Introducing community events is a great strategy for increasing member engagement.
At Learn.Community, we have a live workshop every Tuesday, teaching practical community building strategies.
The benefit of recurring community events:
- It’s a great way to ensure you are regularly bringing value to your members
- When members attend regularly, it becomes a habit
- You will naturally see a boost in engagement across your entire community platform on event days
- Events add structure to your community
- They keep people coming back. Retention improves as members have a compelling reason to return
Here’s a graph showing our community engagement at Learn.Community throughout the week:
No surprises, the day we host our weekly workshop we see around 25% more engagement versus other weekdays.
The possibilities for recurring community events are endless.
At my company Design Cuts, our community team host ‘Friday Fun’ sessions. Members gather to socialise, play creative games and unwind before the weekend.
Remember, events should be guided by the value proposition of your community, as well as the preferences of your members.
How to plan successful community events:
If you’re looking to introduce events into your community, here are some practical tips:
- Brainstorm a list of best ideas. Then ask your community to vote. If you have a clear winner, start with that.
- Start with one event, rather than multiple. You can always expand over time, but it’s better to do one recurring event really well, rather than over-packing your community calendar.
- Iterate and cut. Once an event is working well, look for ways to continually improve upon it. If certain events aren’t working so well, don’t be afraid to cut them, and try something new.
- Ensure that new members learn about the events within their onboarding process.
- Encourage members who attend to keep coming back. Track which members actively participate and reach out to them individually in the early days, to ensure they return for future sessions.
- Ask for feedback. When I try a new angle for a workshop, I’ll always ask attendees how they enjoyed it. Their feedback proves invaluable.
I hope that this quick guide for community events was helpful. They don’t need to be intimidating, you can start simple and build from there. When done right, events can become one of the cornerstones of your community. Have fun and try them!
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