Effectively building an online communityJeff Spring, Advanced Solutions International

AGENDA

Engaging your membersOnline communities are a valuable part of your overall engagement strategy. Effective communities can keep your members/donors involved supporting your mission.

Who is your community?Structure your message so that it appeals to those who will provide the most benefit. Bring on your champions!

Using iMIS CommunitiesIt’s a fast moving world out there. Watch your conversations and refine your message to stay ahead of your members/donors.

Effectively building a member/donor community

Q: What is engagement?

Engagement = Relationship + Action(E = R + A)

Engaging your members/donorsWhat is engagement?

Q: What is the relationship?

The relationship is every interaction:– Every email– Every page on your website– Every customer service interaction– Every event– Every phone call

Everything

Engaging your members/donorsWhat is engagement?

Q: What is the action?

The action is how your relationship with your membership is realized:

– purchases (membership fees, contributions, publications)

– Social conversation(public or private)

– Participation(committees, event attendance)

– Organizational evangelists(many – or all – of the above)

Engaging your members/donorsWhat is engagement?

Keep the barriers to engagement low:– Simple account creation and donation forms.– Test and adapt. Experiment! Try . . .

• Different approaches• Different messages• Different locations• Being redundant

But don’t be annoying (like baseball positive)

Ideas to drive engagement

What’s in your iMIS?• Event registrations• Webinars• Newsletters• Donations• Purchases• Committee Participation• Community posts• Community Subscriptions

Outside of iMIS• Public social media• ad hoc groups/events• others?

Score your engagementHistorical data in iMIS

Score your engagementiMIS Engagement scoring

• Give voice to the people that matter

Identify your communityWho are you trying to reach?

The conversationsWhere are they happening?

Guide the conversation• Respond appropriately (and positively)• Post frequently, and stay positive• Mention your supporters• Promote when people are interested

– Events – yours and other industry events– Dues renewal time– News events– Others?

The conversationsPublic Communities

• Tools– Hootsuite (used by ASI)

• One dashboard for all your services• Listening streams: You, your industry, and your

competitors• Schedule posts• Message uploads• Mobile application

The conversationsPublic Communities

Private CommunitiesiMIS Communities

Private CommunitiesCreate a community

iMIS CommunitiesCommunity home

iMIS CommunitieHome

The Community Home is a summary page, includingannouncements, blogs, andrecent activities.

iMIS CommunitiesBlogs

Community members can:– Subscribe to group or

individual blogs.– Subscribe to a single blog or to

all blogs.

iMIS CommunitiesDiscussions

Community members can engage each other!

– Unlimited discussions.– Threaded discussions.– Subscriptions to a forum or

specific topics.

iMIS CommunitiesResource library

The Community Resource Library is a repository:

– Audio files– Video files– Image files– Documents– Configurable maximum file size

iMIS CommunitiesWikis

Community Wikis offer:– Collaborative editing of articles– Authors identified by iMIS

iMIS CommunitiesParticipants

Your Community Participants– Members in your community– Roles and recent posts– Link to what the user is

following

iMIS CommunitiesSecurity

With Community Security, you can manage:

– Members of your community– Administrators– Moderators– Wiki Authors

iMIS CommunitiesSecurity

iMIS CommunitiesSecurity

Featuring community components throughout your site

iMIS CommunitiesOutside the box

iMIS CommunitiesOutside the box

• Path to the user control:– ~/AsiCommon/Controls/CommunityManagement/Blog/BlogListItem.ascx

• Community Item Key:– 88bbe9be-5e37-422a-82bb-135afcadb03c

• Huh??

iMIS CommunitiesOutside the box

• iUniformKey from the URL of the community item

iMIS CommunitiesAdvanced Communities

WITH THANKS TO OUR SPONSORSNIUG DISCOVERY CONFERENCE