Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

I was looking around at some different online community examples earlier this week, and noticed a number of cases where the hosts are promoting events, contests or other content from their main sites in their blogs or forums. But I didn't see many cases where the community was encourage to discuss the event or add to it in any way. This seems like a missed opportunity to me to extend the reach of the event and give it additional legs. If the event is worthwhile enough to promote, why not provide a place to talk about it?

What about you? Have you added a social dimension to an event by creating and promoting a place for it in your community? Either in the past, or do you plan to so in the future? Why or why not?

[#2]

Hi Scott,

We do a couple of forum activities related to events.  First, we have a section dedicated to our regional user groups, so user group members and prospective members can meet, introduce themselves,share what they're background and UG interests are, plan their next meeting, etc.  Some user groups will post copies of the event presentations and event summariesin the forum as well.  When I start a new regional user group forum board, I add a sticky post that tells them what the board is for, reminds them to subscribe to new board activity, and encourage them to post an introduction (e.g. name, interest level, discussion topics).  Then I send a one-time "grassroots" email of sorts to folks in that are, so they know the board is available.

Secondly, we create a featured board a couple of months before our annual user conference.  Then the main event planners post updates, ask for feedback, answer questions, etc. about the event.  It's a good way to promote the event and showcase our customers' enthusiasm for the event.  Hard to beat those third party endorsements.

Cheers,

[#3]

That's great Roxy!

Have you found that this gives those events greater legs than they otherwise would have? And does it bring more participation to the community that you wouldn't have seen otherwise? I love the win-win scenario!

[#4]

I think having the community / forum boards tied into these events has had a positive impact, especially for the user groups since they're user-driven events.  And we incorporate these forum boards into the event invitations, confirmation emails, user group best practices, etc. so it encourages new users to bounce out to the forum and see what's going on with the event.

Other advantages include:

(1) Have a designated place for existing members to chat with / stay connected to each other

(2) Create a public place that prospective members can find to learn about the group, agenda topics, etc.

(3) Encourage collaboration around planning their meetings, providing agenda suggestions, etc.

(4) Allow regional user groups to learn from each other (e.g. see agendas that other user groups are creating and using)

(5) Keep a record of past user group details that isn't auto-archived away in email and that is available to mulitple stakeholders, so all the info doesn't live in my head, my folders, etc.

(6) Board / thread subscriptions help keep the user group top-of-mind

[#5]

The community that I am currently working with does in fact tie in its special events to the forums where contributors and Supervisors can discuss the details, vote for finalists and winners and so on.  It works like a charm because they are essentially engaged in processes unique to 'their' site that are outside of the normal everyday activities that they usually participate in.  In turn, these events and posts are blogged about, Dugg (Digg) and Tweeted (Twitter).  It's a fascinating and very benefical approach.

[#6]

Our community has a massive 'events' side to it. In fact I would say that users find this half the attraction of our forums.

We run many official events that our community teams run and perhaps even more regular weekly events that the users themselves run. In all instances we have boards and threads dedicated to each individual event - and certainly this is something that we would never change! Giving the users a place to talk about such events is critical to the success of the said event. They talk about the outcome, the highlights, ideas and changes for future events and furthermore it serves as a great place to build up excitement for the following event! 

We even promote these events with a weekly calendar that we place in the boards announcement section! 

[#7]

Hi Scott,

We're trying a slightly different twist on this topic. We're currently planning for our annual partner conference and one session I'm involved in teaching will be on using social media to promote your business. We're planning to set up a forum that complements this session and allows us to hold a "support group" for attendees after the conference to share what ideas they've implemented, successes they've had, etc.

Has anyone tried something like this before?

-Mike

[#8]

I think most people think of events as in attending one in-person but I think with a global community that reaches your brand you should think in terms of those that attend in-person and those that attend online (webinar, live video, etc...).  I love upcoming.yahoo.com's terminology of I'm going, I'm interested and an additional one would be I'm watching.