Four key steps to help support service providers build engaged online communities.

Online community. On the surface, the term may be a little ambiguous, and even conjure up images of the ‘90s-era web. But one thing’s for sure: online communities are extremely relevant today, delivering enormous value for both community members and the organisations that facilitate them.

In terms of definitions, ‘online community’ can encompass everything from discussion boards to massive multiplayer online role-playing video games.

The definition may be diverse, but so are the benefits. An engaged online community can deliver all kinds of value.

Let’s start with an obvious one: positive cash flow. San Francisco-based game developer Linden Lab generates much of its revenue through subscriptions and virtual land fees for over 85,000 residents in its ‘Second Life’ game. In fact, the Second Life virtual economy transacts over US$1.5 million per day in real and digital goods. World of Warcraft took things a step further, contributing over a billion dollars of revenue for Blizzard Entertainment in 2007.

These are surprising and impressive statistics, but there is far more value to be gleaned from online communities than simply profit. And this is where support service providers—like Guide Dogs, Jesuit Social Services, Care Connect, or any registered NDIS provider—enter the fray.

Online communities are increasingly a source of genuine connection for people feeling isolated.

Support services typically provide crucial interventions for communities who may face feelings of isolation: examples include people living with disability, lower socioeconomic-status populations, or people experiencing mental health conditions. In many instances, these considerations may present in tandem.

Research suggests people are increasingly turning to online forums for help with all kinds of issues, including mental health challenges like anxiety, isolation, and depression.

The growing popularity of online forums has been attributed to the ease with which information, advice and support can be accessed. This ease of access—combined with anonymity—can be especially important for people who are less likely to seek professional face-to-face support.

There is further evidence to suggest people experiencing serious mental illness report benefits from interacting with peers online. According to the research, these people report:

• Feelings of greater social connectedness.
• Feelings of group belonging.
• The cathartic experience of sharing personal stories and strategies to cope with the day-to-day challenges of living with a mental illness.

By learning from peers online, these individuals may gain insight into important healthcare decisions, which can ultimately encourage in-person support service seeking behaviour.

We can deduce from this research that, with the right approach, online communities can provide a crucial interim support for those not ready to reach out in person. Longer term, they can also act as an incredibly valuable conduit to connect people with actual support services once they are ready to engage.

There are clear benefits for both people and providers. So, how do you go about building an engaged online community?

1. Give people a clear, compelling reason to come.

Before you do anything, establish absolute clarity on why people should or would come to your community. Be clear on the value you provide.

There are many different types of online communities. The type you intend to build will have implications for the content or unique product features you need to deliver to foster and grow your audience.

Types of communities include:

• Support communities: a place for people to request and provide assistance in relation to specific subjects. Examples of support communities include Beyond Blue’s forums or Guide Dogs’ CatchUp.
• Discussion communities: a place for people to discuss common interests. Examples of discussion communities include Reddit.
• Action communities: a place for people to plan and work towards a common goal, like Ability Forum. Ability Forum invites people to take part in research studies and use their voice to improve disability services around Australia.

It’s entirely possible that you may end up with a combination of types of communities.

Tip from experience: rather than simply choose a type of community at random, start by thinking about your key audiences and their ‘jobs-to-be-done’ (or JTBD).

Developed by Tony Ulwick—founder of the Strategy innovation consulting firm—the JTBD framework focuses on identifying outcomes that customers seek, as opposed to products they might use to achieve those outcomes. This ensures the user need is identified first, and the solution calibrated around that need. The alternative? Arbitrarily building something because you want to, and hoping people find utility in what you’ve built.

Rather than say ‘let’s build a community message board’, think about the outcome your community members may seek. If ‘share experiences and learn from other peoples’ insights and stories’ is a job-to-be-done, community message boards may be a valuable way to deliver on that job.

Starting with the JTBD framework will clarify your thinking in terms of how you promote the community. And equally, whom you target with promotion or outreach.

Good examples and techniques:

SANE is the leading national mental health organisation for people with complex mental health issues in Australia, and for the families and friends who support them. The SANE forum does an excellent job of incentivising people to join the community. Some of the techniques it uses to encourage people to join include:

• Clearly itemising whom the community is designed to support, with big bold sections speaking to different audience groups or contexts.

The login page for the SANE forums does a great job of encouraging and incentivising people to join the community, directly speaking to clear and distinct audience groups.

• Offering social proof, with anonymised testimonials from participants speaking to the value of being a community member (also shown in the above screenshot).
• Examples of current conversations that occur within the forum, so prospective members can get a sense of the content and insights on offer.

You can preview the types of conversations that happen within the community before signing up.

2. Once you’ve given people a reason to come, give them a reason to come back.

Once you’re able to establish initial traction with a member base, you need to create an incentive for repeat visits. It’s crucial that you keep people engaged and returning to the platform.

You don’t want new members joining a community that feels like it wrapped up yesterday. Creating a sense of constant activity is key.

There are many ways to do this: both within your platform and in the way you proactively engage members outside of the platform.

Good examples and techniques within a platform:

Beyond Blue’s forum does a great job of conveying a sense of activity within its community.

Beyond Blue makes it easy to see which new topics are being discussed within the community.

In the above screenshot, you can see the forum highlights common discussion topics (anxiety, depression, or relationships and family issues). This allows people to immediately identify with key topics of interest, rather than sifting through multiple conversations to find material that resonates.

It’s also beneficial if these featured conversation topics change every time you return to the forums. This highlights the breadth of issues the community can offer insight into, and thus the more comprehensive the support on offer for members.

Beyond Blue’s welcome screen also includes bold numbers itemising the amount of posts and discussions that relate to each thread within the forum. Again, this helps to convey the wealth of insight members can glean by either reading or contributing to discussions.

Once you click through into the more detailed discussion threads, Beyond Blue also provides an indication of how many comments you have read within each conversation (and how many remain unread), so you can easily pick things up next time you visit.

The number in red highlights how many messages remain unread, making it easier to see where you should jump back in to conversations.

Good techniques outside of a platform:

To create a sense of activity outside of the platform, you could consider recurring email notifications. For example, if a person can subscribe for updates on a particular thread or conversation, they might receive an email each time there’s a new comment. Or alternatively, a weekly wrap up email highlighting how many new comments have been posted throughout the previous week.

You could also consider automated marketing journeys that are initiated by certain behavioural triggers.

If a person logs into your community, reads a conversation, and then doesn’t visit the platform again for a month, that may be an opportunity to send an email highlighting all the great content they’ve missed in the interim period.

3. Make the entire experience accessible.

It’s important to consider both technical accessibility (building for a variety of different needs, preferences or abilities in how people use technology) and conceptual accessibility (building a product that is easy to understand and intuitive to use).

Technical accessibility is crucial, but it’s a significant topic in and of itself I’ve written about elsewhere. So, let’s focus on conceptual accessibility.

Some techniques you can apply here include:

• Create an interactive on-boarding tour to ensure people understand the different features in your platform, and when and why you’d use them. CatchUp—Guide Dogs’ support and networking platform for people with low vision and blindness—offers a welcome tour for new community members to ensure everyone understands what’s on offer. Of course, it’s highly accessible from a technical perspective too.

CatchUp offers a tour to help new members get acquainted with the platform’s features and functions.

• Stand on the shoulders of giants. Most people are familiar with the usability conventions of platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Many of the usability patterns in these platforms are also optimised and validated through comprehensive testing and research. By maintaining some of the conventions of popular technology products, you can ensure your community feels familiar from the get-go.
• Use consistent terminology and document it. This is a relatively small consideration in the scheme of things, but a crucial one in supporting new members to orient themselves in a new community. If you refer to something as a ‘thread’, keep that name consistent in every instance throughout the platform. Be clear on the distinction and application of terms like ‘thread’, ‘conversation’, ‘chat’, ‘forum’, ‘topic’, and ‘comment’. If you’re not, it can get confusing very quickly. This becomes particularly important if you have multiple team members involved with creating content or moderating the community.

4. Make it feel personal, without being intrusive or discomforting.

Personalisation is important. In many ways, we’ve come to expect an element of personalisation in every digital product and experience. There are stats to back this up, too.

Personalisation can make an experience feel more relevant and curated for your members. It also makes things feel more human. It doesn’t have to be particularly onerous or explicit; just a little flourish here that says ‘the system recognises and acknowledges you as a user’.

Good examples:

In line with this approach, CatchUp greets members by name. It also offers a series of time-based welcome messages. These messages rotate depending on the time of day in your local area.

Speaking of location, CatchUp also uses geo-tagging to allow people to customise the material they receive in the platform. If you live in Geelong, for example, you can choose to receive news, events, and other content that is more relevant to the Geelong area as a priority.

News and events can be configured to serve material that’s relevant to your local area as a priority, using the ‘local updates’ dropdown under ‘featured news and updates’.

Personalising content provides an additional opportunity to deliver on some of the considerations outlined in point 2: ‘once you’ve given people a reason to come, give them a reason to come back.’

The more curated and relevant the experience of using the platform, the more likely people will enjoy and continue to use it.

However, it’s worth acknowledging there is a balance to achieve with personalisation. A little touch here and there can be positive, but too much can create an unwelcome sense that members are being constantly monitored. For certain audiences—especially those who are sensitive and using the community to gradually re-establish a sense of connection with the world—it’s not appealing to feel closely scrutinised in any capacity.

Remember, building a community takes sustained effort. It can also be a non-linear process.

While these four steps can be crucial, it’s important to remember that there will be ongoing effort involved in fostering and growing your community. Building a community can also be a non-sequential process.

As your community grows, there will be new and different ways to personalise the experience. There will be new and different ways to incentivise people to return to the platform.

However you grow, evolve, or pivot your community over time, stay true to the value you provide for your audience. That way, you’ll be sure the community continues to generate value in perpetuity: both for you as an organisation, and for your members or supporters.