s being built for them, and by then.  

5. Embrace the opportunity to quickly respond to member feedback. 

One of the most thrilling things about an online community is realizing that you’re learning more about your members than ever before. Since communities encourage authenticity, you shouldn’t be surprised that you see new sides to your members. It can be tempting to think, “We didn’t know our members as well as we thought we did.” But we encourage teams to view the new knowledge positively by saying, “What an amazing opportunity to get to know our members.”  

So as you learn new things about your members, respond accordingly. If they want more opportunities to volunteer, post about that more. If they want a custom breakout group where a group of users can post in a forum about their pets, encourage them to build it. You don’t want to be reactive all the time, but you should embrace the flexibility an online community offers.  

6. Never stop planning.  

Like all good things (and successful community strategies), good planning is essential. The first 90 days after launching your online community should include regular meetings with your internal ambassadors, influencers, and staff. After all, setting — and revisiting — expectations are important.  

In addition to weekly and/or monthly meetings, make sure to schedule an annual community recap where you review what you did well and new things you would like to try in response to member feedback and activity.  

Want more tips, tricks, and tools for building and maintaining your online community? Check out our guide. 

Get a roadmap to your first 90 days of launching your online community 

We hope these six online community strategies give you clarity as you launch your new community and confidence that you don’t have to build it alone.  

Join us for our upcoming webinar, “What to Expect: How to Grow an Online Community in the First 90 Days after Launch” on September 2 at 12:30 p.m. ET as we walk through a roadmap of the first 90 days after you launch your online community, complete with helpful checklists! 

The post How to Grow a New Online Community appeared first on Personify.

In a recent webinar, Rich Vallaster, Director of Marketing and the Tradeshow Wonk at Personify, discussed innovative strategies for successfully implementing event communities and connecting audiences at your next event. This webinar covered building event communities to increase satisfaction and retention, create additional revenue opportunities, and drive higher attendance to your hybrid events.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the discussion.

Your Audience Wants to Connect

As Vallaster stated early on in the webinar, “We were really good at in-person events. But, then Covid-19 happened, and Covid-19 taught us that communities matter more than ever.” People want to connect with like-minded professionals and engage in meaningful industry topics. Networking is essential for establishing vital relationships—and that is where event communities come into play. They have built-in trust thanks to familiarity, privacy protection, and ownership.

Event communities are not a new concept. Audiences have been asking for them for a while. Vallaster noted that he often heard that attendees wanted to stay in touch with the people they met at in-person events after they left. Event communities provide an outlet to keep the conversations going.

Audiences are conditioned and accustomed to utilizing digital tools to feel more connected and engaged. “We need to diversify the investment and risks associated with in-person events, and event communities do just that,” said Vallaster.

Event Communities Are the Hybrid Solution

In-person events will be the centerpieces of the digital experiences surrounding physical events. Vallaster stressed that that is “where we are headed in ‘Hybrid 2.0.’”

Webinars and online communities are going to drive people to in-person events. In-person events generate the most revenue, and digital will continue to facilitate networking opportunities and awareness around those physical events.

In a recent survey of 500 associations, Personify asked, “What is becoming more important for association members?” Personify found that 45% of respondents want to network with others in person. Still, 43% want to be able to network with others via digital platforms and communities. Thus, the data supports the importance of having an event community for your tradeshow and conference. “This truly is creating the total package,” said Vallaster.

How You Can Maximize Event Communities

Content: Your event community is your private audience. The data is yours. It is designed and scalable for your event. You can host live and on-demand videos for pre-, during, and post-event activities. Vallaster stressed that these communities encourage thought leaders to interact on relevant topics, which creates and fosters engagement. “It’s not just a virtual event; not everything is happening in a certain timeframe, “he said. It’s a year-round opportunity to solicit real-time feedback to improve your overall content initiatives.”

Revenue Generation: Sponsors, exhibitors, and industry partners are eager for opportunities to get involved year-round. Online marketplaces, sponsor advertising, and galleries for products and services are increasingly of interest for year-round exposure. The more networking that occurs online year-round, the more valuable your events will be.

Return on Investment: Event communities grow the value of your events. They foster and accelerate connections. They not only broaden your audience but also increase engagement among all audiences and offer new and exciting revenue opportunities. “The great thing about member-only areas is that they create exclusivity and desire to level up,” Vallaster remarked. “The general trend is that people wait until the very last minute. Habits have changed. That is where event communities can drive registration benefits. They create excitement to influence attendance at other events.”

Wrapping Up

Vallaster offered a lot of valuable information during the webinar for any organization interested in reaching its audience through event communities. From growing the value of your events to increasing engagement among all audiences, he made it clear that as organizations begin to stage hybrid and return to in-person events, the desire to connect is stronger than ever.

Click here to watch the webinar recording. To request a demo of Personify’s Community for Events, click here.

The post Webinar Recap: Supercharge Your Hybrid Event with an Event Community appeared first on Personify.

So, what happened?

Continued success is what happened. Our traditional events continued to grow in both attendance and revenue. In addition, their relative predictability and reliability made them desirable for organizations, associations and independent show organizers of all sizes, many of whom events are often a large portion of their organization’s budget.

Sure, there were years with small fluctuations by city choice, weather-related issues, or local and regional incidents that impacted a host city. Still, these were frequently acute and effected only a minuscule fraction of the events industry. For example, even shortly after September 11th, I was chairing a large outdoor, 60,000 plus attendee event, and we were able to move forward with only slight modifications to our event. We plan for these types of things – it’s what we do.

In mid-March 2020, that all changed. COVID-19 revealed that in-person events were far more fragile than anyone imagined. The New York Times quoted me last year; nobody had this in their event planning playbook. Many were forced to cancel or postpone their events with no alternative. Others with more runway were able to pivot to a virtual event, often their very first.

Most professionals were “on the job training” as they built out virtual experiences in unfamiliar and new and emerging event technology. Early on, attendees and exhibitors alike understood the challenges and want to remain involved to support the organization and event. However, all audiences had little experience in engaging in this new world.

As COVID moved from a few-week event to a full-blown global pandemic lasting through today, there have been many lessons learned and opportunities for event professionals to build their events to better weather the post-pandemic era upon us.

Bigger and Wider Audiences in the Virtual World 

The removal of many traditional in-person barriers such as time, travel and expense opened the door to wide-ranging audiences at virtual events. Countless organizers saw participation from entirely new audiences–from geographic diversity to adjacent markets, the level playing field opened unseen doors. Indeed, some of this growth can be attributed to a lower price point (sometimes free), but these new contacts represented untapped potential.

The prospect is now on organizers, membership managers and marketing teams to harness this audience going forward as they have already shown a propensity to engage virtually.

Connecting these new and existing audiences in more meaningful ways throughout the year online should generate new opportunities. Even those who may never attend an in-person event (for whatever reason) are still valuable through increased engagement with your exhibitors and sponsors, membership capacity, participation, or additional purchases with your organization.

Engagement Wins with Greater Competition 

The upside to the removal of those barriers has been the ability for more to participate virtually. The downside is the greater competition of digital experiences, both personally and professionally. This is a significant shift from competitor events rarely, if ever being in the same venue, location, dates or even times. As many are aware, larger tradeshows are often booked 5-10 years in advance to avoid competitor events and secure prime locations.

However, the technology and ability to host virtual events on short notice with no physical location anchoring them have expanded the marketplace extensively. In addition, the rising trend for online content such as webinars has created a crowded space of content, connections and commerce.

CEIR reported in December of 2020 that only 54% of registrants converted to attendees. That number is expected to decrease as events return to in-person or hybrid and virtual fatigue gains strength. What is clear is that a pre-COVID registration no longer represents a lower-funnel activity. The funnel has flipped with registration now at the top and engagement far more predictive to event success and satisfaction.

Engagement is the new currency. Regardless of approach, virtual, hybrid or in-person, to compete in this crowded space, event organizers will need to build ways to connect all the audiences pre, during, and post-event. These strategic and far more frequent interactions will not only be what attendees are looking for; they will demand it as a part of their total in-person package. Likewise, exhibitors and sponsors will also be searching for events that mobilize the movement and connect them

with their desired audiences in meaningful ways. Bottom line, you can’t just have a three-day event any longer.

How is a Community Different from an Events Community?

While it may seem obvious, communities are groups of like-minded individuals sharing common interests and goals, learning new things, solving challenges, and conducting business. It sounds like your event.

Communities have been around since man first began to walk the earth. They have grown exponentially since the advent of the internet. The adage, “birds of a feather, flock together,” is true of our networks to professional ones. Communities bring together people the way events do.

For those with shuttered in-person conferences and tradeshows, the virtual world became the only opportunity to connect with their communities. Thus, the challenge arose when attempting to take a three-day engagement and expect the same results in an online world.

An events community is not just another occasion to connect with your membership, audience, or constituents. It is a way to stay in front of them year-round. And unlike traditional communities, these pay off with in-person meetings to share those desired experiences.

But We Already Have an Online Community?

Some associations, nonprofits and organizations have been utilizing online communities for years to maximize member engagement. My colleague, Erin Sullivan, recently interviewed several successful organizations who have enabled their members, volunteers and advocates to connect, communicate and collaborate in a digital space.

An events community is separate (and for a good reason). Like all good communities, a common purpose is a foundation. Just like your event, there are many subgoals each of your unique audiences is looking to achieve. They are often far different than your existing online community.

An exhibitor or sponsor, for example, wants to promote their products or services to your attendees. Your attendees want to solve challenges and connect with other attendees. Often this aligns with your educational programming or the products and services your exhibitors and sponsors want to showcase. Forums on topics, challenges, services needed, success stories are all examples of great event communities. There may be elements only available to paid registrants, open areas to attract new attendees or exhibitors and sponsors. And since this community is open beyond your traditional membership base, it will grow in new organic ways.

Also, do not confuse the fantastic efforts of your social media team. Building a community of social media followers is not the same as creating a safe and secure space for constituents to connect via a private, online branded community. They are both designed to build brand and event awareness and increase attendance, but strategically, they need to be viewed differently.

Don’t worry if you have not tackled an association community yet. An events community is an excellent post-pandemic starting point to drive revenue and understand the power and influence a community can have for your organization. We can also help. 

Why Attendees and Exhibitors Love It

Events can be overwhelming experiences for many individuals. Meeting new people, making connections, learning new ideas and even deciding where to go to dinner in a new town – all require a great deal of effort. This is especially true when you put these expectations into a few days’ timeframe.

One thing is clear, the desire to connect is stronger than ever with those sharing similar experiences or successes and resolving related challenges. Event communities nurture and facilitate those connections pre-event, so on-site they are far more natural and more beneficial. Conversations start “It’s nice to finally meet you in person” versus “who are you and what organization are you with?” The same is true for exhibitors and sponsors. Attendees will visit a booth with knowledge and intention of a company’s products and services versus, “what do you do?”

These curated and often topic-driven connections build over time in a comfortable and safe space. And while not every topic is around content, the discussions of the best places to eat (and possibly someone to share a meal with) drives value for attendees.

And unlike a traditional conference, the benefits don’t stop once it is over if you have an events community. The connections made before and during the event now have another venue to continue those relationships, learnings and excitement from your event.

The post-event engagement is often the most critical to maximizing the investment in your in-person event. As your audiences meet again in the online world, they will extend the life of your event and build loyalty and ownership – further driving future success.

Why Speakers (and their Content) Benefit 

We have all been to a conference and walked into a session with a speaker who has little understanding of who the audience is. We have also been to an amazing session and wished we could continue the conversation far after the event. Event communities help solve these common challenges.

Much like connections and networking, having the ability to interact with speakers and content during all lifecycles of your event ultimately creates better content, more informed speakers and a greater affinity for your event. For example, speakers can monitor popular topics, challenges people are facing or even ask the audience what questions they want to be answered. In addition, speakers can modify their presentations for the most up-to-date content based on your community’s interactions.

Post-event, speakers can answer questions they could not answer live, offer post-session discussions and provide check-ins with attendees. Attendees can also post questions and watch the on-demand session if they missed that session.

Why Event Organizers Love It

There are so many benefits to event organizers beyond those listed above. Event communities increase Net Promoter Scores and retention because of the enhanced value offered to attendees. They drive additional revenue with fresh sponsorship and engagement opportunities for companies who want to interact with your key stakeholders. They also provide real-time intelligence and data on your event performance – from trending session discussions that might need a bigger room to popular locations you may want to maximize as a sponsorship opportunity. No other platform or event technology can offer this level of active data and insights in a non-obtrusive way while driving value for everyone involved.

Finally, the more engaged your audience is, they will likely attend and sponsor your other events. The more satisfied they are, the more likely they are to encourage others in their networks to become involved in your organization or attend your events.

Finally… the 365-day type of engagement every event professional has talked about for years.

Looking to build your online events community?

Watch on Demand 

The post Event Communities for Your Hybrid Events – It’s Time appeared first on Personify.

If you’re looking for more details on what an online community is and if it’s right for you, see our blog post titled, What Is An Online Community? I’ll assume that you’ve taken the time to understand the benefits of an online community for your association and nonprofit, and you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to make sure that you are set up for success. Our essential steps for building your online community include:

1. Define Your Community’s Purpose and Goals
2. Identify Your Key Stakeholders
3. Choose a Platform that Meets Your Needs
4. Plan How You’ll Structure Your Community
5. Determine Launch Date, Promotion and Onboarding Plan
6. Go Live…Then Analyze and Optimize

1. Define Your Community’s Purpose and Goals

Once you’ve decided that an online community makes sense for your organization, you will likely receive questions from colleagues and the leadership team on what the goals of the community are and how it’s different from your organization’s other channels such as your website, social media channels and more. In fact, your leadership team may ask why you cannot use a free tool such as a Facebook group to accomplish the same goals as the community platform that you want to use. You will need to articulate why it’s necessary to have a private, branded dedicated space for your users and how the community will meet your goals, whether they are maximizing engagement, driving members to take action, increasing brand loyalty to your organization, and saving your staff valuable time.

To be successful, your community’s goals need to directly support the overall goals of your organization, and you should be able to define how you’ll measure the success of the community. No two communities are the same and your goals should be unique to your organization. You may be building your online community for all members, volunteers and/or donors, or you may be setting up a community that is specific to one program or initiative within your organization.

For example, the National Association of Secondary School Principals has a community that is focused on supporting and engaging advisors for its National Honor Society program for school inductions, activities within their chapters and projects that students are involved in. In contrast, The Society of Hospital Medicine has an online community for all of their members, but they create interest groups and forums that are unique to their different membership types.

2. Identify Your Key Stakeholders

When you are in the initial phases of building an online community, it’s helpful to consider the various groups that will need to be part of the discussion about what the community should do and how it should be structured. These may vary by organization but typically consist of:

• Community Managers: These are the folks that will be approving new users, monitoring discussion boards, setting up events and making sure that users have everything they need to join and participate in the community. This may be a dedicated role within your organization, or it may be spread across a few key staff members with responsibilities that are aligned with the overall goals of the community that you previously defined.
• Teams Involved with the Community: Beyond the people that will manage the community directly, make sure to include teams and departments that will be impacted by the community and will promote, engage or analyze the community. For example, make sure to include your marketing colleagues who will help drive members, volunteers or donors to join the community in your weekly newsletter, on your association website or through other digital channels. If you will use the community to continue the conversation among attendees of your annual conference, ensure that your events team is able to provide input on the community. And include your IT team to ensure that metrics and engagement data from the community can be synced with AMS or CRM platform to have a full picture of your membership.
• Leadership: Don’t forget about your leadership team. Obtaining buy-in from your organization’s leaders is not only helpful to ensuring that you get approval to move forward with the community initiative as a whole, but that they’re engaged from the start. According to a report by the Community Roundtable, in 58 percent of the best-performing communities, the organization’s CEO is an active participant.

3. Choose a Platform that Meets Your Needs

There are many options available when it comes to selecting a platform and building your online community. It’s important to think about your user needs and community goals when evaluating software options. Here are some questions to consider:

• Will you need to be able to create sub-groups within your organization for specific types of users to connect, learn and share with one another? If so, custom content permissions can help you tie specific information and actions with distinct groups of users.
• Will your users share photos, videos and other types of multimedia?
• How will you organize content that is shared within your community? Do you need a resource gallery to organize and tag different types of assets?
• Do you want the ability to incentivize and reward those who are engaging often in the community? Badging, points-tracking and leaderboards can help cultivate super fans and reward them for sharing their knowledge in the community.
• How will users be notified when content is published? Will they receive email alerts, and can users customize the type of alerts they receive?
• How will members or volunteers sign into the community? Do you want to leverage a Single Sign On (SSO) so that users have the same credentials whether they’re logging into your website, community or other platforms?

If you’re looking for more details on how to select the right Community vendor, check out our Technology Buying Guide.

4. Plan How You’ll Structure the Community

Once you’ve chosen a partner, you’ll work together to align on how to structure the online community to meet your needs. There are many questions that your software vendor will ask to ensure that you are set up for success and they may include:

Public vs. Private: When you’re building your online community, you’ll need to think about if anyone can join your community or if you want to restrict access to members only. The latter option provides a good incentive for members to see more value in joining (and remaining) a member of your organization. However, it may be beneficial for volunteer- or donor-based organizations to have a public community and reduce the barriers to join the community.

How You’ll Elicit Engagement: In the early days of your community, it will be important to guide members on how they can participate and engage. How will community managers elicit input and ensure visibility for your key programs and activities? You can leverage the newsfeed within your community to make sure that users see what’s most important in the community. Your community managers should analyze engagement within the community and regularly make recommendations to optimize. But it’s important to start with a thoughtful approach that is intuitive and easy to navigate by your users.

Align on Team Responsibilities: Revisit your list of internal stakeholders from earlier in the process and make sure it is clear who will be responsible for approving new users, moderating discussion boards, helping users navigate the community and more. The community should not be a siloed activity that a specific team or department is responsible for but, rather, multiple teams—including your organization’s leaders—should help cultivate and grow engagement within the community.

Set up Gamification: Will you assign badges for different types of members, volunteers or donors? How will users accrue points for various activities and types of engagement?

5. Determine Launch Date, Promotion and Onboarding Plan

You’ve got the building blocks in place and are ready to bring your community out into the world! Here are some things to keep in mind as you are working towards the big day:

Soft Launch: Consider hosting a soft launch with a group of members who are willing to provide input on their initial experiences. They can help you look for bugs or other issues and their comments and likes will help generate content to make the community feel vibrant when all members are invited in and to have some experts help them along the way.

Test Everything: Testing is a crucial piece of your launch strategy and should include all of your internal stakeholders making sure that their respective parts of the community are working correctly. You’ll need to test things that are internal and external to the community, including how community alerts route to users and relevant spam controls.

Promotion: It’s great that your marketing and membership teams have been part of the discussion from day one, because you’ll need their help to maximize visibility for the new community. Connect with those teams on what the full promotion plan will look like including dedicated emails, mentions within your newsletter, a featured section on your organization’s website and more.

Onboarding: Make sure to think about what the experience will be like for new users. While some of your members may know how to get active immediately, others may require some coaching on how to participate. With a platform like Personify Community, you can use onboarding tours to walk users through the process of getting the most out of your community with guided experiences.

6. Go Live…then Analyze and Optimize

You’ve made it to the finish line and you’re ready to welcome new users, after you have spent all this time carefully cultivating and building your online community! After your new community goes live, there will of course be small things to tweak and fix as people start participating and engaging in your community.

But it’s important to set up regular check-ins to evaluate how your community is growing and helping you meet the goals that you defined in step one. I encourage you to set quarterly review cycles with the group of key stakeholders to review engagement data and revisit the key performance indicators that you set up at the start of this process. If you have a solid integration between your community and CRM or AMS platform, you can understand how engagement in the community contributes to membership renewals, increased donations, or other organizational objectives.

These review sessions will help you identify and prioritize optimizations within the community to ensure that you’re meeting your goals and achieving the ROI to justify the investment of your community platform.

Learn More About Building an Online Community

If you’re interested in hearing more about our strategy and approach to online communities, watch my recent discussion with Benjamin Morton. We explore the benefits of communities for associations and nonprofits and reveal strategies to get your community off on the right foot and keep it going strong. In this session, you’ll learn:

• What an online community is and how it plays an important role in your engagement strategy that is unique from your organization’s other digital tools
• A strategy to launch a new community that will make your members and stakeholders feel welcome and understand how to get involved
• Essential best practices in online community management for organizations of all sizes
• A walkthrough of Personify’s community platform and how to bring these best practices to life within the software
• And much, much more.

Watch Now

The post An Essential Guide to Building an Online Community appeared first on Personify.

We are big believers in the value of digital communities. Sure – we all utilize a variety of channels to connect to coworkers, friends, volunteers and constituents, including email, phone, video conferencing, text and social media. And before COVID-19, we could network with like-minded professionals and grow business relationships at in-person events, conferences, trade shows and happy hours.

But, unlike these other channels, an online community uniquely provides a space for people with a common interest, product use or membership to gather, generate and consume content, and access relevant tools and information long after an in-person event ends or well beyond an email thread. It’s been referred to as a Third Place—different from your two primary places: home, and work or school, where you are among your tribe in a safe space.

That’s exactly what we want for our new client community. We’ve designed and built a space where we hope all will feel welcome and valued, but we need YOUR help to grow the community into a thriving ecosystem of problem solvers, game changers and bold innovators.

Just in case you’re still on the fence about joining the community, here are a few things to consider…

Top Reasons to Join:

• To connect with like-minded association, nonprofit and event professionals who are using Personify solutions to advance their mission and achieve their goals
• To access product release notes, documentation and user guides all in one place
• To receive exclusive content that you can only find within the community, plus direct access to Personify staff and experts
• It’s FREE!

While we’ve done our best to thoughtfully design a community that’s easy to navigate and welcoming to all, I know it can still feel overwhelming to adjust to a new space. It’s similar to that feeling of walking into a party 20 minutes too early and not knowing who to talk to, or if you should make yourself useful or just linger in the background until the party livens up.

Let me be the first to welcome you to the PersoniParty with a few tips to make yourself at home.

Tips to make yourself at home in the new community:

• Take the welcome tour. Upon logging in for the first time, you’ll be prompted to take a welcome tour. The tour will walk you through how to start a new discussion or participate in existing discussions, browse and RSVP to upcoming events, and set up your profile.
• Make Connections. Browse the member directory to connect with colleagues and Personify staff.
• Join the conversation. Browse the discussion boards or start a new discussion! Do you have a problem you hope to solve with one of your existing solutions? Are you looking for advice on how to improve staff adoption of the new interface? Do you have an idea for a product enhancement or innovation? Don’t be shy! We’re all (Personi)family here.

Get started*

*Please note that the community is for Personify clients only. If you’re not a member of the Personify family (yet!) but are interested in learning more about our approach to online communities, please feel free to reach out.

The post We’re Glad You’re Here: Join Personify’s New Client Community! appeared first on Personify.

As I have started my virtual meet-ups, webinars and as the host of the Planet Leadership Podcast I have asked, “If you could go back to the second week of March before the COVID-19 lock-down, what would you do differently?”   

While I would have expected most event professionals to say things like “purchased the pandemic insurance cancellation rider” or “update their playbook to include such a catastrophic event” (or at least “buy more toilet paper,”) the first answer has been around cherishing those face-to-face interactions with colleagues, friends and family a little more. Having watched my daughter hug her grandmother (with masks, of course) and cry, having not seen her in person in months, it hit home even more.  

It only makes sense. We are driven professionally by those same motivators of face-to-face interactions that we naturally crave.  

Take Action

While we are all working to figure out the future of events in the online, in-person and hybrid worlds, I want to challenge us all to take the time to reimagine our events. We cannot continue to lick our wounds and hope for a better outcome. Hope is not a strategy since we will most likely be co-existing with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. 

Let’s DO some of the things we have all talked about (myself included as an event organizer) forever. Year-long engagement is something every organizer has wanted to maximize for their events. Ironically, our in-person success has hindered moving this from the wish list to the to-do list.  

What is a Community?

It is essential to broaden our definition of a community to incorporate all channels – events, social networks and online communities. Much like events, communities can be social places to learn, network, conduct business and share information or education. They create a place that allows constituents to interact with two trusted sources – an organization, association, or event they have an existing relationship with and their peers.  

That trust creates a safe place for participation. And fortunately for organizers, audiences (of all types and ages) are already conditioned and accustomed to using digital tools to feel more connected and engaged. According to Statista, Facebook (a type of community) has 22% of female and 15% of male users that are over the age of 45.  

Why Now?

People want or need to solve problems. Now more than ever, it is why they seek out events, networks or online communities. For event professionals, in-person experiences were the primary moment to fulfill this need. For decades, events have successfully connected audiences with content (education), and commerce (buyers and suppliers) and their peers with little interruption or decline.   

Every activity has been driven around engagement in such a limited amount of time, typically 72 hours. The dramatic and sudden inability to meet in-person because of COVID-19 has highlighted the risks associated with placing the full weight of a successful engagement strategy on a singular activity – meeting in-person and the potential rewards of having a highly engaged community around your events.  

Delivering Value

Having conducted hundreds of focus groups with attendees and exhibitors, the biggest requests of these audiences is two-fold. One is the desire to be more involved in shaping the event and the other is extending the event beyond the few days that people are together in-person.   

Why? Because every audience invests a lot of resources, time, and effort to travel and attend an in-person event. Any way all audiences can feel more “invested” and “engaged” in your event, the more value (and satisfaction) it will drive.  

On the education side, a community allows engagement with speakers and other attendees around the topics and issues important to the audience. Post-event, and even more importantly, learners want a forum to unpack those learnings and extend the value of the educational content. 

For exhibitors and sponsors, the ability to connect and showcase products and services before the event generates greater brand awareness and creates even more meaningful in-person interactions on your show floor. 

But Wait, There’s More

While it is cliché, there are so many other positives to list here by creating an events community.  

I recently hosted a discussion on these topics:

• Education– How to leverage educational content and speakers for increased engagement, higher session satisfaction and improved attendance for webinars and virtual and hybrid events.
• Networking– How to foster genuine and meaningful networking among various affinity groups, on relevant topics as well as products and services (from your exhibitors and industry partners) before, during and after your events.
• Increase Attendance – How events communities boost attendance and drive earlier registration with less marketing resources.
• Revenue – How to monetize your community and involve key exhibitors and sponsors in the development, growth and success of your community.
• Market Intelligence – Understand the real-time information, analytics and data that event organizers can now have at their disposal with an events community.

So, let’s take this “pause” and start to think about how you can create a year-long event community. Not only will you find that it will increase engagement and satisfaction, but you will also better support all your event formats, virtual, hybrid or in-person. 

Watch Now

The post Stop Talking. Start Doing. Community Engagement for Events appeared first on Personify.

Well, about ten years ago, I was at my significant other’s apartment on the fourth floor in North Austin, and just to paint you a picture this is the same apartment complex where they filmed office space.

I walked down the four flights of stairs to the parking lot to get something out of my car, and when I came back up the stairs and walked into the apartment, I immediately felt like something was terribly off. It probably had something to do with a strange woman laying on a blanket in the middle of the living room floor wearing nothing but a puzzled look on her face. To my horror, I realized that I walked into the wrong apartment. I was one floor off.

Well, that was ten years ago, and since then I’ve walked into nearly 100 strangers’ houses.

But don’t worry! That’s because I’m an assistant to the Weird Homes Tour.

Weird Homes Tour is a for profit social benefit company that works with homeowners across the United States in order to open up their weird, otherworldly, strange, interesting houses up to the public to tour for one day. So yeah, I’ve walked into a lot of strangers’ houses and met a lot of interesting hosts. I’ve soaked up the vibe of a lot of these spaces. People and spaces that have:

• inspired me,
• intrigued me,
• creeped me out (but in the best way),
• overwhelmed me,
• and made me feel cozy and welcome.

And, as a community consultant, I’ve also walked into quite a few online communities. What I’ve learned is that whether physical or virtual, that feeling you get when you walk through the front door sets the tone for the remainder of your experience there. This pivotal moment is important and should not be left up to chance. It should be strategic and well-crafted. It should have purpose and be predictable.

Now, the worst feeling in the world is to walk into a community that you fully expect to belong to and feel safe in, but instead feel out of place – like you’ve just walked into the wrong apartment at the absolutely wrong time.

So…what feelings does your community inspire in your members?

Well, the feeling we WANT to inspire in our members is the feeling of walking into a good friend’s house for the very first time but feeling like you’ve been there a million times before. That feeling of instant belonging, that sense of emotional safety. The sense that you can be yourself and be vulnerable. That feeling of being seen and heard and that you matter. That inspired, excited feeling of wanting to learn and grow and share with other people.

These are all ingredients that make up what I call a “community soup.”

The sense of community theory, which was founded by McMillan and Chavis, is vital to our work. It’s the engine of all communities. Organizations want members to have a sense of community because research shows that it may lead to increased activity, investment, engagement and member retention. So yeah, it’s an easy sell. Yes, we want a sense of community.

Except, it’s not easy to measure. How do you measure a feeling? How do we tie specific metrics to a feeling?

We as community managers and builders are consumed with wanting to correlate specific metrics to a sense of community.

Metrics are extremely important in telling us the potential for engagement, but not necessarily the real picture. You may have a high number of page visits and post views, and from that you can infer that the content is useful, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the content is contributing to a member’s sense of community.

How do we know if our members have a sense of community?

Luckily, the sense of community index (SCI) tool, which is a survey based on McMillan and Chavis’s decades of research, can be used to measure our member’s sense of community level. However, even with this wonderful tool, there are challenges.

1. Sample size. We send out surveys like the SCI, but often we don’t get enough responses for the required sample size. For example, a community of 36,000 members will need to have approximately 600 to 2,000 survey responses in order to have a margin of error and confidence level in the results to hang our hat on. What should not happen is getting a couple responses back and then make sweeping changes to a community platform.
2. Low Sense of Community. An inherit issue with this approach is that members with a low sense of community many not fill out the survey in the first place! Members need to be in the community long enough in order to measure their sense of community but by then you might have already lost them.
3. Now what? Assuming that you are able to obtain enough submissions and the results tell you that you have a sense of community problem. Now what? The survey results aren’t going to tell you where in your process or platform to make changes.

So, in a way, metrics and survey results can be like DNA at a crime scene. You may have the DNA, but that doesn’t quite mean you understand the motives and can understand the bigger picture.

How do you find out what your members aren’t telling you?

In addition to your metrics and using a validated survey tool like the SCI survey, my proposal is to take the SCI tool and flip the script. What I mean by that is to take the survey items and turn them into a checklist for yourself as you walk through the community and view it through your members’ eyes. However, in order to effectively do this, you must first understand your members to the core. You must know that your members’ goals may not be the same as your organization’s goals. Identify the reasons why your members walked through that door in the first place. Know their hopes and aspirations. Understand what motivates them to want to learn and grow. And it doesn’t hurt to also understand the problems they’re facing in their industry.

Along with this, as a community admin, you are wearing all the hats. You’re the all-seeing all-knowing god of the community. You’re standing on top of this mountain and have this 5,000-foot view of your community, but that also means you may not see the minutia of your members’ day to day life. Instead of not being able to see the forest for the trees, you may not be able to see the trees for the forest. In order to see your community through your members’ eyes, you must shed your bias. And maybe even your ego if you’ve had a hand in building the community from the ground up. And just acknowledging your bias is a positive step.

So, without bias and with a deep understanding of your members to the core, reverse engineer the SCI tool and use it as a guide as you walk through this house you’ve built with your members’ perspective, and it may reveal issues and opportunities that you might not have seen previously.

In the next post, we’ll practice this approach.

The post Sense of Community: Find Out What Your Members Aren’t Telling You appeared first on Personify.

The goal of our community is to make sure that “no post goes unanswered.”

Earlier this year, my colleagues and I had a chance to sit down with Lacey Horta, a Senior Support Specialist at the Canadian Cancer Society, and this statement about how they approach managing their online community really stuck with me.

About the Canadian Cancer Society

The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) is a national, community-based organization dedicated to improving and saving the lives of people affected by cancer. They have taken a comprehensive approach to fight cancer, including:

• Funding research on all types of cancer
• Educating Canadians about early diagnosis and prevention
• Providing support services
• Serve as a political advocate on cancer-related issues

Additionally, CCS is Canada’s largest national charitable fundraiser of research into all types of cancer. At CCS, Lacey and her team enable connections and support among the organization’s members across the country. One of the ways in which they do this is through their online support community, Cancer Connection, which is powered by Personify Community.

About Cancer Connection

This community was created to support not only people with a cancer diagnosis but also their loved ones and currently has more than 8,000 members. Community members can start or join existing discussions categorized by topic or cancer stage, join groups to find like-minded members and have a safe space to discuss difficult issues, exchange messages of support with other community members and even share personal journals in the form of blog posts.

Recently, CCS launched a community mentor program that empowers superusers within the community to gain more education about the platform and welcome new members and help them navigate through the different resources available online. CCS recently conducted a survey among community members and found that 97 percent felt that the community was a place they could trust. This is a tremendous accomplishment and speaks to the value that the organization has created in its online community.

The mission of the Cancer Connection community is to make sure that people who are experiencing cancer do not have to go through it alone. It’s crucial to connect them to other people who are going through something similar so that they can feel supported and hear stories of hope.

One of the things I love about working at Personify is that every day I get to help our nonprofit and association clients achieve their missions and better serve their members. While I’m certainly familiar with the impact an online community can make – as it drives much of what we do – I don’t always get to hear the personal stories of how these communities can truly transform lives.

Online Community Misperceptions

We were especially grateful to have had the opportunity to sit down with Lacey recently as she shared stories of hope she’s witnessed within Cancer Connection. She shared that a common misperception about online communities for specific health concerns is that community members don’t have a support network outside of the community. However, that’s usually not true. Members of Cancer Connection often have a support network filled with friends and family members.

They turn to the online community because they don’t have people in their support network that are going through the same experience of having a cancer diagnosis. So, the community can be really powerful in connecting individuals that would otherwise have a challenging time finding one another.

Lacey sat down with us at PersoniFest to share how the organization uses Personify Community to connect those affected by cancer to one another and shared a powerful story of acceptance and inclusivity.

Hear Lacey’s Story

The post Meet our Latest Game Changer: the Canadian Cancer Society appeared first on Personify.

February 19, 2019– Austin, Texas – Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations and nonprofit organizations, today announced that the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) is its first client to build its operations strategy with the full Personify Platform including Personify360, Personify Community, Personify Hub, a2z Events and Wild Apricot.

NASSP, the nation’s foremost organization of school leaders and home to the National Honor Society (NHS), has been a Personify client since January 2010. The organization engages more than 45,000 principals, assistant principals and other school leaders annually in membership and programs. Personify sits at the core of NASSP’s operations and staff depend on it daily to process thousands of transactions including membership, subscriptions as well as sales orders. In addition, NASSP leaders use Personify to make data-driven decisions to drive the organization forward.

“NASSP is truly committed to building an active and vibrant membership base to empower, educate and connect schools and student leaders,” said Sarah Schmall, Vice President of Client Success at Personify. “They continue to make technology investments that allow them to be at the forefront of the association market and provide tremendous value to members and constituents.”

To improve visibility across the organization, NASSP recently added Personify Hub to its technology stack. An integration platform as a service (iPaaS), the Hub will allow NASSP to streamline data flow and workstreams across multiple sources including Salesforce, Phone2Action, Personify Community and Core Achieve LMS.

While NASSP’s recent addition of the Hub is designed to improve internal operations, the organization has long trusted Personify to create a meaningful experience for its constituents. NASSP leverages a2z Events by Personify to manage its national conference exhibitions. The organization engages NHS advisers in its online community powered by Personify Community. A few NASSP local chapters use Wild Apricot which will strengthen the relationships between the national organization and its state affiliate organizations. All of NASSP’s stakeholder data, eBusiness and analytics are held within Personify360, which serves as the organization’s central CRM.

“Personify’s tools support NASSP’s activities in many different ways, which places them at the heart of our operations”, said Meta Tshilombo, Director of Information Services at NASSP. “We track membership and sales transactions, run our vibrant NHS Adviser Online Community, manage our National Principals Conference exhibitions and more through the Personify Platform.”

About Personify

Personify is the market-leading Constituent Management and Engagement (CME) platform that empowers organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. For over 20 years, Personify has served as the technology foundation for organizations of all sizes from the largest associations, charities, YMCAs and JCCs to emerging nonprofits. For more information, visit https://personifycorp.com/.

About NASSP

The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) is the leading organization of and voice for principals and other school leaders across the United States. NASSP seeks to transform education through school leadership, recognizing that the fulfillment of each student’s potential relies on great leaders in every school committed to the success of each student. Reflecting its long-standing commitment to student leadership development, NASSP administers the National Honor Society, National Junior Honor Society, National Elementary Honor Society and National Student Council. For more information, visit https://www.nassp.org/.

The post National Association of Secondary School Principals Becomes First Client to Leverage Full Personify Platform appeared first on Personify.

• Will anyone log in, let alone participate?
• Will our staff need to prompt every discussion?
• Will our members, of their own volition, really connect with each other?

In an interview for CMXHub, sociologist and strategist Danny Spitzberg says those fears can be assuaged with trust:

“What I think businesses can eventually get their head around is that people will participate. There will be user-generated content. There will be all these things that might match up with some of your metrics or business objectives generally. You have to suspend your disbelief that those things won’t happen and just trust people radically.”

You heard it: Building a community is a radical act.

Having an organizational culture of trusting your members is important for community. But community also requires building trust between members. Being part of a community, after all, means sacrificing a sliver of one’s own individuality in favor of a shared identity. Your members need to trust each other enough to know the sacrifice will be worth it.

How do you go about building trust? Modeling authenticity is key. Community managers can build trust by listening, sharing and responding in their own voice, by admitting mistakes, and by asking for help. But in addition to those very important ways of being, there’s another age-old way to build trust on a more massive scale: by facilitating ritual experiences.

Here’s the thing: studies have shown that groups of people who participated together in a completely bogus ritual trusted each other more than those in control groups did. For example, in one study, participants in an invented ritual were more likely to share their own money with other ritual participants than with non-participants.

A different study showed that participating in rituals seems to enhance the quality of an experience. Brands like Oreo and Guinness, writes social psychologist Heidi Grant, have smartly built ritual into their marketing campaigns, “created added value right out of thin air” or, out of the twist of a cookie or the careful pour of a beer.

Think about rituals that you engage in as part of a community – physical, online or both. Does your organization take every new hire out to lunch, or induct them with a common project? What are the shared experiences that bind members of your association together at the annual conference? What do members of your advocacy group do together to celebrate gains (or acknowledge losses)?

New online community members should have these kinds of experiences, too. We need to invent new rituals where they may not exist, leaning on organizational culture, community mission and vision and member personas to make them on-tone, delightful and organic. We need to listen for and gently acknowledge and elevate any member ritual practices that arise organically. (If your member base has already created their own common rituals, great job!)

Joining a community – really joining it, on an identity level – is no small transition for members. How does your community celebrate every crossing of that threshold? How do you mark the passages and milestones that take place beyond it? Helping shape and illuminate the unique rituals in your community can bring delight to members and add another layer of meaning to membership, building trust for the group as a whole.

The post Radical Acts: Rituals and Building Trust in Community appeared first on Personify.