“Sometimes you want to go…where everybody knows your name.”

A vibrant digital space. A branded, online destination. A digital collaboration tool. You may have heard these descriptions before to describe an online community. But what is an online community, really? And why do you need one?

Simply put, an online community is a digital platform for a group of people with a common interest, passion or goal that connect and communicate with one another.

An online community connects like-minded individuals or people who have similar experiences. You are likely already part of one or more online communities such as a LinkedIn group for your profession, a Facebook group for your family, or a Nextdoor group for your neighborhood. Your community helps you meet people like you, keeps you informed and involves you in important issues or activities.

For association members, they turn to online communities to find like-minded and purpose-drive people like themselves, plus many are finding year-round support from their associations, additional member benefits like exclusive learning courses and job postings, and engagement for annual conferences and events.

How Private, Branded Online Communities Differ From Social Media Groups

You may have an online community set up through a Facebook group, LinkedIn group or other social media platform. While these communities can help engage with people and achieve your goals, they do have limitations and I’ll share a few key differences between them and a private, branded community:

Increased control & security

If you create an online community on a social media site or another open-source platform, it’s important to understand that your community is subject to any and all of the changes that the social media implements with little say or input on your end.

Additionally, your ability to control the way that users’ data and information is used—as well as your own—is fairly limited. This has become an increasing concern for many organizations given the data hacks on social platforms, like the 2021 Facebook data breach where 530 million users’ personal information was exposed. When you create a private, branded member community, privacy and security are a top priority and you’ll have increased control over how much information to collect from users and where it will be used.

Better access to data

With a private, branded online community, you can have full access to engagement data from your community, which you can combine with Google Analytics and your organization’s internal data to have a full view of your members, volunteers and/or donors. You can use it to track progress towards your goals and understand how the specific contributions of your online community. If your community is hosted on a social media platform, you’ll have limited access to engagement data and be unable to pull reports or leverage metrics to see how your community helps meets your organization’s goals.

More robust engagement tools

A private, branded online community allows you to set up forums, discussions and groups that are tailored to specific topics or needs within your organization. You can gamify the experience with badges, leaderboards and contests to increase engagement and reward your most active contributors. You can also crowdsource user-generated content and host meetings and events with live chat and embedded videos.

Organizational efficiencies & streamlined communication

Any association considering launching or refreshing their online community should think about how members would enjoy their community and what they want, first. But many organizations are also seeing benefits to their organizations’ processes and communication after implementing an online community as well.

The team at the National Association of Nutrition Professionals (NANP) saw an opportunity to centralize the communication between the team and with the board by storing their documents in their online community. This allowed them to collaborate with each other seamlessly, create private files and discussion forums that gave the right access to the appropriate people and it saved them $1,600 per year as they were able to evolve from using Dropbox.

Why Do Associations and Nonprofits Need an Online Community?

Your organization has a wealth of channels where you can reach and engage with your members, volunteers, donors and other stakeholders. These may include your organization’s website, social media channels, digital newsletter, mobile app, and in-person or virtual events. Your online community plays a crucial role in serving as a collaboration hub to connect people that engage across those channels and across different programs or parts of your organization.

It plays a valuable role apart from your organization’s website because your members, volunteers and/or donors are the ones who are creating content, asking questions and hosting discussions or events—in addition to your staff and community managers. Your online community not only keep constituents engaged but also provides feedback on which programs and tactics are most effective, identifies gaps or opportunities to deliver more value to users and informs the strategic direction of your organization.

And members are telling us they want to connect with their association or nonprofit via an online community.

In Personify’s latest research report, The Journey Ahead: The Future of Associations, Nonprofits and Events, more than half of all survey respondents shared how important it is for an association to provide digital networking and an online community for members. The survey found that a private, online member community may be an underutilized tool, with less than 20 percent of association staff members saying that they use this channel while more than a third of members said that they would like to engage here.

Is an Online Community Right For You?

There are many things to keep in mind about what an online community is and what it is not. First off, it’s a tool that requires weekly (and more often, daily) care and upkeep. It’s crucial to think about the team resources that will be needed to manage the community including adding and approving new users, posting discussion topics and meeting invites, adding resources and more. Some people decide to hire or recruit a dedicated Community Manager, but many associations make it a tag-team effort. 

It is not a self-sustaining solution that will be run completely by your user base. In fact, G2 reports that executive buy-in is essential to the success of an online community.

Additionally, an online community should be an essential part of your technology stack and it should have an approved, operational and measurable strategy. It should not be a standalone tool and you should be leveraging data from your online community to inform other communication tactics and the strategic direction of your organization.

A measurable strategy means that you’ve taken the time to align on your goals, metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for how you’ll measure the success of your online community. And it’s important that they’re part of any initial discussions with a software provider and serve as the building blocks for creating and implementing a community that meets your unique needs.

Keep in mind that no two communities are built the same. Each organization has unique reasons for launching an online community, including how they’re looking to engage their audience and the long-term approach.

Additional Resources

If you’re interested in learning more about online communities, we have a wealth of resources for how to get started with one, including case studies from several associations and nonprofits, best practices and more.

Also, if you’re ready to get started with your own online community, learn more about Personify Community.

The post What Is An Online Community? appeared first on Personify.

By: Ashly Stewart, Content Marketing Manager

The Current State of Online Communities 

Tools & Strategies to Enhance Online Communities

Demographic Statistics about Online Communities

Community Member Behaviors 

• 77% of users join online communities to discover new things. 

• 66% of users join online communities to connect with people who have similar interests.  

• Visitors visit the website more times than entry generators, they open few topics and add few contents.   

• Research found that more than half of users in the U.S. are actively looking for product recommendations on community sites. 

Preparing to launch your online community? 

If you’re getting ready to launch a new online community or you’re rethinking giving your online community a refresh, check out our guide to growing your online community in the first 90 days after launch.  

And please let us know if we can help you connect with the members in your community by reaching out today.  

Sources:  

1) Mobile Marketing 

2) Sage Journals 

3)  Reddit Case Study  

5) The Nonprofit Times 

6) Regent University  

7) Hubspot  

9) Personify  

The post 15+ Top Stats about Online Communities 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.

Focused young gentlemen engaged in online event communities.

Ironically, event professionals are an industry that is changing and an industry that never seems to change. Like many black swan events, there are often long-term changes to the way businesses operate and consumers act.

According to a recent McKinsey and Company study,  90% of executives said they expect the fallout from COVID-19 to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years. Those same executives also reported that the pandemic would have a lasting impact on their customer’s needs and 75% said the crisis would create new growth opportunities. Could online event communities be the answer?

So, what will stick with events? 

What continues to gain traction across event manager blogs, discussion groups and industry chatter is harnessing online event communities’ power. Ironic since it is something event professionals (and audiences) have been discussing for many years, well before the pandemic. Having conducted event focus groups for years, it was common feedback. Regardless of the industry or event size, every group desired to extend their three days to year-long engagement. From the connections they made, the business conducted, the sense of community they often felt at events to the learnings, it was always an utmost desire to “keep it going.”

It makes sense given the investment of resources (both in time and money) for a three-day event. We have all been to a great session and wished we could continue the conversations with the speakers and other attendees. Most of us have gone alone to a conference and wished there was an easy way to connect to other attendees in advance to meet up on a topic or just a social meal. Exhibitors and sponsors would always prefer to start a conversation at the event with “it’s great to meet you finally” versus hear “what do you do?” The list of benefits and examples of why we should leverage event communities are endless.

So why now?

As the pandemic has endured (on gone on further than anyone ever expected), organizations realized that year-round engagement is not only an insurance policy for the risks singular in-person events can often face; it is what everyone wants in their events. As new and previously untapped audiences have attended virtual-only events, organizers are scrambling to find ways to extend and increase engagement, networking and connections as the core value propositions that in-person events were so effective at generating pre-pandemic. While everyone seems to agree that virtual events will not replace in-person events, the value of events is far more than just the in-person interactions in such a short window of time.

So how do online event communities work with hybrid events?

When it comes to hybrid events, in-person events will be the centerpieces of the virtual experiences surrounding physical events. For many organizations, the most effective virtual component will be event-branded online communities.

In our latest research study (LINK), 44% of association members shared that it’s become more important to have an online community in 2021 than in previous years. However, we found that only a tiny percent of association staff report using one. So, it not only serves to benefit your events, but it will also benefit your organization.

Sounds great, but why will it work?

Audiences are already conditioned and accustomed to using digital tools to feel more connected and engaged with their peers. Peers are one of the most trusted sources in digital spaces.

I travel a great deal for both work and personal enjoyment. When I am looking for a restaurant recommendation in an unfamiliar town, I turn to Facebook over Yelp. While Yelp provides me an overview of what the public thinks of a dining establishment, I have been in cities where Taco Bell is highly rated. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Chalupa, but my friends will make recommendations for a small local Mexican restaurant versus a chain. Or since I am a bit of a foodie, a unique local establishment, or some great BBQ. My peers will also likely know I am allergic to seafood, so they will not make that recommendation either. My peers and colleagues will better serve me, and I will trust them more than the general public.

Association and event communities have built-in trust because of familiarity, privacy protection, and community ownership. Just this past week, another Facebook data breach compromised 533 million users phone numbers and personal information was leaked. The more trust a participant feels, the more likely they are to freely engage with others.

Even if they have only attended your event once, they will likely already feel connected to the event and its community. If it is a new attendee, they will want to engage this community as quickly as possible to make the time most valuable. These are not strangers meeting online; they are a group of individuals with a common goal and interest – your event and your organization.

Will this help our in-person events?

Absolutely. Event advocacy or net promoter score (NPS) via online channels is a universal driver of attendance. And since most people attend events to solve problems, make connections, conduct business and gain knowledge and skills – your online community becomes an extension of why they already attend. This past year, our research (LINK) has shown this has grown more important, with 45% of respondents saying a chance to learn career skills or certifications is more important than in 2020. Followed quickly behind is 46% who said it was more important to network with others in-person and 45% who shared being able to network with others via digital platforms & communities.  We have all heard of FOMO.  Event communities can create it by offering “member or registered attendee only” areas, special events and sessions only available to registrants. That exclusivity will drive event registration sooner to benefit from the content, sharing and networking reserved for “club members.”

These connections and interactions create a circular loop: People want to meet the people with whom they interact in an online community. When they connect and engage at events, they contribute more to your online community in authentic, relevant and ongoing discussions.

Can we generate revenue with an online event community?

Of course! Online event communities offer companies year-long opportunities to remain in front and engaged with their target markets (your attendees). Companies can participate in many ways, between highly valuable thought leadership sponsorships and events to online advertising opportunities.

Some event organizers only allow participation in their event communities to those who exhibit or sponsor this in-person event (to drive in-person revenue), while others are extending their reach to those who may not attend in person but still want exposure to your audiences.

Regardless of your approach, there are many ways to cover the cost of the platform via sponsorships.

Are there other benefits of online event communities?

While this list extends beyond this, here a few:

Content – Most events are filled with great content. Content that expires moments after it is presented. An online community maximizes the usage of existing educational content and speakers for days, weeks or even months afterward. Some will include this as a member benefit moving forward, while others may charge for it.

Networking – Connecting our audiences has been a challenge this past year. Well-built event communities create curated and meaningful interactions and connections around affinity. Examples include topics of interest, job role/title, products, services, geography, skills, etc. And for introverts who may feel less comfortable networking in-person, a community provides a level playing field and safe space for digital networking year-long.

Data and Insights – As we learned with a year of virtual events, the data became highly valuable. Your online events community is not only a place to connect; it’s a goldmine for data, interaction insights and market and member intelligence. The data will be a real-time data source not only to plan your in-person event but can also help organizations strategically plan for 2022 and beyond.

Ready to learn more about building an online community?

If you’re interested in hearing more about our strategy and approach to online communities, watch our recent discussion with Personify’s Erin Sullivan and Benjamin Morton. During the webinar, they 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 Online Events Communities – Why Now? 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.

These last few months have been

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the past few months educating yourself on social justice issues, searching for organizations to donate and support, and aligning yourself with causes that can make a difference in your community… while also taking precautions to limit exposure to the Coronavirus.  

According to a recent New York Times article, Color of Change, one of the largest online racial justice groups in the U.S., went from having 1.7 million to 7 million members and received “hundreds of thousands of individual donations” in a matter of days. On Blackout Tuesday, a day where people went dark on social media to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, ActBlue, the fundraising platform used by Black Lives Matter and other organizations, reported $41 million in donations within a single day. And the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a small community bail project, raised $35 million in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, which overwhelmed the small organization. 

Many political activist and racial justice groups have been flooded with requests from volunteers, donors and supporters—which is great news for these nonprofits. But it’s also a challenge for these organizations to engage new donors quickly, provide them with resources and education, and reassure them that their chosen organization is ready to meet this moment and is the right group for them to invest their time and resources. 

We’ve rounded up 5 tips to help you mobilize your movement and inspire action from your supporters: 

1. Make Newcomers Feel Included 

 When a volunteer or donor first joins your organization, their first interactions with your team will play a critical role in laying the foundation for their future relationship with you. How are you currently onboarding new constituents in the first few weeks, and how are you getting them involved immediately? This is particularly important in the digital world, because new volunteers can’t meet people at your volunteer info session or happy hour like they could in a pre-COVID world.   

Consider enrolling new members, volunteers and donors in a nurture drip campaign with emails to help them get to know your organization, activities and programming available. Invite newbies to your online community and create dedicated discussions and virtual events to help newcomers meet one another.  

2. Keep People Informed About Issues They Care About 

 People are raising their hands to learn more about your organization because you’ve demonstrated expertise and a commitment to a topic that is near and dear to their hearts. Make that relationship with the donor or volunteer more valuable by curating unique and relevant experiences that are designed to keep them informed and advance your mission—whether you’re focused on amping up fundraising efforts, increasing attendance at an upcoming event or growing your volunteer base. 

Rather than notifying your supporters about every activity in your organization and potentially overwhelming them, take advantage of a preferences center as part of your member management system or email marketing platform to deliver the content that will be most meaningful to them. You can also use newsfeeds and personalized content within your online community and virtual events platform to tailor content to their interests. 

3. Create Experiences to Engage Them Year-Round 

Many nonprofits and groups traditionally build their outreach calendar around a few key events that take place throughout the year such as an annual conference, fundraising event, 5K and Giving Tuesday. But, if I’m looking for a positive in our current environment, virtual events do not need to be constrained to the three days when all of your supporters attend your annual conference or the weekend that you hold your annual 5K.  

 Nonprofit organizations can engage people year-round through virtual events, happy hours, meetups and more. Consider breaking your annual conference into mini-events that take place each quarter and require smaller chunks of time from our supporters. Empower your volunteers to host their own meetups and form affinity groups tied to specific issues within your organization. 

4. Give Supporters a Clear Path and Next Steps 

How many times have you joined an organization or donated to one without knowing how to clearly get involved and become an active member of the group? This has happened to me before and I eventually stopped engaging with the group. 

Your volunteers are valuable and it’s crucial to make it easy for them to understand the needs within your organization, and how to leverage their own skillsets and expertise to help reach your goals. Use your email newsletter and discussion boards on your website and online community to clearly articulate needs in your organization and match them with volunteers who have the time and expertise to support them.  

Consider using badging to highlight your active supporters when they log into their volunteer portal and digital spaces, to give them recognition for their efforts and drive engagement. Badges can be used for attending a specific number of virtual events, joining committees, emailing and calling their representative, and more. 

5. Deliver More Value to Help Offset Your In-Person Activities 

Nearly all organizations and nonprofits have struggled during COVID-19, whether it’s the challenges of a remote workforce, concerns about revenue and the need to use financial reserves, how to engage their volunteers digitally, and more.  

More than 70 percent of nonprofits reported a decline in marketing spending in 2020 as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and a significant chunk of this investment is coming from the loss of in-person events. Smart nonprofits are taking this time to focus on messaging and programming that is personalized, localized and relevant to their supporters’ needs right now, and they’re also being more efficient with their current marketing spend. 

How are your programs and activities helping your volunteers navigate the overwhelming amount of information and resources that are relevant to their interests? How are you connecting them with other folks in your organization who share their passion? And, are you giving them a digital space to collaborate, share their progress and actions to further your cause?  

Want a Deep Dive on This Topic? 

See more information and best practices for nonprofits to mobilize their movement and unite supporters. In this session, you’ll learn: 

• The evolving landscape for volunteers, donors and supporters in a COVID-19 world 
• Best practices and tips for organizations to unite their supporters and engage meaningfully through digital channels 
• A roundup of tools and technology that can help organizations be more efficient and effective with their investment  

Watch Now

The post Mobilize Your Movement: 5 Tactics to Unite People and Inspire Action for Your Cause appeared first on Personify.

In 2020, we’ll have four main stage sessions, one out-of-this-world keynote speaker, community manager breakout sessions, 20+ hours of training, one BIG party, plus tons of opportunities to consult with Personify experts… and that’s just the beginning of what’s to come. 

The PersoniFest planning team has designed a valuable, experience for those clients using Personify Community. Whether you’re a first-time attendee looking for ways to optimize your online community or a veteran attendee driving engagement strategies for your association, PersoniFest has something for you! 

We’ve built a track of breakout sessions that are focused on goals and challenges for professionals who manage an online community and are tasked with driving engagement in their organization. See our breakout sessions for Community users. 

Our Top Picks for Community Users 

• Getting Your Membership Active Online: Communicating the Value of Digital Membership: From trends in young member acquisition to changes in social channel usage, hear what the data tells us about successful strategies to help your community stand out as a value-driver for your members. 

• Power Your Programs with Online Community Events: Whether scheduling volunteer opportunities and assigning roles, building mentorship office hours, or facilitating member-hosted engagements, this session will help you uncover the power of events functionality within your online community. 
• Building Champions and Managing Change: Building an online community is a change management initiative with moving pieces that include stakeholder identification and engagement balanced against organizational and departmental strategic priorities, organizational culture and subcultures. Through a case study featuring the American Society of Safety Professionals, this session will introduce attendees to the elements of effective change management to assess organizational readiness and preparation to implement a thriving online community. 

See the Full Agenda 

Exclusive for Personify Community Users 

In addition to the multiple breakout sessions and keynotes, our Community Consultants team will hold Community Office Hours where you can pop in to ask questions and get advice on how to make your online community a success. 

We encourage you to attend a Community Roundtable discussion on Monday from 11:10 AM-12:10 PM where clients will network and share their best practices and challenges in cultivating a successful community.  

Throughout the conference, we’ll host meetups for clients using Personify Community at social events. We recommend this networking opportunity for all attendees but especially for first-time users who are looking to connect with their peers. 

The post Community Managers: Find Your Tribe at PersoniFest appeared first on Personify.

Let’s put last week’s approach into practice. Here are four tangible ways to think about and evolve your Sense of Community:

Create a Safe Space and Provide Emotional Safety

One of the main elements of a Sense of Community is membership or spirit. And one of the main attributes of membership is emotional safety.

Imagine heading over to your friend’s house for a casual get together to watch the big game. You may be wearing your laundry-day clothes and bringing a 6-pack of beer to share with friends. But, when you walk through the door, instead you find a black-tie event. That type of experience doesn’t feel comfortable and safe. If I found myself in such a situation, I would turn around and go home.

This reminds me of a similar story with a community that shall remain nameless. The community manager had crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is, and she couldn’t figure out why members weren’t posting and engaging in the community. It wasn’t until she took a look at the community through her members’ eyes that she realized what was happening. All her posts were these well-crafted, incredibly researched, detailed and long posts that ended up intimidating her members…to the point where they didn’t want to contribute. Many of them felt there was nothing left to contribute. The community manager didn’t realize that the tone of her posts negatively impacted this sense of safe space for her members.

What your members might not be telling you is that they may not feel safe enough to open up and be vulnerable in the community. They may not feel comfortable enough to ask their colleagues questions for fear of being humiliated or looking dumb.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) asks members to share their story in the community. But instead of a new member walking through the door and seeing these beautifully written, well crafted, high-quality posts from their members and then being intimidated from writing their own, EDF proactively created a safe space for their members by breaking the writing process up into digestible chunks. In fact, members don’t see the next step in the story building process until they’ve completed the previous step. And members only see the progress of other member stories as they progress themselves. It’s an ingenious way of turning a potentially intimidating experience into an opportunity for members to emotionally connect and build a safe space together as they go through this process of creating their advocacy stories.

Another community that is proactively creating a safe space for their members is the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The engineers in the community post regularly, but a high number of posts does not necessarily mean that the members have that emotional safety in order to feel vulnerable and self-disclose. It’s one thing to ask your colleagues about wiring and regulations, it’s another thing entirely to ask a colleague if they also feel out of their depth. So IET created an option for members to submit anonymous questions. They also created a persona called ‘Calvin the Engineer’ as a community mascot to share these anonymous questions in the forum for other members to respond.

Create and Define Boundaries.

Another important attribute of membership is boundaries.

There’s a speakeasy in downtown Austin called the Floppy Disk Repair. The door is locked and only those with the code can get it. The code changes weekly and you must know someone who knows someone to get it. It’s difficult. But once you walk through the front door, there’s the most amazing feeling of validation and exclusivity. This is the feeling you want to inspire in members of your community.

On the opposite spectrum of that is Who’s Who American High School Students. Getting into Who’s Who was touted as an exclusive honor… until you flipped through the pages and saw everyone in your class listed. Then you realized that the threshold to get into the book is negligible because the goal of the company was to sell books to proud parents.

What your members aren’t telling you is that having a low barrier to enter the community does not inspire feelings of exclusivity and validation. The higher the barrier, the higher the feeling of belonging. If the barrier is low, then you’ve already removed one ingredient to forming a sense of community right off the bat.

Now, sometimes those barriers are out of our hands. If an organization makes member acquisition a higher priority than developing a sense of community, then that probably means the community has a monetary boundary. In other words—if you pay a membership fee, you’re in!

A community with a monetary boundary might therefore supplement a secondary barrier by creating a nested community – one that weaves in intersectionality and is based on demographics.

For example, consider the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP). Everyone that walks through that front door is a safety professional. They are immediately part of a homogenous group, and homogeneity is vitally important for group cohesion. But once you’re through the door, members need to be able to differentiate themselves from the group in order to develop their identity within the community and truly feel like they belong. For that purpose, ASSP created a nested community for women in that profession called WISE (Women in Safety Excellence).

Create a Sense of Belonging and Identification

Next, let’s consider the attributes of belonging and identification that is inherent to membership.

Say you walk through the front door into a house and see people milling about. Except, everyone is wearing the same blank grey mask on their face. And they’re all staring at you. That does not make me feel safe. I’m just going to turn around and walk out. Well, that’s what it feels like for a new member who walks into a community and everyone has that default grey avatar, you know which one I’m talking about. For myself, this does not inspire feelings of belonging and of identification.

What your members might not be telling you is that in a very literal, visual way, they don’t feel that they have anything in common with other members. They don’t recognize themselves in the constituency. They don’t see anyone that looks like them.

The National Wildlife Federation’ EcoLeaders program decided that they want to make their community feel lived in, warm and inviting, so they encourage members to upload profile pictures. And to overcome any issues with emotional safety, they created an avatar menu that members could choose from that aligned with their specific passion if they weren’t quite ready to upload a picture of themselves.

Similarly, the American Diabetes Association encourages belonging and identification in its members by creating a self-selection of badges for illness type, and then displays those badges with the member’s profile throughout the community. So, if you walk into ADA with type 1, you can quickly see others like you interacting in a safe space.

Show That You’re Invested

My final example of this practice is Investment, which is another element of sense of community.

Imagine walking into a house for a party. You look to your left and see a table displayed with rotting food. Perhaps, there are some 25-cent bags of chips that you could have easily gotten at a gas station down the street.

What your members aren’t telling you is that walking into a community and seeing stock photos, static content and announcements of a community relaunch that haven’t been updated in a year creates a sense that the community is not invested in the member. The community does not value the member. So why should I invest in the community? It’s a common practice with communities to place the onus on the community manager to continually update content in order to keep the space lively and fresh. That is not sustainable.

What is a sustainable option? Let’s take a look at the Climate Reality Project, which has successfully created an environment where community members contribute the majority of the content. They did this by turning the act of contribution into a challenge for the entire community to reach a certain number of contributions in the year 2019. In fact, they’ve inspired members to act by making their contributions visible in a challenge or leaderboard format.

Know What Works For Your Community

There is no standard, ‘out of the box’ platform or configuration that consistently creates a sense of community in your members. Each community is different. Being able to take a step back and see your unique community from a member’s perspective is a mix of art and science: of understanding of the psychology behind a sense of community while using tactical imagination and a background knowledge of what your platform can do.

While there is plenty of research and study behind the intricate psychology, there isn’t much in the way instruction on how to build a community that hits on all four elements to improve your community’s Sense of Community index. By using targeted conceptualization, you can see your community through the members’ perspective and stimulate ideas on the practice, configuration and process to encourage connection to these elements.

If you’re ready to take the next steps of improving your sense of community, I recommend thinking about this from an approach of “Who + Why = How.”

If we know the who (member goals) and we know the why (sense of community), then we can use this practice to determine and become architects of the How.

The post What Your Members Aren’t Telling You: 4 Ways to Improve Your Sense of Community appeared first on Personify.