The number one challenge community managers as us about is engagement. How do we get more people to visit our community? How do we keep members coming back for the long-term? How can we convert casual viewers (fka lurkers) into contributing members? If you struggle with how to boost online engagement you aren’t alone.

We’ve been compiling engagement resources since 2009, and while a lot has changed in the online community world since then, the fundamentals of engagement haven’t! Below is a list of 45 online community engagement resources from the Engagement Resource Bundle in the The Network.

The Engagement Resource Bundle aka 45 Ways to Boost Online EngagementMost Recent Entry:* All About the Ritual: Vicky Cumberbatch walks through the vitality of rituals as part of the engagement strategy, why, and how to go about brainstorming them..

Roundtable ReportsCommunication:* Mission & Community: How Purpose Affects Engagement: Deb Lavoy of OpenText facilitated this call to stimulate discussion on the topics of mission and community and especially on how purpose affects engagement. * How To Help Your Members Ask Great Questions That Get Great Answers: This call examines the importance of good questions, the foundation of a good question, and how to help members ask good questions to boost online engagement. * Plain Language Crash Course: Tips For Communicating More Effectively: Member and certified Plain Language instructor, Erin Winker of Aetna, gave members a crash course on the art of writing in plain language. * Undeniable Story: The Science And Intuition Of Engagement: Michael Margolis of Get Stories shared a six-step storytelling framework that, in his experience, has been a breakthrough process and approach for not only capturing people’s attention, but also for overcoming the cynicisms, skepticisms and fear of judgment that occurs whenever there is a disruptive or innovative message that needs to be shared.

General Engagement

• Maximizing Community Engagement: Advanced Techniques To Keep Members Hooked: On this Roundtable Call, FeverBee’s Rich Millington walked members through his method of thinking about community engagement.
• Bringing It Back From The Brink: Re-Engaging An Underwhelming Community: On this Roundtable Call, one member shared strategies and tactics they used to liven up a couple of Ghost Town communities.
• Crowdsource Questions of the Week: This is a curated list of good discussion starters that you can borrow or build off of for your community.
• Creating Engaged Communities: A Speed Round: This member-led discussion took on a speed round format aimed at culling various community engagement best practices.
• Removing The One-Way Mirror: Transparency & Engagement In Social Business: Kirsten Laaspere, then at Fidelity, shared her best practices for supporting transparency and engagement in social business.
• Simplifying The User Experience To Increase Engagement At Salesforce: This call was an interesting case study into how Salesforce has increased engagement by simplifying the user experience.
• Engagement Drivers: Down and Dirty Case Studies: This call was dedicated to discussing how to create engagement through content and programming.
• The Culture Of Community Engagement: An Anthropological Discussion On How To Encourage More Member Interaction: We had a great discussion with Chris Bailey on “The Culture of Community Engagement”.
• Digital Embassies: A Blueprint For Community Engagement: David Armano joined us to share his new framework for thinking about community engagement.
• Exploring Engagement: The Dance Floor Theory: Kevin Prentiss of Red Rover explored engagement through the analogy of a dance floor.
• How MetLife Met A Member Milestone… And Saw Engagement Shift Along The Way: Former members Sue Tuttle and Noelle Farra gave a look at how engagement in their internal community has changed after hitting their 1,000 member milestone.

Social Media

• Risk Management & Crafting Engagement: How To Architect Social Media Success For Your Organization: Jack Ashman of Adobe shared ten main points in the area of architecting social media successes to boost online engagement.

Specific Communities

• Employee Adoption And Engagement In External Communities: Participants on this Roundtable Report were interested in discussing 3 main areas related to the topic of employee adoption and engagement: leadership and culture, content and programming, and metrics and governance.
• Engaging Executives: The Power Of Content: A report of best practices and lessons learned on using content to engage executives from a Roundtable call with guest expert Roanne Neuwirth.
• SMWG: Community -V- Audience & Engagement Kickstarters: On this Social Marketers Working Group (SMWG) call, members discussed various issues and best practices that are specific to social marketers, particularly community and audience engagement kickstarters.
• Collaborative Solutions: Tackling The Engagement Challenge In Product Communities: This member-led discussion brought forth member challenges in the area of creating engagement within product communities, as well as various potential solutions to booth online engagement.
• Internal Cohort Discussion: Engaging Employees: This call saw two case studies provided by Kosheno Moore of Jive and James Martin of Shepley Bulfinch, that explored what methods capture and retain engagement with internal communities. Read through the lessons learned to find methods of cultivating positive culture, how to excite new employees (without being overwhelming) and ways to keep the conversation going.

Discussions* What comes first: engagement or opening to the public?: In this thread, members debate what you should focus on when launching a community: getting engagement up before opening to more people or invite more people in and grow engagement that way. * What Constitutes An “Engaged” Community Member?: Members discuss how to measure and track engagement in various types of online communities and strategize how to boost online engagement. * What Types Of Community Events Get The Most Engagement?: Members share what activities are the most engaging in their communities. * How Do You Measure Engagement When Logging In Is Optional?: A great discussion about lurkers and engagement when members don’t need to log in. * (Research) Quantity Vs. Quality Engagement: A discussion based around a SOCM finding that quality of engagement is displacing quantity as a measure of community success. * Measuring Value-Gained And Value-Added Activities: In part one, Ted Hopton shares definitions of his deep dive into engagement metrics. * Leaders Engagement Dashboard: Part two to the above discussion where Ted Hopton discusses applying those ideas to leaders. * What Is An Optimal Engagement Rate?: Members discuss where a community’s engagement should be. * Executive Engagement: What does good executive engagement look like? Kirsten Laaspere shares some great examples in this discussion.

Blogs* The Holy Grail Of Engagement And Why Communities Matter: What makes meaningful engagement. * The Language Of Engagement: How to word your communications to create and maintain engagement. * Executive Engagement In Three Venn Diagrams: Explore common issues that we’ve heard from executives about engagement.

Case Studies* Beyond Engagement: Moving Businesses & Creating Movement (A Sidecar Case Study): Maria Ogneva gives an update on Sidecar’s journey from launch to early community. * Community Engagement: Turning Customers Into Fans, Yahoo Case Study: Robyn Tippins, the community manager from the Yahoo Developers Network, discusses how to stretch marketing dollars and create great events to boost online engagement. * Case Study: Using TheCR’s Work Out Loud Framework To Measure Adoption & Engagement: Jim Martin shared how he has been using the Work Out Loud framework within Shepley Bulfinch. Jim uses metrics around each level of the framework to measure engagement and progress. * (ICWG) Marsh U Case Study: A Two-Year Journey Of Adoption & Engagement: Participants were privy to an intensive Marsh University case study with community managers Vedrana Madiah and Wendy Lamin that overviewed their two-year journey of adoption and engagement. * Learning Reimagined: How Pearson Education Uses Tech to Improve Customer Engagement: This case study dives into how Pearson used Salesforce and innovation technologies to transition their support organization into a vital part of their customer experience through maximizing sales and service collaboration, decreasing call center expenses, and improving customer engagement.

Other TheCR Resources* TheCR’s Engagement Framework: This framework helps us understand how to create and move a community culture from sharing to solving — including suggested metrics to track behaviors. * Community Maturity Table: A self-analysis tool built in collaboration with members and our research team that identifies common artifacts by competency and stage. * (Discussion) Getting Into The Weeds Measuring Engagement In Jive: Ted Hopton and Ted McEnroe curated information for measuring engagement in Jive. * (Presentation) Architecting A Collaborative Culture Using TheCR’s Work Out Loud Framework: . In this presentation, we discuss the connection between the culture change, working out loud, and the role of community management. * (Resource Pack) MetLife Engagement Resource Pack: As a companion piece to their Roundtable call (listed in “General Engagement” above), Noelle Farra and Sue Tuttle of MetLife shared examples from their engagement strategy. * (Resource) Bring Outside Events Into The Community: Tracy Maurer, shared the skeleton of her engagement plan for how to better engage offline events where not all members are attending.

All the resources above (and literally hundreds more) are available for members of our private peer community, The Network. You can learn more about becoming a member here.

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