How to revive your online community
Communities that align with formal business segments don’t run themselves.
Rachel Pevy and Jennifer Peterson-Ward, Internal Communication Specialists from The University of Sydney, shared at a recent SWOOP Community Connect session about how they took their Business School Yammer Community from zero to hero.
SWOOP Analytics refers to Simon Terry’s Collaboration Value Maturity Model for enterprise social networks to determine the value different levels of collaboration bring to organisations. The University of Sydney has all bases covered from its “Cool Pet Group” that facilitates base-level connections all the way through to dedicated communities for specific staff cohorts, such as the “Business School” community which is used by staff in that school.
The Business School Yammer community at the University of Sydney is a group that had previously been open to all staff to share content, no matter how relevant. Information shared in the group was ad hoc, random and didn’t align with any clear vision. As a result, the community began to experience a lull in engagement and membership dropped.
Dedicated community admins can be the difference between a good and a bad community
Community admins at the University of Sydney consulted with leaders to discuss challenges including; an unclear purpose for the community, inconsistent content and staff being unfamiliar with Yammer as a communication channel. A more robust strategy was developed to move the community back on track, which wouldn’t have been possible without community admin intervention.
The goal was to make the Business School community a place where everyone in the business school would feel comfortable and psychologically safe to share and collaborate. Without community admins advocating for a collaborative space for its members, the Business Group community would not have achieved the level of success it currently experiences today.
Initial steps to bring a stagnant community back to life
Using the information pane in your community or group can do wonders. Once a clear purpose for the community is established, don’t forget to share with your members so everyone is on the same page.
A common criticism of becoming more active in communities and groups is the influx of email notifications. Simply posting about how your members can adjust their notification settings helps to remove barriers to entry. Understand that receiving emails about posts can be enough for a user to ‘switch-off’.
Embed use of enterprise social into an internal communications plan to clearly explain its purpose in your organisation (and where your community fits in the bigger picture!) On-a-page-training guides simplify getting started on platforms like Yammer or Workplace from Facebook. Ensure your group members understand the key functions and encourage them to think about what they’re wanting to achieve before posting.
If your community is starting from a low baseline, try celebrating success through recognition. Anyone can contribute and facilitate a culture of connection. Combining praise with @mentioning, imagery and hashtags is a quick way to boost engagement and set the standard for the rest of your community.
Don’t forget to measure success
Reporting at regular intervals or just simply checking in on your live SWOOP dashboard is a great starting point. Being familiar with available metrics, and understanding what good looks like for your community or group, can help to guide future campaigns.
Rachel and Jennifer from the University of Sydney regularly report on qualitative measures including influential people and most engaging posts, and quantitative measures including key statistics, influencer risk and response rate.
Check in to see how your community performs month-on-month and follow trends in engagement. Are there key influencers who can help amplify messages? Are there well-represented business segments who may be interested in different types of content? Do you receive more engagement with images or video attached to posts? The data will help to tell the story of your community and guide any intervention required.
If you’re unsure what good looks like, try consulting the SWOOP goal-setting feature to see how you compare. Want to learn more about goal-setting in SWOOP? Check out this article on setting measurable goals for your enterprise social platform.
Are you ready to measure the success of your Yammer or Workplace community? Try SWOOP Analytics for free.
