A member engagement platform is like a digital HQ for bringing your association community together and keeping members pumped about participating. This article focuses on some solid ways to put all the bells and whistles of a member engagement platform into action.
Let’s dive right in!
Engaging and Retaining Your Members Through Member Engagement Platform
Here are tips to engage and keep your members as an association.
1. Bring Members Together in New Ways
A member engagement platform lets you create rocking online spaces for members to connect. You can create next-level discussion boards where your members can chat about hot topics, share news, and lend each other a hand.
To keep it buzzing, you can even assign moderators to facilitate the conversations. While they’re making friends and connections, members will low-key gain knowledge from rubbing shoulders with peers who get what they’re going through.
And that’s not all. You can also set up private and group messaging so members can just kick it and collaborate on projects. Oh, and virtual events, including webinars, big-time conferences, smaller workshops – the whole enchilada.
You can take a poll of your audience, get some Q&A, and record everything for members who couldn’t make it to the meetings. The opportunities are endless. Geography and busy schedules no longer limit your interactions.
2. Tailor the Experience Member by Member
Alright, check this out. A member engagement platform makes it super easy to get personal with how you engage each member.
You can track the types of content each member reads, saves, and shares. See who is interested in research reports, videos, courses, and other catalog items. Use this to create member profiles highlighting their interests and preferences. How cool is that?
Letting your members show off their styles through profiles they pimp out themselves. It helps them find others they’d vibe with.
You can additionally sort members into attributes like what chapter they belong to, how long they’ve been a member, career level, and how active they are, and send each group relevant content. No more wasting their time with info overload.
When you show members you “get” them, it keeps them hooked.
3. Make Participation Fun with Rewards
You can use friendly competition and rewards in the platform to get members to contribute more. Here is how you do it. Give points when members do things like start forum topics, volunteer for committees, attend webinars, and refer new members. They can redeem points for free access, discounts, and member-only content.
Display leaderboards, showing members with the most points and badges earned for involvement milestones like hosting five events. This public recognition inspires activity. Introduce member levels connected to points earned. They get special features at higher levels, such as displaying their profile more prominently. This makes all members strive to move up.
When you make membership feel like a fun game and status, people want to keep engaging.
4. Get Ongoing Feedback to Improve
Digital tools make it easy to survey members often. How do you survey your members?
Use brief polls sent out after annual conferences, elections, policy changes, and other major events to gauge reactions instantly while things are still fresh. Ask straightforward questions like whether they were satisfied on a five-point scale to encourage participation.
Create a suggestions forum where anyone can share ideas for improving various areas like member benefits offered, website changes needed, and community outreach opportunities. Upvote features let you see which suggestions have the most support, so those get higher priority. Show members their voices shape plans by posting responses explaining how popular input is being implemented.
Use charts and graphs to display metrics collected automatically, like monthly website visitors, event attendance, and votes in an election. Hard statistics reveal what initiatives truly resonate, so you can double down on those and reconsider less popular ones.
Getting quick input from your full membership often helps you stay connected to evolving needs and interests. This keeps the community vibrant over time.
5. Supply the Resources Members Seek
Be the go-to authority in your field that members rely on. Launch free short courses taught by experts addressing frequently asked topics, new technologies members need to learn, and leadership skills to boost their careers. Build organized libraries of templates, instructional videos, white papers, and other assets members use. Expand it routinely so there is always something new to explore.
Produce premium webinars, presentations, and research available only to active members. Reward loyal supporters with exclusive access and incentivize others to engage more for privileges. When you supply the educational resources and downloads members want, it makes the organization invaluable to them and earns their loyalty.
Final Word
The specialized tools of a member engagement platform make executing modern, people-focused experiences easier for associations. You can facilitate vibrant communities through a member engagement platform by being more creative and strategic with digital capabilities.
Meg is an author at Cinnamon Hollow. She writes on a variety of topics sharing tips and ideas for daily life.
