Daily

• Monitor community activity and make sure appropriate people respond to questions. To best monitor community activity, turn on all email notifications on the "Notification Settings" page under "My News".
• Instead of answering member questions directly in email, create a Forum post with the answer and then refer your member to that answer via email.

Weekly

• Make sure upcoming events are on the community calendar
• Distribute documents by adding them to community library and then linking to them
• Post questions to stimulate conversation in multiple places throughout community: Group listserv, Community Forum, My News page
• Have a weekly drawing where one member wins a $5 Starbucks card and announce the winner on the My News page. The drawing can pull from all members who have a photo, or who have signed in during the last month.

Monthly

• Your challenge: connect like-minded members into small discussion groups where they can ask questions, hear other's questions and hear answers. Examples: Regional chapters, working committees, staff. Are there any other "groupings" within your organization who should be talking? Are you supporting your most active members in their attempts to convene conversations by starting groups?
• Congratulate the most active member for the prior month on the "My News" page
• Provide "quick fact" in your monthly newsletters highlighting recent community activity. Have "Learn More" link click through to community.
• Brainstorm as a team to create a list of questions that can be asked on the community to stimulate conversation.
• Ask thought leaders to blog within the community at least once per month on relevant topic.
• Make organizational announcements first on the community (1-2 day lead)
• Attend GoLightly's monthly Admin Refresher webcasts to discuss best practices with other community managers.

Quarterly

• Acknowledge most valuable community participant in your monthly newsletter once per quarter
• Move or remove unused Forums. Reorganize them so the most active Forums show up on the Forums front page.
• Review the latest Community Management Best Practices: http://www.golightly.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=5
• Survey your members: Is the community serving you? See Learning Center for suggested questions: http://www.golightly.com/vb/showthread.php?t=221

Yearly

• Discuss and document success metrics. See some suggestions: http://www.golightly.com/vb/showthread.php?t=192

At Community Launch

• Encourage chapter leaders to use a group email listserv to communicate with regional members.
• Add commonly referenced documents to group or community library.
• Give new members something to do immediately; don’t leave them to figure it out.

Energizing your community, feature by feature

General

• Set specific goals for your community
• Assign people to the task. Find out who your most interested and engaged members are, and assign them specific roles.
• Regularly re-evaluate your community goals

Welcome Page

• Add new facts
• Add Announcements
• Highlight members

Profile

• Encourage members to update profile
• Highlight good bios to others in the community
• Encourage members to update photos

Calendar

• Update upcoming events

Library

• Keep files organized/useful
• Send reminders when an important file is updated
• File of the month

Forums

• Remove unused forums

Wikis

• Keep wikis updated
• Send reminders when an important wiki has been updated

Site statistics

• Find & utilize your super users
• Install Google analytics and track your site statistics

Groups

• Update group homepage
• Reuse/delete dead groups
• Encourage members to start blogs
• Add links to open Groups on your Welcome Page
• Send a welcome email when someone registers for your community giving instructions for updating their profile and how to join groups
• Post an occasional message to the Everyone group highlighting some of the open groups that are available to join
• Assign your moderators the task of going through and adding people to groups

Listservs

• Send a welcome email when someone joins your group
• Identify your top contributors (i.e., champions) and reward them consistently for the important role they play.
• Create a list of Hot Topics or questions lapses in activity you could send to your list to spark conversation.
• Make sure your messages cover a timely topics that interest your members.
• Moderate new listservs (especially those with more than 50 subscribers) for the first two weeks so that administrative questions about the list or your organization don’t get sent to everyone.
• Is your subject line informative and engaging in less than 40 characters?
• Are all of your hyperlinks active and working?
• If applicable, did you remember to include an attachment?
• Support a level of controversy that incites engagement. Different perspectives are necessary.

10 Tactics for Growing Your Community

The full Powerpoint presentation can be downloaded here.

1) Let the potential members of the community know why you are providing an online community, and how being an active member of a community would benefit them.

2) Use every opportunity to showcase your online community.

3) Seed the community with groups, forum postings, blogs, etc., so that early adopters aren’t faced with an “empty” community.

4) Make it as easy as possible for people to sign up and to use the community tools.

5) Designate a staff person to be the facilitator or moderator of the community.

6) Acknowledge those members who use the community frequently.

7) Seek input from the members on your organization’s agenda and other organizational issues. Take what you learn from the community and put it into practice in the organization.

8) Publish ongoing lists of group events.

9) Announce new initiatives and other important organizational news in the community first.

10) Keep the community content fresh.

Additional Resources

• To learn about all of GoLightly's features, visit the Learning Center
• Participate in our ongoing Admin Refresher Training
• Read more about our Community Management Best Practices
• Email GoLightly Support: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Keep up with new community features/changes

If you are a GoLightly client and have additional ideas, please click here to let us know your thoughts.