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6 min read
How to Accept Payments with Twitter Tip Jar Using Razorpay

Social media platforms are an enabler in public conversations, and Twitter, in particular, stands out when it comes to driving the discussions forward. Continuing its endeavour to boost the creator economy in India, Twitter has launched a new feature – Tip Jar. 

This feature will enable the content creators on Twitter to connect causes and conversation with direct acceptance of online payments via Razorpay in India. 

In this blog, we will explore how you can get started and benefit from this feature. But first, let’s start by understanding what Tip Jar is.

What is Twitter Tip Jar and what does it do?

Twitter’s Tip Jar feature enables Twitter users to send and receive money from other Twitter users using third-party payment service providers. In India, Twitter users will be able to use Razorpay to accept payments via the Tip Jar feature. This feature is currently available to a select few users and will be gradually opened to others.  

These few select users will see the option to add Tip Jar to their profile when they tap ‘Edit profile’ on Twitter. This group includes creators, journalists, public figures, experts, and community leaders.

What’s more? Tip Jar is available in multiple Indian languages, including Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil! 

Send-a-tip-jar

 

Supporting influencers

If you are an influencer on Twitter, you must know your words mean the world to your followers. With Razorpay and Twitter Tip Jar, you can now collect payments or donations for a personal campaign or your client’s campaigns. 

For instance, if you need support for an event on mindfulness where you bring together experts, musicians, theatre artists and more, this feature will help you do just that directly from the Twitter profiles.

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What can you do with Razorpay and Tip Jar today?

The first step is to turn on the Tip Jar feature on Twitter, Allow Tips and tap on Razorpay. And paste the custom suffix from your dashboard payment page: <pages.razorpay.com/yourcustomurl> Copy your URL suffix, and that will get added to Tip Jar.

Set-up-Tip-Jar-5

Need help in customizing your URL. Check it out here. Don’t have the payment page? No issues; you can create it easily. Here’s how:
 

  1. To create your payment page, navigate from your Razorpay dashboard and choose the template “Events and Tickets”, and edit details of the event you are planning.
  2. Share the links and the timelines. If there are specific passes or packages for registration for the event, you can add those details and share a bit more about you and your team as well.
  3. Remember to edit the payment details on the right-hand side.
  4. Uploading images from similar events can help your followers get more context.
  5. Set your contact and social share details before you hit publish.

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Powering the creator economy

A creator’s joy lies in the act of creation, be it art, music or content. As a creator, you always strive to find the right set of audience to showcase your work. And what better than having them support your art directly, online?  

What can you do with Razorpay and Tip Jar today?  

You can now enable payments directly for your work without creating multiple tools and processes across different platforms. 

Start as before by turning the Tip Jar on and adding the custom payment URL.

Need help in customizing your URL. Check it out here.
Don’t have the payment page? No issues; you can create it easily. Here’s how:
 

  1. To create the payment page, on your Razorpay dashboard, once you choose “Create Payment Pages,” navigate to “Product Sale” or “Fees Collection” templates which could be more relevant for you.
  2. Add a visceral description of your work and a short summary of the project you want support for.
  3. Visual cues can help your followers, so you can add some images that explain your work.
  4. Remember to edit the payment details and the contact information before you publish.

While we have enabled these easy templates for you, you can, of course, create your own templates as well while building your payment page. It’s easy. At any time, to view the payments made, you can go back to your payment pages on your dashboard, click on the page ID, and you can see all the transactions. 

Community leaders: Empowering Change

If you are an NGO or an individual working towards helping your fellow countrymen through a time of crisis, like the ongoing pandemic, any natural disaster relief, or are rooting for a social change, you will need aid to bring systemic change. This is where collecting payments via Razorpay on Twitter Tip Jar can help you.

What can you do with Razorpay and Tip Jar today?

As before, set Tip Jar on Twitter and choose the URL suffix for the payment page.
Need help in customizing your URL. Check it out here.
 

Don’t have the payment page? No issues; you can create it easily. Here’s how:
 

  1. Go to your Razorpay dashboard to create your payment page. Choose from our customized templates under “Create Payment Page.”
  2. Choose the template called “Accepting Donations.”
    Psst! We have pre-created these templates to save you time. 
  3. Include a powerful title that gives people a reason to support your cause.
  4. Select a start and end date; data shows it’s good to give a time-bound approach to a donation campaign.
  5. Images speak volumes. So try adding some field or campaign in action images and some details about your organization and your past work, which lends credibility.
  6. Add any eligibility around tax exemption, too, to make it clear for those donating.
  7. You can also customise the price field by clicking on the ‘Payment Details’ section on the right-hand side. You can keep the price fixed or let the followers pay what they want.  Do read our detailed documentation for more insights.

Before you save the details, remember to update your contact details and social share icons. Your followers could share and find more supporters for you. And voila, you are done!

How can your followers support you directly through Twitter Tip Jar? 

Once your followers log in to their Twitter account, they can visit your profile and see the change you are initiating. If they want to support you, all they have to do is tap the tips icon, choose Razorpay, and that’s it. The payment will get routed to you.

At Razorpay, we are excited to enable sending and receiving payments via Tip Jar for our community. We look forward to powering your stories of change and inspiration! 

Daniel James
Aug 05, 2021
14 min read
The Virtual Events Crash Course You Need

“There are lots of companies that have been building virtual communities for a long time, using online forums and groups as a place to gather online. Those spaces are blowing up right now and getting a ton of traffic as everyone is spending more time gathering online. So the challenge for these companies is managing the influx of activity while shifting their in-person community events online, as most didn’t have a robust program for virtual events in place,” says Spinks. “The startups in the other group are starting from scratch right now and thinking ‘Crap. Our typical sales and marketing channels are drying up, our trade shows are getting canceled. We’ve got to figure online events out, fast.’ But it’s not as simple as just hosting a webinar. There’s a lot more to a virtual event than that.

In this exclusive interview, Spinks delves into useful strategies for startup leaders in each of those camps. He also shares targeted tactics for making the format of the virtual discussion more valuable, from the tools to use to the techniques that will help you encourage engaging conversation. Whether you’re tasked with energizing your existing community, pivoting your company’s event programming, scrambling to spin it all up for the first time — or just trying to hold a really great virtual happy hour — Spinks offers a wealth of wisdom drawn from over a decade spent deepening the moat of community.

 

STRATEGIES FOR SHIFTING YOUR EXISTING EFFORTS ONLINE:

For those that already have a robust community strategy in place. How can you adjust as you shift from IRL to online?

“From a community manager standpoint, you’re probably thinking, ‘Engagement is super high right now. Our community is coming together in these really special ways. We just need to figure out how to rev this up, keep supporting our community, and then come up with creative ideas and new formats to bring them together virtually,’” says Spinks.

The biggest shift in strategy or tactics for existing community programs is the offline to online move for events specifically. “This is especially true if they were leaning heavily on an in-person component of their program, which most were. For example, our recent industry trends report at CMX found that 60% of companies were doing both online and offline events. Obviously that mix is changing for now,” he says. “Previously, it was really difficult to get someone to sit there for a whole day attending a virtual event from their office. But now there’s this perfect storm of companies having no choice but to go virtual, and everyone being stuck at home, online and looking for ways to stay engaged and learn. That's making virtual events work really well right now. Most folks are seeing through-the-roof engagement. The jury’s still out though on whether virtual events will work as well after the dust settles.”

That uncertainty over whether this shift is fleeting or more permanent can be unsettling for those whose very careers are centered around the value of getting people together in person. “At the very least, in-person events seem to be on hold for the next few months. So pausing conferences and meetups, until at least the fall, is advisable. While this is a really difficult time for a lot of community teams and event organizers, you can also look at this as an opportunity to sharpen your virtual event chops,” says Spinks. “You won't be able to fully replicate the experience of in-person. Virtual just won't have the same feeling as getting together in real life. But you can hit a lot of the same value points of in-person events and lean into some of the unique advantages of virtual gatherings.”

The best community programs have always been a hybrid of online and offline. So if you've been all offline up until now, see the opportunity — you'll have a more balanced program when the dust settles.

That uncertainty over whether this shift is fleeting or more permanent can be unsettling for those whose very careers are centered around the value of getting people together in person. “At the very least, in-person events seem to be on hold for the next few months. So pausing conferences and meetups, until at least the fall, is advisable. While this is a really difficult time for a lot of community teams and event organizers, you can also look at this as an opportunity to sharpen your virtual event chops,” says Spinks. “You won't be able to fully replicate the experience of in-person. Virtual just won't have the same feeling as getting together in real life. But you can hit a lot of the same value points of in-person events and lean into some of the unique advantages of virtual gatherings.”

PRINCIPLES FOR GETTING YOUR VIRTUAL COMMUNITY & EVENT GAME OFF THE GROUND:

For those jumping into virtual events and online community building for the first time. Where should you get started? Spinks offers five principles for you to keep in mind as you rev up your online event engine.

1. Don’t be afraid to swing for the fences.

“A mistake I often see with folks who are just getting started is that sometimes they just don't take a big enough swing at it. They launch a group, invite some people, post a couple times — and then lament the fact that they’re seeing no engagement. Communities form when people see an experience that's exciting to participate in, either because the content is great, the people are high quality, or it's well produced. So if you don't make your community exciting, it's going to be hard to get off the ground.”

2. You’re growing a tree, not building a house.

Another misstep Spinks often sees is a tendency to overthink the program — and letting that prevent you from getting started. “You don't need a big group to start a community, and you don't need to have a fully-fleshed out community engagement plan to start hosting events. Just start gathering, learning and iterating,” says Spinks. “Growing a community is more like growing a tree than building a house. You don’t need to have blueprints for what it will all look like from day one. Just start bringing people together and over time your community will organically find its form. So even if you don’t feel ‘ready,’ it's never too early to start building your community. It will become an invaluable asset to your company in the long run, but it does take time to build up. And right now speed is important. So start now.”

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, don’t sweat it. Just start hosting. You’ll pick up on many of these tips organically by just getting your reps in. The truth is, when you bring the right group of people together into a shared space, with the right purpose, it’s almost impossible for magic to not happen.

3. Focus on first principles instead of exporting your offline event strategy.

A virtual certainty in these uncertain times we’re living through is that most startups are now in the same boat — and attempting to shift their strategies in similar ways. In an era when everyone's suddenly ramping up online events and trying to cultivate community, how can you cut through the noise and stay relevant?

“There seems to be an almost limitless appetite right now for online content because people are socially isolating in real life. Ultimately, the same things will cut through the noise now that always has: targeted, high-quality content that’s focused on real pain points that real people are experiencing,” says Spinks. “Bring it back to your customer and community members. What are they dealing with right now? How is this crisis affecting them, specifically? What content do they need right now to help them stay productive and healthy?”

4. Set dual goals to stay authentic.

In Spinks’ line of work, there’s always been a tension between cultivating authentic communities and bringing it back to the business results. “Business and community building have to be integrated. As warm and fuzzy as it may feel, it’s naive to say ‘We're just going to build community and not worry about any business objectives.’ If you do that, that's fine. But you're relegating yourself to the ‘charity’ bucket of the business — and you’ll be first in line for the chopping block when it’s time to make cuts,” he says.

“When we work with a community team to set their objectives and their metrics at CMX, we remind them that you should have dual objectives for your programs: one focused on community health, and one focused on business outcomes. On the community front, ask, ‘Are we giving people a sense of community? Are we creating a sense of belonging for them? Are they happier as a result?’ Then on the business end, you can tie community back to your objectives.”

5. Measure, measure, measure.

For those looking to pinpoint that business impact, it can be hard to gauge how your efforts are taking hold. Taking his dual goal-setting approach, Spinks shows founders and newly-minted community leaders what to look for:

Business metrics: “If you do a virtual event, see who signed up, who showed up and who engaged with the content. Map that back to your customer database and figure out how many of those people were current customers, prospects or cold leads. How many of them never heard of us before, but now they did?” says Spinks. “Now you’re able to see if you’re having valuable touch points with people all along your funnel. You can also measure impact on your existing customers. Are they happier? Are they more likely to renew? Many of these are B2B metrics, but much of this thinking applies for B2C as well. Are they more loyal customers? Are they coming back? Are they spending more? How likely are they to recommend your product?”


Community metrics: “On the community side, you can actually gather deeper data with virtual events. Think about when you host a conference. It’s difficult to track how attendees engaged with your content. You don’t know which talks, discussion groups and events each person went to. With your virtual events, you can go deeper and track who attended each session. Then use surveys to measure community health. Questions like: Do you feel like you belong in this community? Do you feel welcome in this community? You can also use a sense of community index as another measurement tool.”

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER: TAKE CARE AND DON’T FORGET TO TAKE A STEP BACK

As a capstone on this community-driven, circumstances-forced guide to virtual events, Spinks offers up a caveat and a warning. “All of the advice I just shared applies only if you have the bandwidth to take on that work emotionally, mentally and physically. Community managers, event organizers, marketing leaders, founders — this shift is putting a lot of strain on all of us right now,” he says.

“Even if you’re an extrovert, organizing and interacting all day can be incredibly draining. And what we're seeing right now is unprecedented,” he says. “We're adapting to quarantines that could go on for months, shuttered businesses and nonstop worries about our friends and family. For all of us overachievers in the startup world, we already had full plates — and we just had a lot more to worry about dumped onto them.”

To handle the extra load, many managers are rightly emphasizing the importance of space and self-care. But for Spinks, there’s room to go farther and get more specific. “It’s not enough for managers to say, ‘Take care of yourself’, but then talk about how ‘Now’s the time to really hustle and work through this,’ in team meetings. Yes, we all need to pivot, have big goals and adapt. We need to figure out where there are new opportunities and where we need to adjust business-as-usual tactics so we can keep the business in business,” he says.

“But it's important to articulate upfront and get specific in your advice so people know you mean it. Here’s what I say: ‘Take the time you need right now. If you need a day or two, or however much time you think you need to make sure you're in a good place and your family is good, full stop, that's the number one priority. You need to take care of yourself, because you're not going to be able to invest in your community fully for the next several months if your cup is empty. Reset your lifestyle for the new norm and build habits so that you can continue to take care of yourself for the foreseeable future while this crisis plays out.’”

As for how he’s following his own orders, Spinks shares what’s been working for him: “Social media right now is the most stressful place in the world. There are updates every second about new numbers, sad stories and what the government’s doing. It's really important to control how you're consuming information right now, because it all feels important but it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I put on SelfControl for big blocks of work time,” he says. “I'm also trying to lean into my meditation practice, sitting for longer than usual and taking my time in the mornings. And I’m exercising every day, getting my runs in while we're still allowed to go outside unimpeded.”

Outside of the self-care required to sustain this work, Spinks has one final reminder. “You could be forgiven if you look at this situation we’re all in and think, ‘This is community's time to shine.’ I’ve caught myself and my team doing this. We live and breathe community. You can easily slip into using that language of, ‘This is an opportunity,’ or, ‘We can tap into this in marketing.’ That’s true. But the number one priority is being a resource and helping people right now. It’s not to make more money out of this, or take advantage of opportunities. It's to be there for your community. People around the world are experiencing helplessness, loss of normalcy and lack of connection in a difficult way right now. How can our businesses be that resource for people? How can we create safe spaces for people to come together now when they need it most?

Take a step back and reflect on why the work of building community is so important. “There's nothing that builds community as strongly as shared struggle. If you're canceling events, your business is struggling, and you're having to change up your strategy, bring your community into that process. Be transparent with them about what's happening. Let them help and get involved. You'll be shocked at what your community is capable of when you give them a chance to rally together.”

Emma Brown
Aug 05, 2021
6 min read
How online communities improve customer support?

I know something about you. The fact that you’re consistently engaging with The Community Assemble tells me that you need to know more about strategic community management to improve your business. That means I need to deliver useful information through this story and make it fun. No sweat!

The business landscape has changed

The world is changing, especially in the community industry. This has always been true, but I feel it more because the pace of change continues to accelerate. With technology providing a lot of tools and opportunities in the community industry, it feels like businesses can pedal to the metal on every aspect of their customer journey.

But here’s the thing that we tend to forget amidst all these changes - people are inherently still the same. All they are looking for is to find a personal connection with you or your product.

Moreover, you realize that you are no longer competing in a specific city or country. You’re competing around the world with a product in your hand that is similar to half a dozen other businesses, maybe more. You have to constantly think harder to come up with a differentiating factor for your product/ business. And the only way to do this is to…

Become a customer-centric business. Make your customer support a differentiating factor.

Smart businesses have started doing this already. I think it’s a great way to stand out from your competitors as it builds loyalty amongst your customers.

However, you might have witnessed that most of the companies just claim to be customer-focused rather than truly being one. This will become pretty evident if you observe your interactions with different companies whose products you’re using.

For example, I have experienced delays in the resolutions of my issues/ requests of some products because my support tickets have been transferred many times between departments. But companies like Amazon have just nailed this part. They can resolve similar types of issues within hours. And most importantly, I love the overall experience because I can easily approach their customer support team get my issues resolved. 

Well, when B2B businesses think of customer experience, they should think about taking control of customers interacting with your business at every touchpoint of their journey. And while it might seem overwhelming because of the limited support hours that you could provide, that’s where an online customer community comes into the picture.

Let’s begin by addressing a question that you might be thinking about at this point:

Do online customer communities eliminate my customer support team?

The answer is NO - online customer communities do not replace your customer support team. The two work hand in hand. It’s about creating an environment where your customers come and ask questions, help, and learn from each other; giving your existing support teams some relief and improving their insight into customer problems. Also, online customer communities that provide options for peer-to-peer support while allowing users to connect to the support team directly work out the best in differentiating themselves from others.

In this story, we will look at the 3 ways in which you can improve your customer support experience using online customer communities and stand out from your competitors at the same time. 

Knowledge Management

In B2B businesses, the customer support experience is different because all conversations may not be about problems. There will be customers who would need advice on how they can better leverage your product, how a new update will help them, or simply a need to understand how a particular feature works. By building a rich knowledge base in your online customer community, you put essential documents in one place and establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry.  

Reduce support tickets

Usually, customers address their problems using emails and calls. Then they wait on customer support executives to solve their inquiries. But in the case of online customer communities, they can just come and first search the community to see if anyone else has had a similar issue. They can learn from other customers’ experiences. Or even better, customer support executives can tag your customers to a thread in the community that fully answers their queries. 

User-generated content

Conventional customer support often focuses on helping one person at a time. It’s inefficient. Think about the number of times your customer support team gets the same question? Or a similar type of query?

When customers look for help in an online community, they consistently contribute to self-generated, authentic content. This becomes easy for existing customers to find a solution and develops a rich user-generated manual for future customers. Future customers can just come into the community, search for their queries and follow the thread.

Glynk’s take

A B2B company in the telecom industry runs an online customer community and currently serves approx 900K users. Their community is just over a year and a half old. It answers 63% of all customer questions — resulting in a support cost saving of more than 660,000 Euros per year. Their knowledge base, which is constantly updated with company-created and user-generated content, has led to some very impressive results and they have established themselves as thought leaders in the industry. 

So, today's reminder is that community-based businesses can be MASSIVE as community compounds like nothing else.

David Sanders
Aug 05, 2021
7 min read
This story is for entrepreneurs

This story is for those innovative people who are passionate about bringing people together around their ideas. This story is for entrepreneurs. It’s community-heavy. While endless Zoom meetings and filtered Instagram reels aren’t exactly giving a sense of belonging, each one of us is craving community more than ever. And the huge rise in community-focused jobs tells us that many entrepreneurs are waking up to the power of community. They are learning intangible concepts around community building and making them practically applicable for their businesses.

Today, I am going to talk about how you can leverage the idea of community to build something bigger than yourself - a business that values people, not just profit. It’s going to be super actionable as I’d also bring along insights from some incredibly inspiring community builders.

Community is a long-term bet

Communities are meant to encourage connections, not just transactions. Therefore, you might have some resistance at the beginning. The benefits of community are not often immediate, it takes time to build. But the rewards are high. And you really have no choice anyway. Well, that is if you want your customers to be happy. The days of push marketing are numbered. Companies can no longer push one-sided ad campaigns and expect customers to blindly accept their message. The digital age has turned marketing into a two-way conversation where customers have a powerful voice and they want to be heard.

The online community has brought such transparency to the customer relationship that businesses have no choice but to respond and tailor their communications. Companies that do not embrace this new landscape risk alienating customers and losing business to savvy competitors. This is why a good community management initiative is so important. But what’s more important is - PATIENCE and FOCUS to build an engaging community.

 

Know your “WHY”

As community builders, we all yearn to give our customers a greater sense of belonging. While this directly translates to loyalty and retention in the longer run, the purpose is much bigger than that. Making customers feel like they are part of something bigger is vital to giving them that sense of belonging. How do you do that? 

Define your community’s purpose and communicate it very clearly. 

Hand-pick your early customers - choose people who really relate to this purpose

Start building your community with them, not just for them. 

The only rule to follow in the first early days - be patient and pick your members carefully. 

 

 

Value. Value. Value

If you want your customers to spend time in your community, ensure that they are getting a positive ROI on that time. To understand this, you must be able to answer the following 2 questions confidently:

What is the reason your customer should join the community?

Why should they stick around?

When you think about your community, think about your customers, always. You need to constantly think about what is best for them. This means staying alert, keeping your ears wide open, and constantly listening to your community. You will know what they need right now. To create a true community and be relevant, you need to stand out and stand for something that your customers connect with. You can combine multiple value propositions. The core value of your community, may be, is to provide product-related information to the customers. While it’s important to keep the consistent flow of this information, what’s even more important is to create a warm and enjoyable environment where customers find a sense of belonging and actively build relationships amongst one another.

Numbers don’t matter as much as you think

It’s not how big your community is, it’s how much your community members care - Tom Ross, CEO - DesignCuts

You aspire to get more and more customers in your community. But, let’s take a pause and understand this - numbers don’t matter as much as you think. To be more precise - the “number of members” in a community is not the metric that most folks are chasing. This metric might make you feel good at the start, but it has very little relevance to the actual success of your business. Anyone can go and buy 100k followers on social media these days, but this has literally no real substance to your business. Instead of building a giant audience of members who do not care, build one where they genuinely do.

Glynk’s take

Tom Ross is the founder and CEO at DesignCuts.com, a community of amazing creatives. In his spare time, he loves sharing his passion for community building with others. In one of his books around community building, he explained how his tiny community outperformed a massive community. 

At my company, we’ve done tons of partnerships over the years. One partner boasted about their huge community numbers - over a million users! However, when they shared the agreed campaign, the numbers were beyond woeful. There were literally a tiny handful of sales. The engagement on their massive email newsletter was practically non-existent. By contrast, we partnered with a small, niche community of just 5000 members. This campaign performed literally X20 better than the results we saw from the larger campaign! That means that on average, the smaller community’s members were worth 4000 times more to our business, compared with the larger community. 4000!!! This is an extreme example, but I see this play out all the time.

He literally didn’t have revenue goals. Or member growth goals. All he knew is that after building a giant audience of folks who didn’t care, he wanted to build one where they did. The number of followers or volume of traffic didn’t matter to him. He just knew that he wanted each and every person on his platform to give a crap! What followed was the most rewarding and intense period of his life. His company flew, it went like a rocket. Entirely bootstrapped and with no funding, it spread like crazy. Community was at the heart of it all. Whereas before he had an empty vessel, he had now built truly the most engaged community. Community members raved about them. They told their friends. They purchased it repeatedly from him. They were vocal and supportive. They were their biggest cheerleaders. They became genuine friends. And it didn’t happen overnight. Let’s look at what he has to say about the process of building a community:

I won’t say it was easy. In fact, it was the hardest, most grueling, and intense period of my life. I even ended up hospitalizing myself from overwork, and a naive resistance to delegation (but that’s a whole other story). However, it was undeniable that community was, and remains our secret sauce. That is why I’m so committed to helping others to harness the power of the community. That’s why I want to leave a legacy of entrepreneurs who care more about their people than the ego-charged numbers we all chase on social media.

Tara Cox
Aug 05, 2021
6 min read
How does real community engagement look like?

I keep reading a lot of books. And of course, my favorite books are always the ones that actively engage me throughout. That’s what inspired me to write this story. In this story, we will be looking at some of the interesting hacks to build a super-engaged community.

An engaged online community is probably one of the most used terms that get thrown around a lot in the community space. And it can have multiple meanings depending upon the context and who you are talking to. But, in customer communities, it can be defined as a method of making customers interact with each other, with the genuine intent that their needs are met within the community. 

Everyone wants more engagement in their online communities. I have seen people getting impatient as soon as they launch their online community because of the low or almost zero engagement. But what you need to realize is, engagement does not come instantly after launching a community. It takes its own sweet time to make your customers come, stay and then even make them keep coming back to your community. While all of it doesn’t happen automatically, building your efforts in the direct direction can spark engagement in your community.

For starters, keep in mind that the kind of content you create in your community is a key part of your engagement strategy. But what’s more important is - maintaining a strong feedback loop with your customers.

Do you want to know how? Let’s dive in:

Invest time in 1:1 conversations

Talk to your customers about their challenges, pain points, expectations, etc. Channelize this feedback into creating rich content that would help them and other customers/ prospects joining the community.

Leverage community platform features like “create polls”, “ask a question”

Use these features to get the data from your customers on what kind of content they would like to consume. Observe thoroughly to understand what brings the most value. While asking a question, avoid asking open-ended questions and ask questions around different community ideas and check what they say about that. You could also do that over the zoom call and check their reactions live. 

Engagement hacks - The Community Stoplight method

To spark your community, you got people together and helped them start talking. STAY WITH IT! But as your community starts growing beyond its early memberships, the real challenge will be to make sure you’re constantly attracting new folks while maintaining the engagement quality. It doesn’t happen so smoothly. Because new folks need to be genuinely excited about your shared purpose or they’ll never want to come to your community.

Here, I’d like you to have a look at the community spotlight method to get more engagement in your community. You can start off by doing this activity for at least a month and then keep evolving accordingly.

? = 10 “silent members” in the community, ones who never participate or interacts

? = 10 members who do not initiate a conversation, unless tagged or mentioned

? = 10 most engaging members in the community who you may refer to as “role models”

You can track these in excel or google spreadsheets. The focus for the next one month should be very thorough. Keep in mind, this method is a great way to kickstart your community when you see the early members coming in and contributing in multiple ways already! Because this is exactly the time to build relationships. Now, your next action item should be:

? Activate = Send personal messages. Try to indulge in 1:1 conversations and find out what excites them in the community, their expectations, and feedback

? Engage = Turn the spotlight towards role models. Ask them to tag these members in relevant posts, share their stories. Personally invite them to community events and rituals.

 ? Scale = Reward these members. Make them feel special. Let them take impactful initiatives in the community.

At the end of the month, have a look at the spreadsheet and see what worked and what didn’t. Some members would definitely move up the spotlight. And if they don’t, there’s nothing to worry about. You can control what’s in and what’s out but you can never predict how things will grow. Your job as a community leader is to curate the community and nurture the different voices within it. So, try out different strategies and keep at it. 

You should create space for healthy debates, compassionate support, and constructive criticism. That’s how you’ll grow along with your members and collectively make an impact.


Now, you might be thinking, “Anukriti, what are you saying! I am just starting out. I don’t even have enough community members or engagement to get this kind of feedback. What should I do now..?”

Don’t worry! Check this out..

Try to find similar communities that are larger in size and read through the comments/posts etc. You will get to know the struggles of users. Make a pattern and define a value proposition that appeals to your target audience and will help attract them to your community. If they see/feel that their pain points and needs are getting addressed with your community, members will start joining in.

Define your ideal customer persona and try to find them on social media. Check out their content and understand them better. This will give you a lot of insights in terms of what type of content will bring the most engagement to your community.

Glynk’s tip ?

In any community, there will always be a small set of extra-passionate people who will do the majority of work to push the community onward and upward. And with that, you also get an added set of responsibilities. Growing a community isn’t only about management, btw. It’s about developing leaders. With their help, your community will affect more people and sustain itself longer than you could have managed on your own.


?How does your community engagement look like? Do you have any tips/ suggestions that you’d want me to add here? Get to me on Twitter or LinkedIn, or shoot me a question in the comments below. You can also write to me about what's driving you crazy in your community—engagement, control, metrics, visibility..anything. I’d love to chat. Thanks! See you next week.

Kenneth Martin
Aug 05, 2021