How to Create Engagement in your Community with 3 Easy Tactics

Published in

Honeycommb

4 min readApr 1, 2022

Communities are best when they’re vibrant with activity, a space that invites members to engage in conversation and build relationships with others. As a community leader, you need to use a variety of tactics to create engagement and get your members talking. Read below for three tactics to boost community engagement.

Conversation Starters

Conversation starters are a simple concept: Create posts that get people talking. Conversation starters can be as simple as Introduction posts or discussions about significant news events. To take things to the next level, use conversation starters to bring people together and create value.

CMX’s founder David Spinks posted on LinkedIn that community leaders need to “shift your mindset from creating content that people connect with to creating content that connects people to each other.” David followed up in the comments with an insightful point, using Introduction posts as an example: “When you ask members to introduce themselves in your community, do you ask them to answer questions that are interesting to consume? Or are you asking them questions where their answer opens up an opportunity for conversation?”

I’ve used this method in my own community; my introduction threads often ask members to share advice or post about something they need help with. Conversation starters create many opportunities for members new and old to connect over topics that they genuinely care about.

TIP: Having trouble getting responses to posts? Personally reach out to members and ask them to join the conversation. Members appreciate opportunities to share their expertise or help others.

Community Rituals

Community rituals or traditions are activities that you do regularly with your members. Rituals increase engagement by creating opportunities for members to connect with others regularly. Rituals or traditions are often performed weekly or monthly, but any regular cadence can have an effect.

While Community Rituals are often facilitated by a community leader, they can also organically come from your community members. Use daily or weekly “challenge” posts to create viral traditions that your members can carry on without your direct involvement.

Example Daily Challenge prompt:
“Share how you started your day and use hashtag #DailyCheckin in your post!”

Your members have joined your community to connect around a common interest or idea; tap into those commonalities to find rituals or challenges that can prompt members to get engaged and connect with others. What are your members doing on a daily or weekly basis in their lives? Use those as prompts to create conversation and get members to share more about themselves.

Go Deeper: Commsor’s blog provides several examples of Community Rituals that can boost engagement.

Livestream Events

Honeycommb’s live stream feature enables beautiful and interactive live-video experiences that many of our most engaged communities use to great effectiveness. Livestreams can provide members with informative or entertaining content while also creating a space for members to connect with others through the live stream’s chat.

We recently connected with a community leader who hosts live streams with over 1,000 concurrent viewers.
Here are their tips for successful live streams:

Host live events at fixed times of the week or month. A regular schedule will help members plan ahead and increase attendance.
Use Feed Banners to promote upcoming live events to create awareness before the broadcast.
Send an app Notification one hour before the event and one notification when the live stream has begun.

Go Deeper:

Use Your Engagement Tools

Honeycommb’s platform provides you a variety of tools that will help maximize the effectiveness of your engagement activities.

Featured Posts — featured posts are posts pinned to the top of your community’s home feed. Featured posts can effectively drive engagement to posts, both those you create and your members’ posts. Use Featured Posts to spotlight great content that your members will care about and enjoy.
Feed Banners — feed banners are great for driving members to content within your community. Feed Banners + Featured Posts can be used together to creatively drive traffic to multiple initiatives.
Notifications — Honeycommb customers with the Full-Suite package, featuring iOS and Android apps, have the ability to send notifications to members’ phones. Notifications can send members to a post, group, or individual’s user profile in a short period of time.

We’re in this together

Remember, at Honeycommb, you’re building a community alongside many experienced builders and leaders that use the platform every day. Reach out to Honeycommb’s Community Success team if you need assistance — email us at success@honeycommb.com, and we’ll be happy to help.