The Not-So-Secret-Mantra for Building an Engaging Community 👥

Before we deep dive into this blog, WHY COMMUNITY?

Very frequent answer to this question is, to bring together like minded people under the same roof, correct?

The craze for community building has been amazing in the past few years. People are fascinated by the term community because it’s the place where you meet like-minded people, and your thoughts resonate with the other person. You get to share your ideas and hear from the people in your community, and along with this, you keep growing yourself!

But hey, there’s a lot more to it. Let’s find it out together.

From my experience, here’s a quick guide on how you can build a community. All you have to do is just keep these four steps in your mind while building your community

• Motive — A community should have a common goal.
• Trust — The members of the community should have faith in the community, in the community manager and also the community members.
• Engagement — There should be events or some activities where the members of the community should be engaged.
• Rewards — This is one of the key factors which drives an active community. The community should ensure that members of the community are getting back from the community since communities are all about two-way traffic!

Once you have built a community with the pointers mentioned above, the next question is, How do you keep the community active? Do the members in your community have the same excitement which they had when they joined? Do they participate in your initiatives like they used to?

Let me put it in more straightforward form — How does a community manager engage with his/her community?

Well, community building is not just about bringing people with the same interest together. It’s also about engaging with them and retaining the members in the community!

Don’t worry, after being a part of various communities; I’ve got a Mantra for you to keep your Community-Engaged.

• Rituals — Have regular interaction with your community members. This has to be followed every week and could be welcome posts, shoutouts for the contributors or could be some fun posts every Friday evening.
• Weekly Sessions by Industry Experts or Influencers — Just as much as you want the community to engage, your community members want to empathise with relevant content. Invite Influencers who would help them grow themselves.
• Events (Offline/Online) — This is something which keeps the community together. Events are the best way to help your community members grow or upskill themself.
• Community Catchups — Regular catchups or meetups or webinars creates a sense of happiness amongst your community members, and they are always in touch with you. At the same time, you can count on them for any engagement in your community as well.

I’ll be coming with another blog in which I will be talking about how can the above pointers be met as a community manager and how can you succeed in keeping your community engaged!